sarah HANNAH gómez

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I just finished Lucy Knisley’s latest comics memoir/travelogue, Displacement [ IndieBound ]. I’ve been having a lot of trouble reading lately, both because of time (traveling from the Bay Area to Tucson and making stops to see people along the way) and just general inability to focus. So I went to my childhood neighborhood library yesterday and picked up her book and Audrey Niffenegger’s Raven Girl [ IB ] and found that her colorful, quick illustrations that I think live somewhere in between illustration and comics, tbh, was the remedy I needed. I really hate people who view certain types of formats, audience designations, and genres (coughYAcough coughcomicscough) as “palate refreshers” or “light reads” because they’re pretending to respect them while really insulting them and reducing them to one thing. But it’s true that this book was refreshing; I’m just not sure if it was because I’m just not connecting with the other book I’m reading or a new place demands a fresh book or what.

I saw Knisley in person a few years ago when Relish [ IB ] came out and she did a presentation at Brookline Booksmith. She’s really awesome. But I also felt really jealous and inadequate, since she’s all of a year or two older than I am but has accomplished and produced so much more in her life than I have. Y’know, the usual for me, bemoaning my lack of success while being lazy about doing the things that could make me successful. Gifted child who became an underachieving adult, that’s me.

Displacement may be my favorite of her memoirs so far, which is probably because the shades of introspection and deepness that started happening in An Age of License [ IB ] (whereas I see French Milk [ IB ] and Relish as slices of life that are interesting but pretty light) come out even more, and it’s really a lot deeper and thoughtful than previous works. Continue reading →

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I was really, really excited when I heard about Joel Christian Gill’s Strange Fruit, Volume I: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History (IndieBound) , and I waited for months until it came out and then bought it at work. Nobody has checked it out, even though our kids love graphic novels, but it will happen. Especially this year, when we have some new students who very, very much want to find books that validate and acknowledge and respect and honor them as black students (they’re not articulating as much, but they’re talking around it, and actually one of my white students is articulating that she is really enjoying Jacqueline Woodson and Bil Wright, which is awesome), I am glad we have bought this book. So I wanted to read it to see how I get could them to read it, and I found it….interesting.

Well researched, for sure. There is even a bibliography, which I have never seen in a nonfiction graphic novel, and this pleases me as a librarian for technical dork reasons but also because it means that this book can be used like things like Dear America and American Girl – that is to say, a kid who really likes one thing in it will be able to start on their research steps to learn more. Hurrah!

The book is, as the title and subtitle suggest, a series of comics biographies of semi-famous African Americans to highlight the fact that black history is more than Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. There is a foreword from Henry Louis Gates, which is pretty fancy, and even for someone who only dives into comics-style narratives occasionally, I found the art and the storytelling to be pretty solid, if not particularly groundbreaking or uncanny.

I have a huge objection to this book, and it should be an objection to anyone else who reads only as far as the foreword and introduction. Continue reading →

On our way from the pumpkin patch in Willcox to Apple Annie’s Orchard in maybe third grade, I slid in the car after my friend (her moms were driving us around for this very Tucsonan of October adventures), and she offered me a choice: “ Archie or Betty and Veronica? ”

I knew of the existence of these things because of intertextuality. I’m pretty sure I had seen those comics mentioned in a book I read at some point, but I had no idea what they were, really. I had no idea if I would like them. But since boys had cooties, I chose Betty and Veronica , and that was the end. And the beginning.

(Can I sidebar for a moment to say how much I value that in my childhood, I had more than one friend with whom this – sitting silently together in the same space and just reading by ourselves – was considered a perfectly acceptable and normal friendship activity?) Continue reading →

september reading in review

white discomfort and seeing no color

august reading in review

life is happening

memoirists are amazing

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