A creative resurrection of people around the world who broke gender norms.
Living as themselves—and often punished for it.
In the late 18th century, Gregoria Piedra was sentenced to prison for eight years for being a “dissolute” and “perverted” woman. Piedra’s supposed crime? During the Eucharist at a Mexico City church, Piedra removed the communion wafer from their mouth and left the church laughing—while dressed in men’s clothing. Piedra is one of 15 people who are honored, posthumously, in this gem of a book. It’s a follow-up to Butch Heroes (2018), in which Brodell also paid tribute to figures who went against society’s gender conventions—and often paid a price for doing so. It’s an inspired project: Brodell, an artist who grew up Catholic, did a lot of research to find these heroes; the author not only tells their stories in brief biographies, but dignifies them in paintings done in the style of saints on holy cards that Brodell knew as a child, cards that are shared at funerals to memorialize the departed. “Even though I am no longer Catholic,” Brodell writes, “I still have a collection of holy cards that belonged to my late aunt.…They are beautiful, intimate objects. They are delicately rendered with bold colors, and often include gold borders or ornate banners.” Brodell’s 11-by-7-inch cards are similarly captivating. For example, the artist depicts Piedra—“known by the nickname ‘la Macho’ because of their masculine physical appearance and demeanor”—holding up a radiant wafer, a faint smile of self-assurance meeting the viewer’s gaze. The subjects in the collection go back as far as the 16th century and lived around the world, from Ecuador to South Africa, underscoring the universality of people, as the author writes, “who were strong or brave in the way they lived their lives and challenged their societies’ strict gender roles.” Some are unnamed, including a Black woman arrested in 1870s North Carolina for wearing men’s clothing. “They had a three-month-old child with them,” Brodell writes, “and upon arrest they were sent to the poorhouse.”
A creative resurrection of people around the world who broke gender norms.Pub Date: April 29, 2025
ISBN: 9780262049870
Page Count: 96
Publisher: MIT Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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