A raw, revealing chronicle.
Vivid pictures from a gay life.
In an honest, often self-deprecating coming-of-age graphic memoir, Canadian cartoonist and illustrator Vellekoop recounts growing up gay in 1970s Toronto, where his family was a member of the conservative Christian Reformed Church, which viewed homosexuality as a sin. As a young boy, Vellekoop was passionately in love with his mother, treasuring their outings to department stores and lunches and helping her in the beauty salon she ran in the basement. He feared his father, who was given to unpredictable rages; surprising to the young Maurice, his father took him to see Fantasia, which incited an obsession with all things Disney. The author recalls his love of 1960s TV sitcoms, Barbie dolls, and Carol Burnett. He preferred watching TV to doing anything else; like his siblings, he was bad at sports. He wasn’t much of a reader, either, but when his mother introduced him to C.S. Lewis, he became enraptured by the Narnia books. Vellekoop structures his memoir in short chapters, each focused on a particular period in his life: teenage angst; finding a welcoming cohort in art school; career highs and lows; and many episodes of “fumbled romance.” Throughout, he pictures himself with two competing angels on his shoulders: one steering him to be good, kind, and compassionate; the other, cynical and bitter, intensifying his feelings of darkness. In 1995, seeing himself as a “smart, urban homosexual” who had outgrown Toronto, he moved to Manhattan. Although he had an agent and was gaining attention for his work—Vogue, for example, sent him to cover Paris couture—his personal life was difficult. He drank too much, fell into recurring depressions, and lost friends to AIDS. When he finally decided to get therapy, he struggled to find someone who could help him—and, after finally succeeding, he turned his life around.
A raw, revealing chronicle.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780307908735
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
An accessible, informative journey through complex issues during turbulent times.
Immersion journalism in the form of a graphic narrative following a Syrian family on their immigration to America.
Originally published as a 22-part series in the New York Times that garnered a Pulitzer for editorial cartooning, the story of the Aldabaan family—first in exile in Jordan and then in New Haven, Connecticut—holds together well as a full-length book. Halpern and Sloan, who spent more than three years with the Aldabaans, movingly explore the family’s significant obstacles, paying special attention to teenage son Naji, whose desire for the ideal of the American dream was the strongest. While not minimizing the harshness of the repression that led them to journey to the U.S.—or the challenges they encountered after they arrived—the focus on the day-by-day adjustment of a typical teenager makes the narrative refreshingly tangible and free of political polemic. Still, the family arrived at New York’s JFK airport during extraordinarily political times: Nov. 8, 2016, the day that Donald Trump was elected. The plan had been for the entire extended family to move, but some had traveled while others awaited approval, a process that was hampered by Trump’s travel ban. The Aldabaans encountered the daunting odds that many immigrants face: find shelter and employment, become self-sustaining quickly, learn English, and adjust to a new culture and climate (Naji learned to shovel snow, which he had never seen). They also received anonymous death threats, and Naji wanted to buy a gun for protection. He asked himself, “Was this the great future you were talking about back in Jordan?” Yet with the assistance of selfless volunteers and a community of fellow immigrants, the Aldabaans persevered. The epilogue provides explanatory context and where-are-they-now accounts, and Sloan’s streamlined, uncluttered illustrations nicely complement the text, consistently emphasizing the humanity of each person.
An accessible, informative journey through complex issues during turbulent times.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-30559-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Metropolitan/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2020
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
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