CHERNOBYL, LIFE, AND OTHER DISASTERS

Nayberg revisits her 1980s Soviet childhood in Kyiv, detailing how a nuclear disaster and daily indignities shaped her coming-of-age as an artist.

It’s 1986, and 11-year-old Genya has finally grown a long braid and dreams of attending art school―and the Chernobyl reactor explodes. Nayberg peppers her deeply personal narrative with vivid historical details that immerse readers in her world: the Volga River contaminated by wartime bomb craters, the unofficial quota limiting Jewish students like Genya’s enrollment at art school, government surveillance forcing the people to keep their phone conversations deliberately vague, official radio transmissions insisting that “the situation is under control” even as families panic in private. Nayberg’s watercolor and collage art brilliantly mirrors Genya’s emotional landscape—varied panel layouts with muted earth tones and expressive faces capture her day-to-day life navigating school, family, and friendships, while scratchy, anxious black compositions mark moments of conflict; a hopeful double-page cityscape in luminous oranges and pinks offers a stunning visual pause that suggests possibility beyond Genya’s current constraints. Nayberg’s depictions of her mother—alternately manipulative, uncaring, or fiercely protective—and of friend dynamics feel wholly authentic, while the portrayal of Soviet-era antisemitism, environmental catastrophe, and casual cruelties never overwhelms the intimate story of a girl finding her voice through art amid chaos.

An utterly unforgettable, achingly honest, and spectacularly crafted graphic memoir.