Beyond Forgetting is a short memoir by Frank A. De La Rosa. The memoir combines short historical summaries with personal stories to illustrate the experience of growing up in the Philippines under Japanese occupation and just after World War II. Beyond Forgetting captures an imperfect human voice that informs and colors one boy’s understanding of…
IDW Pubwatch August 2019
Welcome to the August IDW Pubwatch! I’m thrilled to present you with this month’s findings. It’s been a busy month at IDW, and I’ve got all the interesting news coming out of the publishing house, as well as tons of IDW comic book reviews. George Takei’s eagerly anticipated They Called Us Enemy is a particular…
Book Beat: Naomi Wolf’s Fact-Checking Blunder, Moby’s Memoir, and Marie-Kondo’s Children’s Book
Hello again, book nerds! It’s Emily, back to share the latest from the literary world. Now, I tend to lean a little more to fiction in my reading tastes, but my social feeds have been filled with non-fiction controversies lately (in addition to Game of Thrones takes and Toronto Raptors excitement). So, get ready for…
Handling Parenthood with Lucy Knisley’s Kid Gloves
Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos Lucy Knisley (artist/writer) First Second March 2019 Lucy Knisley’s latest memoir, Kid Gloves, narrates her experiences with pregnancy, and highlights historical and medical information about pregnancy and how we treat it in the western world.
Book Beat: They Can’t Kill Us All
Hello all, Stephanie here again! I was excited to find that there’s been a lot going on in the book and publishing industry this past week surrounding female authors, writers, and characters, particularly black women. Let’s get into it! In YA book news, the second book in Daniel Jose Older’s Shadowshaper Cypher series, Shadowhouse Fall, came…
Zine Review: Gringa
Gringa Kat Fajardo Kat Fajardo’s Gringa opens with a startling two-page spread: protestors, some angry, many gleeful, hold up signs bearing statements like “Diversity = White Genocide” and “Return to Sender.” It is a stark, frightening punch in the gut; a reminder that those who carry xenophobic mindsets are not ugly, black-hat-wearing villains, but people…
Review: Do You Miss Your Country?
Do You Miss Your Country? Monika Szydłowska Centrala A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I don’t often talk about my father’s immigration. If I do, it’s usually because I’ve been directly asked about the “when” and “why,” and while the former response is simple, the…
Comics’ Infinite Scroll: To The Rim and Beyond
The launch of Stela, a new comics app which publishes titles optimized for the downward scrolling function of smartphones, has kicked up some talk about Scott McCloud’s Reinventing Comics. Published in 2000 as a sequel to Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics considers the kinds of innovations that McCloud believed would advance the medium. He paid particular attention to…
Ten Things I Have Learned About Mental Illness from Jenny Lawson
I have been in therapy for over a decade now. I have tried a variety of medications and experienced a variety of diagnoses—mostly with the same theme: depression, anxiety, obsessive-depressive, obsessive-compulsive like symptoms, and so on. The Bloggess Jenny Lawson has depression, severe anxiety, avoidant personality disorder, occasional depersonalization disorder, self-harm issues, OCD, and trichotillomania….
Zine Review: Jane: Documents from Chicago’s Clandestine Abortion Service 1968-1973
Jane: Documents from Chicago’s Clandestine Abortion Service 1968-1973 Firestarter Press, 2004 January 22nd marked the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. Perhaps it is more apt to say it sort of legalized abortion as, according to a recent article from Mother Jones, over 1,000 state laws restricting abortion…
Autobio Spotlight: Miranda Harmon
Seeing as Miranda Harmon recently knocked us all off our feet with with her deeply personal ode to the Harmontown podcast, this is an excellent time to remind everyone that she has been making autobiographical comics for a while now—and they are all great. Seriously, go read them now.
Dogears: Fifteen Epic Heart-Shaped Dogs
Helen and Troy’s Epic Road Quest A. Lee Martinez Orbit July 16, 2013 I have a couple of authors that I follow closely, anxiously awaiting the release of their next books. Martinez was one of those authors for many years, I’ve read everything he’s written since his first book, Gil’s All Fright Diner, in 2005….