A moving and heartfelt graphic memoir.
A Canadian cartoonist and writer pieces together the unspoken lives of her Chinese-born parents.
When Wong, author of a previous graphic memoir, Dear Scarlet, visited her mother, Sandy, in the hospital in 2014, she became aware of how poorly she spoke Cantonese and how disconnected she felt from her now deeply depressed mother. Determined to understand the reasons behind the distant relationships she had with both Sandy and with her emotionally absent father, Frank, the author began revisiting her past. Language was only one part of a problem: Her immigrant parents were also blue-collar working people who “weren’t around much” during her childhood. Probing further, Wong realized that the distance also had to do with the personal stories her parents had avoided telling her—e.g., about the dangerous escapes they made to Hong Kong during the Communist Revolution. Through spare, pen-and-ink images and simple language, Wong imagines Sandy and Frank's respective histories, skillfully interweaving them with strands of the life the family shared in Canada. Plunging deeper into the past, the author also imagines the lives of her mysterious paternal great-grandfather, who came to Canada early in the 20th century to “lift his family out of extreme poverty.” Despite “overwhelming racism,” exemplified by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923 and in forced separation from loved ones in China, her great-grandfather persisted, doing everything he could to “give his family a good life from afar.” What emerges from the fractured segments of Wong’s story is not just a poignant tale of intergenerational trauma, but also an inspiring portrait of familial dedication that embraces wisdom, grace, and love. “I am the descendant of people who stepped out into the unknown and found a way to live,” she writes. “A child of survivors, many generations back.”
A moving and heartfelt graphic memoir.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2024
ISBN: 9781551529493
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
An impassioned message of rage and hope.
The author of Persepolis returns with a collection about burgeoning activism in Iran.
In September 2022, the beating and death of Mahsa Jina Amini, an Iranian student arrested for not wearing her headscarf properly, incited a solidarity movement among women and men that spread around the world. To publicize and bear witness to this major uprising, Satrapi has gathered stories, cartoons, and essays from more than 20 artists, activists, journalists, and academics. The author has two aims: “to explain what’s going on in Iran, to decipher events in all their complexity and nuance for a non-Iranian readership, and to help you understand them as fully as possible”; and “to remind Iranians that they are not alone.” Setting the movement in context, Iranian American historian Abbas Milani offers an overview of the political upheavals and revolutions that have led to the current misogynist, repressive regime and the “resolute defiance” that has emerged in protest. As each contributor attests, life under a wrathful dictatorship is consistently frightening and dangerous: “The Islamic Republic ensures its own survival by murdering people. During the successive demonstrations” over Amini’s murder, “several hundred people were killed in an attempt to strike fear into the hearts of protesters. Young people were forced to confess under torture.” Women are especially vulnerable. Since November 2022, young students in schools across Iran have been poisoned by toxic gas as part of an attempt to force girls’ schools to close. Protecting the regime falls to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a paramilitary organization that answers directly to Khomeini, the Supreme Leader, and for the past four decades has carried out a reign of terror. This collection pays homage to victims and celebrates the dreams of Iran’s determined activists. Other contributors include Joanne Sfar, Lewis Trondheim, Paco Roca, and Mana Neyestani.
An impassioned message of rage and hope.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781644214053
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024
A sharp compendium of dreamy visions that could only have come from the iconic cartoonist’s sleeping mind.
The renowned cartoonist taps into Freud, Jung, and Kabbalah to discuss what happens when the head hits the pillow.
Chast, famed New Yorker cartoonist and winner of the inaugural Kirkus Prize for Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? makes it clear that while your own dreams may be inherently interesting, listening to other’ dreams is markedly not. Thankfully, the author’s thumbnail depictions of dreams that span a cross section of her bedside dream journal bring just enough humor and wit for readers to be charmed instantly. “This book is dedicated to the Dream District of our brains,” writes the author, “that weird and uncolonized area where anything can happen, from the sublime to the mundane to the ridiculous to the off-the-charts bats.” Familiar classics—“alone at a party,” “teeth falling out”—sit alongside the bizarre and hilarious—e.g., “too many birds not enough cages.” Even actor Wallace Shawn, son of former New Yorker editor William Shawn, makes an appearance: “He and I were walking down Main Street in a town in Connecticut and I needed to point something out to him: ‘Look, It’s a Broccoli Patch!’ ” From “Recurring Dreams” to “Nightmares” to “Dream Fragments or Ones That Got Away,” Chast explores beyond the first blush of the strange and personal in dreams. She writes, “here’s what’s interesting: dreams come out of my brain…as I sleep, I am creating them…so why, as they unfold, am I always so surprised?!??” The author reaches for answers beyond Freud and Jung to a wider range of insights from Kabbalah, Aristotle, neuroscientists, molecular biologists, and more. Illustrations and visual storytelling weave together a broad range of content on dreams that offers insight while never feeling burdensome or overly analytical. Easy on the eyes and witty, this book will have readers reaching for their own dream journals.
A sharp compendium of dreamy visions that could only have come from the iconic cartoonist’s sleeping mind.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: 9781620403228
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
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