by Alaina Santiago My Perfectly Imperfect Body by Debbie Tung presents a graphic medicine memoir that dives into what it really means to live in a body that’s not cooperative. The story explores feelings of hardship, frustration, and what that experience looks like to the outside world. Similar to other graphic medicine works such as, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michaelangelo, and Me by Ellen Forney, The Bad Doctor: The Troubled Life and Times of Benjamin Bennett, MD by Ian Williams, and Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 by MK Czerwiec, the strength of these individuals cannot be understood through… Read More
My Perfectly Imperfect Body
By Chloe Horning, Librarian Readers may be familiar with Debbie Tung from her earlier works of graphic autobiography. Book Love explores her love of reading. Quiet Girl in a Noisy World is about her experiences as an introvert. Her first foray into what we might call the Graphic Medicine space was Everything is Okay, a personal memoir of her struggles with anxiety and depression. My Perfectly Imperfect Body is a recounting of Debbie’s difficulties with disordered eating during her teen and early adult years. Tung’s visual style is gentle and soothing. Her figures are soft and rounded, with minimalistic features…. Read More
Invisible Differences – A Story of Autism, Adulting, and Living Life in Full Color
by Janet Chan Content advisory: nonconsensual sexual contact, There is one occurrence of domestic violence when Marguerite is attacked by an acquaintance. National Domestic Violence Hotline in the United States is 800-799-7233; text 988; or use this weblink, https://www.thehotline.org/. In Canada use https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/health-promotion/stop-family-violence/services.html. In the UK use https://www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk/. And elsewhere in the world, one could use https://www.nomore.org/the-no-more-global-directory/, https://www.domesticshelters.org/resources/national-global-organizations/international-organizations, or https://www.theamieffect.com/global-directory-of-abuse-helplines/. Daryl Hannah. Dan Aykroyd. Josef Schovanec. Susan Boyle. Temple Grandin. What do these people have in common? They are all named as fellow “auties” in Julie Danchez’ s graphic novel, Invisible Differences. Originally published in French in 2016, this graphic… Read More
Thinking About Thinking – Impossible Thoughts and Complicated Feelings
awaiting review
Embrace Your Size: My Own Body Positivity
by Soph Myers-Kelley Embrace Your Size, by hara, is such a delightful read. Through a series of short comics (manga), we learn about hara’s teenage struggles with size and eating disorders, difficulty dressing and seeking a career as a large adult, and eventual path towards self-acceptance and body positivity. Hara has always been a larger child, and moving from middle to high school, she was inspired to lose a lot of weight (largely because of the culture and its overarching negative opinion of big girls). Losing an altogether unhealthy amount of weight in a short period, hara begins a… Read More
Naked: The Confessions of a Normal Woman
by Alison Kent Everyone I know has at least one moment in their past where an initial exposure to sexuality, or sex, is marked by deep shame. (For me, it was, at age 8, seeing a film in Spanish where a couple were intimate; since this was in Franco’s Spain, the main character decides to keep the child instead of having an abortion. The scene itself was really innocuous in retrospect yet it left a deep mark.) This is the premise that is the starting point for Éloïse Marseille’s memoir Naked: we share common experiences of shame about our… Read More
What Is Home, Mum?
awaiting review
Lost Soul, Be at Peace
awaiting review
When I Came Out
awaiting review
Green Lantern: Rebirth
By Mason Bennett Superhero comic books are exaggerated soap operas. The characters are all larger than life, wearing colorful spandex, with universe-ending problems. However, we feel drawn to them because, in their overly dramatic way, they reflect our reality. This is true in Green Lantern: Rebirth, a sort of reboot/continuation of the character Hal Jordan and the Lantern Corps. Rebirth is a great book about rectifying mistakes, dealing with PTSD, managing grief, overcoming anxiety and fear, and accepting oneself. A common thread in the book is how Hal Jordan deals with the trauma of death. First when he witnessed his… Read More