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The Sickness, Volume 1

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by Dr. Javier A Suarez The Sickness is disgusting and scary. A trite observation based on the cover, but one that extends into the themes of the work beyond its initial oozing hook. The book shoves you face-first into a vile swamp of squelching entrails and dripping orifices. However, the spectacularly grotesque art from Jenna Cha barely scratches the epidermis of this deep flesh wound that gets worse the more you peel it apart. The book is not scary because it has unnerving imagery, but because of what those images represent. There are motifs of uniquely American war-time anxieties, and… Read More

Remember Us to Life

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by Annemarie Jutel Content Advisory: This graphic memoir includes a death by suicide. The crisis Lifeline number in the U.S. and Canada is 988, in the U.K. it’s 999; and for elsewhere go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines . Anyone who has done genealogical research will admire the work of Joanna Rubin Dranger in Remember Us to Life.  It’s a detailed and carefully drawn story of the author’s Ashkenazi family:  refugees from some of the most decimated Jewish communities in Europe.  In contrast to the spidery outlines of a family tree, her graphic memoir provides deeply textured imagery, historical documents and characterizations of… Read More

Feeding Ghosts – A Graphic Memoir

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by Melanie Anspacher Tessa Hulls’ 2025 Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Feeding Ghosts, is nothing short of extraordinary.  Meticulously researched and created by the author over nearly a decade and filled with beautifully detailed etching-like illustrations that richly cover each page, this work tells not one but many stories that span three generations and as many continents. At the heart of the memoir is Hulls’ grandmother Sun Yi’s severe mental illness and the devastating impact it has on generations of her family. It is told through the emotional and physical journey Hulls takes with her mother, Rose, to piece together and comprehend… Read More

Fe – A Traumatized Son’s Graphic Memoir

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by Kevin Wolf While on a recent vacation to Denver Colorado, I read Fe – A Traumatized Son’s Graphic Memoir by Bren Bataclan). I checked it out from the local library. The editor of this review asked me “How old were Fe and her son when they immigrated?” It’s a good question, but unfortunately, I can’t recall (except that the timeline covers the author’s childhood in the Philippines into adulthood in the United States). This book isn’t available in my local library system, so I can’t readily answer that question. In this review, “Bren” will be the author’s, Bataclan’s, character… Read More

Heavyweight: A Family Story of the Holocaust, Empire, and Memory

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by Anita White After taking them across the stream, he sent across all his possessions. Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When he saw he had not prevailed against him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip at its socket, so that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with him. Page 68 Verse 24 to 26 JPS Hebrew English Tanakh   Solomon J. Brager wrestles with many aspects of his family history as he carefully probes and reveals layers of his relationship to his great grandfather Erich Levi who was… Read More