Feeding Ghosts by Tess Hulls

This is a graphic memoir that is the author's family story. She is feeding their ghosts by pulling them into the light, which she does metaphorically with her words and graphically with the accompanying drawings. She is also feeding her own ghosts, having grown up in a home with generational trauma that she is seeking to disect and understand herself. The story covers three generations of women, starting with her grandmother, Sun Yi, who herself was once a bestselling author of a memoir. Sun Yi’s path wades through a treacherous Chinese history, from the brutal massacre of Chinese in Nanking by Japanese soldiers through her escape to Hong Kong in 1957 — just missing the Great Leap Forward and the mass starvation that came with it. Then, as Sun Yi withdraws into a spiral of hospitalizations and mental illness. the story picks up through Sun Yi’s daughter, Rose, who is unbearably aloof and seemingly cruel at times to the author herself, Rose’s daughter, as she pieces together their past to make better sense of the reverberating wounds that have threatened to drown each of them in matrilineal succession. The graphics are on the simple side— cartoons drawn with black strokes on white paper — but what it conveys is so much more intricate. Panels often bleed into one another, allowing for layered illustrations rich in metaphor. She visually represents trauma as ghosts in her bones, emanating from her, her mother and her grandmother, often intermingling like smoke; veins of their shared history branching out from their bodies as a physical representation of their emotional interconnectivity. It is a bit wordy as grphic novels go, but it conveys a time in hisotry through the eyes of one family's story.

Drama by Raina Telgemeier

I really loved this playful Young Adult graphic novel. I have been woefully under informed in this genre, which I both enjoy, and as the grandparent of two girls and a boy, I feel like I need to beef up my depth in this area. One of my role models for being successful with this goal brought this book to my attention. I am new to this author, who has several other graphic novels under her belt, has a tremendously likable and predictable style. I can see that when you open one of her books, you know it’s her. The clean, organic lines and strong color choices that sell her stories are completely fluid. They’re actually enjoyable and give life to the experience of reading her works. So that is a big help to draw the reader into the story. The thing I like this story is it captures some of the volatility of relationships in middle school, both for friendships and relationships. She has added in the reality of LGBTQ being more in the vernacular now than in hiding as it was when I was this age, and overall this has a refreshing airing of all these foibles in a refreshing way that affirms all middle schoolers lived experiences. Three cheers!

Huda F Cares? by Huda Fahmy

I loved this. It is a saucy Huda who is an average teenager living within a traditional Muslim family in America. She wants to blend in but she sticks out. Here is her origin story: for much of her life, Huda Fahmy, a Muslim American born and raised near Detroit, was dogged by questions about her hijab. Later, as an adult living in Houston, she was frequently asked, “Aren’t you hot in that?” The answer became the name of her comic strip, “Yes I’m Hot in This,” which Fahmy began posting on Instagram. It also became the title of her first book, a graphic novel for adults published in 2018. In this she and her family travel to Disney World--by car--and somehow manage to both survive and have fun. They are trying to adapt to a world where they stick out and are cause for concern, all while being typical teenaged girls. It is frisky and serious at the same time.

Flung Out Of Space by Grace Ellis and Hannah Templar

This is a pretty sparse graphic novel that is conveying pretty intense and emotional material about Patricia Highsmith, a gay woman who was born in 1921, long before it was cool or even acceptable to be a gay woman. She was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character Tom Ripley. She wrote 22 novels and numerous short stories throughout her career spanning nearly five decades, and her work has led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her writing derived influence from existentialist literature, and questioned notions of identity and popular morality. She was dubbed "the poet of apprehension" by novelist Graham Greene. At its simplest, Flung Out of Space is about Patricia Highsmith’s quest to escape the drudgery of writing comics and get her novels published, including Carol, considered the first lesbian romance with a happy ending. It’s also about her years-long attempt to try and expunge her desire for other women through therapy, which she worked a second job in order to afford. It is a critical, caring, funny, and heartbreaking story in which the hands of the artist and author are visible and essential to depicting Patricia Highsmith as a whole, complex person.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

This is a beautiful, thoughtful, understated graphic memoir that starts and finishes almost exactly how you would expect it to go, and yet it is compelling, magical in a bleak way, and altogether worth reading. The story begins in a community where every way for people to make money has left, so its youth have reluctantly followed suit. The goal is to make enough money to get back, but it almost never happens. The story resonates in the United States, but the author is from Cape Breton Island, on Canada’s eastern shore, where coal was once king; the industry’s sinking fortunes are also stripping the financial hopes of Nova Scotians and nearby Newfoundlanders. She has crushing student debt, and decides to go for the big money in the oil sands. For women who migrate to work in the bitumen-rich tar sands of northern Alberta, there were many ways for the gritty environment to turn toxic. This has always been true, of course, and the only thing unique is in the telling. She depicts the experience of being far outnumbered by men, dealing with the leering attentions of some male co-workers, and the loneliness and isolation of these stimulus deprived environments so well. It is less gruesome than it might be, and more thoughtful than I expected. I am not well read when it comes to graphic novels, but I loved this one.

The Legend of Auntie Po by Shing Yin Khor

I loved this graphic novel aimed at a YA audience. The year is 1885 and the location is a small isolated working town. 13-year-old Mei helps her father run the kitchen at a logging camp in the Sierra Nevada. She is first generation American, her father having come on a slow boat from China in search of a better life for her. She dreams of seeing the world but isn't sure how to do so, and she begins to call upon Auntie Po, a legendary giant Chinese matriarch with a blue ox, to watch over the camp. Auntie Po can't stop every misfortune, and Mei must deal with tragedy and heartbreak. Auntie Po can't stop every misfortune, and Mei must deal with tragedy and heartbreak. Auntie Po can't stop every misfortune, and Mei must deal with tragedy and heartbreak along the way. Bad things happen to the best of people in this book which mixes folklore and history to explore issues of equality, equity, and identity. This is a story brimming with historical incident, and timely depictions of both bigotry and understanding. Sweet, funny, and wise without dipping in to self-pity.