Reader's Place: March 1, 2021
Graphic novels featuring
OUTSIDER WOMEN
This year’s Readers Place column celebrating Women’s History Month focuses on women who stray well off the beaten paths as they mature, create art, and make a living.
The low, low woods, by Carmen Maria Machado, … [et al], 2020. (Print, Hoopla)
This brooding tale of magical creatures, environmental and anthropocenic change and degradation, and male violence against women features Octavia and Eldora, two young lesbians of color, high school seniors in a Pennsylvania rust belt town they can’t wait to leave.
The lady doctor, by Ian Williams, 2019. (Print)
If practicing medicine in rural Wales sounds idyllic, imagine being a woman doctor working in a genitourinary medical practice with a backdrop of a misogynistic co-worker, creeping privatization of government-run health care, and unresolved personal trauma. It’s nowhere as grim as it sounds.
Kusama: the graphic novel by Elisa Macellari, 2020. (Print)
Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist born in 1929 who corresponded with Georgia O’Keefe, was a contemporary – and competitor – of Warhol’s, and became known for her happenings as well as her installations and creation of obsessively dotted canvases and cloth sculptures. A true iconoclast.
Spellbound: A graphic memoir, by Bishakh Som, 2020. (Print)
Indian American transgender artist Bishakh explores the concept of identity by inviting the reader to view the author moving through life as she would have us see her, that is, as she sees herself. Framed with a candid autobiographical narrative, this book gives us the opportunity to enter into the author's daily life and explore her thoughts on themes of gender and sexuality, memory and urbanism, love and loss.
Notes on a thesis, by Tiphaine Rivière, 2016. (Print)
When Jeanne is accepted into a PhD course, she is thrilled by the aspect of immersing herself in Kafka's The Trial, her subject. Over time, however, faced with the need to support herself as she labors over her opus, she finds herself in a Kafkaesque nightmare of bureaucracy, isolation and a failed relationship. Nevertheless, she persists.
Compiled by Ina Rimpau