A beautifully drawn memoir full of humor, intelligence, and sensitivity.
A cartoonist and his wife start a life in rural Idaho.
Late in 2016, New Yorker cartoonist Mahdavian and his wife moved to a remote area of Idaho, built a tiny house on several acres of land, started a garden, and had a baby. Along the way, they experienced culture shock—e.g., the vegetarian author was pressured to hunt deer. Mahdavian’s debut book is a whimsically drawn, witty, lyrical graphic memoir. Early on, the author explains that he and his wife were being priced out of their home in San Francisco. “We had visited rural Idaho on a whim the summer before and had fallen in love with the landscape and the freedom it seemed to promise,” he writes. In addition to chronicling his life on their patch of wilderness, Mahdavian describes their neighbors—a relative term in this spread-out landscape—with gentleness, humor, and sensitivity even when they treated him with suspicion. “You’re not a Muslim, are you?” a woman in town asked him. He thinks about it: “Had I given some indication that I might be Muslim? Was I subconsciously orienting myself toward Mecca? But it wasn’t anything I had done. It was my face.” Another neighbor was convinced that the Islamic State group had set up training camps throughout the state. “It’s amazing what the media are told not to tell us,” he told Mahdavian. “The radical Muslims live among the not radical ones. Like they did in their own countries.” But Mahdavian isn’t overly concerned with politics. His lovely pages are filled with gooseberries and cottonwood trees, an exploration of the etymology of the word hearth, and a two-headed calf. Mahdavian and his wife ended up staying in Idaho for only three years, but this moving book serves as a lasting commemoration of their time there.
A beautifully drawn memoir full of humor, intelligence, and sensitivity.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781797223674
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2023
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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