by Soph Myers-Kelley Bishakh Som in Spellbound introduces the reader to a memoir experience about culture, immigration, queerness, transness, tantalizing foods, and crushing identity crises. It’s ideal for older teenagers and adults. One of the most interesting creative decisions Som makes in her book is the choice to use a stand-in cisgender Bengali American character named Anjali instead of depicting her own likeness as the protagonist. Som herself is a transgender Bengali American woman, who came out as an adult. She originally created this work as a diary comic before stringing together longer chapters. This book is a complex, note… Read More
Last Things: a graphic memoir of loss & love
awaiting review
Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars
Book Review by Kevin Wolf Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars is a powerful, touching, honest portrayal from author Rick Louis’ perspective of his son, Ronan, born with Tay-Sach’s, a genetic terminal neurological disease. This story provides information about Ronan’s birth, the disease, infant milestones made and lost, the impact on Louis’ marriage, and all wrapped in Lara Antal’s wonderful illustrations both happy and sad. I read Ronan in one sitting. I highly recommend this story for the medical detail, empathic feelings generated, and beautiful illustrations. Ronan is also recommended by Tom Hart (Rosalie Lightning), Brian Fies (Mom’s… Read More
Medical Mentions Book Reviews III
Where to Buy: https://bookshop.org/shop/graphicmedicine Book Review by Kevin Wolf Medical Mentions is a group of graphic works. The graphic works reviewed here are books whose primary topics are not medical, and yet they cover a medical topic with some depth at some point in the work. The rest of the work might be fictional or nonfictional, while the medical portion is often technical and five pages or more. The reviewer will usually neither recommend nor discourage reading the work, except when the rest of the work is deemed outstanding or terrible, respectively. Typically, six graphic works will be part… Read More
New Podcast: AIDS Memoirs and Sarah Leavitt
In this episode, we feature Jordana Greenblatt’s presentation from the 2015 Comics & Medicine conference, titled “Internal and External Spaces of Threat and Dissolution: HIV/AIDS Graphic Memoir.” This presentation was part of the “Comics as Performance” panel in Riverside. We will be hearing much more in the coming year about comics as performance as our 2016 Dundee conference theme expands on this area of thought and scholarship. In addition to the video below, you can subscribe to the Graphic Medicine podcast in iTunes here. And in our “What Are You Reading?!” segment, Tangles creator Sarah Leavitt talks with MK about… Read More
New Podcast: These Frames Are Hiding Places
In an interruption of the lectures from Brighton, this week we feature Mita Mahato of the University of Puget Sound. Dr. Mahato recently delivered a lecture at the University of California at Riverside titled, “These Frames Are Hiding Places: Processing Grief Through Comics.” You can see more of Dr. Mahato’s work here. The lecture was supported by UCR’s Center for Ideas and Society, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Workshops in the Humanities. The event was coordinated by Juliet McMullin, who was kind enough to share the audio with Graphic Medicine. Dr. McMullin is a moving force behind UCR’s the Medical Narratives… Read More