Plainspoken to a fault, but a revealing portrait of sexual intimidation under an authoritarian regime.
Veltfort recalls her adolescence in newly Communist Cuba through the lens of homophobic suppression.
The graphic memoir opens in 1962, when the author arrived in Havana from California with her family; her stepfather was a committed Communist excited by the new regime. Veltfort was 16 at the time, struggling to adjust to a new language, a new culture, and a newfound attraction to women. The last was a particular challenge in a country that routinely spouted homophobic rhetoric and imprisoned, beat, and otherwise punished suspected LGBTQ people. (“You have to deny everything. Remember that,” the author’s first girlfriend told her.) Veltfort’s drawings aren’t especially splashy or dynamic, and her dialogue is often flat and didactic. However, she captures her teenage self thoughtfully and on a number of emotional registers. At home, her parents could be dismissive and abusive; her sexual relationships were, by necessity, often furtive and anxious; and her feelings toward her new homeland were deeply conflicted. On one hand, her travels around the island to gather information about everyday lives outside Havana stoked her curiosity and compassion, and she was as enchanted by Castro in person as any fellow traveler. But as she began college and purges of “counterrevolutionaries and homosexuals” began in earnest, she sought to escape. She and a girlfriend were beaten on the street, a setup for disciplinary meetings that made her a pariah at school. Castro’s late 1960s crackdown of anything that smacked of alternative culture, including the forced closings of clubs and cabarets, tested Veltfort’s savvy at dodging the authorities. Yet she maintained a certain affection for the country and its people. Rather than playing the victim, she savvily confronted or evaded the regime’s absurdities, striving to maintain a semblance of normalcy amid them.
Plainspoken to a fault, but a revealing portrait of sexual intimidation under an authoritarian regime.Pub Date: Sept. 24, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5036-1049-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Redwood Press/Stanford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.
A new life and book arise from the ashes of a devastating California wildfire.
These days, it seems the fires will never end. They wreaked destruction over central California in the latter months of 2018, dominating headlines for weeks, barely a year after Fies (Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?, 2009) lost nearly everything to the fires that raged through Northern California. The result is a vividly journalistic graphic narrative of resilience in the face of tragedy, an account of recent history that seems timely as ever. “A two-story house full of our lives was a two-foot heap of dead smoking ash,” writes the author about his first return to survey the damage. The matter-of-fact tone of the reportage makes some of the flights of creative imagination seem more extraordinary—particularly a nihilistic, two-page centerpiece of a psychological solar system in which “the fire is our black hole,” and “some veer too near and are drawn into despair, depression, divorce, even suicide,” while “others are gravitationally flung entirely out of our solar system to other cities or states, and never seen again.” Yet the stories that dominate the narrative are those of the survivors, who were part of the community and would be part of whatever community would be built to take its place across the charred landscape. Interspersed with the author’s own account are those from others, many retirees, some suffering from physical or mental afflictions. Each is rendered in a couple pages of text except one from a fellow cartoonist, who draws his own. The project began with an online comic when Fies did the only thing he could as his life was reduced to ash and rubble. More than 3 million readers saw it; this expanded version will hopefully extend its reach.
Drawings, words, and a few photos combine to convey the depth of a tragedy that would leave most people dumbstruck.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3585-1
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
Review Posted Online: Nov. 25, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf