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Offshore Lightning

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by Christine Castigliano, HeartsQuest.com   This collection by manga-ka (manga artist) Nazuna Saito offers a poetic, humorous glimpse into everyday life – and death – in Japan. Most of the stories were originally published in 1991-92 as the artist entered her late 40s. After a 20-year hiatus to care for ailing family members, she published several longer pieces, until a stroke in 2018 slowed her manga production. As an elder, the artist offers her unique perspectives on memory, aging, and the transience of life. As a Japanese artist, Saito draws on a cultural lineage that relies on symbolic nature images… Read More

Night Bus

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Book Review by Kevin Wolf     Zuo Ma is pseudonym for Zou Jian. He’s published, in China, a short story collection, Walk, and Night Bus. The translated (by Orion Martin) collection, Night Bus, is the combination of both these works. Night Bus appears after the first three short stories; and is followed by seven more short stories. Night Bus is about 210 pages. Now that I’ve explained what I’ve understood, let me provide my guess at what it’s about. Night Bus is the artist/author’s creativity applied to the delusions of his grandmother as her dementia/Alzheimer’s disease progresses for the… Read More

Found Stories of Losing Memories

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Dad’s not all there anymore Bird in a Cage Little Josephine: Memory in Pieces Heavy Snow: My Father’s Disappearance into Alzheimer’s At a Particular Age: Heavy Snow Revisited Sea Sirens: A Trot & Cap’n Bill Adventure   Book Reviews by Kevin Wolf     The graphic medicine works reviewed here are often—and rightly so—from the caretaker’s perspective and the outward manifestations of the patient, but not the patient’s thoughts or first-person accounts. Some artists of these works use surrealistic imagery to guess at the patients’ inner life. The primary medical topic covered in these graphic works is Alzheimer’s and other… Read More

This Week in Graphic Medicine (4/19 – 4/26/19)

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‘This Week in Graphic Medicine’ highlights relevant articles about comics in medicine published during the week (Saturday – Friday). Links are typically presented without commentary, unless clarification of relevance is necessary, with credit given to those who flagged them up where possible. So without further ado… Matthew’s Pick of the Week… This week’s picks include big news about the Brighton Conference: Brighton keynote speaker announcement: Dr. Meg-John Barker! The conference is really shaping up to be an amazing event and I’m looking forward to seeing as many of you there as possible! If you have any questions about this year’s… Read More

Parables of Care: using comics to enhance the impact of dementia care practice and research.

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From a blog post by Ernesto Priego: A public lecture, exploring how comics and taking an artistic approach can bring benefits to dementia care, will be held at the University of Chester. Tickets are free, but need to be booked in advance. To reserve a place, visit https://parablesofcare.eventbrite.co.uk Held as part of the University’s 2018 Research Festival 2018, Dr Simon Grennan will describe the making of the 2017 comic book Parables of Care, which presents a creative response to dementia care, as told by carers themselves. The lecture will take place on Thursday, April 12, from 6.30pm to 7.30pm in room… Read More

Dad’s not all there anymore: Lewy Body Dementia comic

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Alex Demetris got in touch recently. He’s working on a comic about Lewy Body Dementia. It looks very interesting and I can’t wait to see more (there is a printed copy in the post to me!). This is what Alex has to say about his project: ‘Having produced numerous cartoons and short comic strips over the past six years, last autumn I decided to enrol on an MA in Illustration at Camberwell College of the Arts in order to explore fully my interest in producing a longer narrative comic.  In 2007 my father had been diagnosed with Lewy body dementia,… Read More