Read 211 of 2021. Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame by Erin Williams

Title: Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame
Author: Erin Williams
Publisher: Abrams ComicArts
ISBN: 978-1419736742
Genre: Graphic Memoir
Pages: 304
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

We go through life hiding all the shame, and not acknowledging our innermost thoughts, what we really think and what we would really want to do. Erin Williams not only bares her soul through her art, but in the process also helps others internalise the trauma and talk about it, well to some extent.

Commute is a book that is about so many things – it is about Williams’ daily commute to and from work, it is about her sexual encounters – past and present, about her past relationships (the guilt associated with some and the idea of them not working out), about men always taking space (whether on the train or in life), making women second-guess, gas-lighting, and asserting their right on women’s bodies.

Williams does this with a touch of humour but doesn’t ignore the intensity and seriousness of it all. Commuting is so local, global, and more than anything personal. Each individual’s journey is so unique, and we see that through Williams’ journey – regardless of the places, and what’s happening, we are constantly observing – what others read, what other commuters are doing, and in that we also tend to drift. What is it like travelling in a female body? I will never know. I can only learn and empathise and that’s what I did from this book.

Commute is mostly told through feedback, reminiscent of childhood and teenage years. Commute makes the male gaze visible in 300 pages or less. It is a graphic memoir that was needed to be told and a most essential addition to the list. Read it on the train, perhaps.  

Books and Authors mentioned in Commute

• James Patterson
• Anne Carson
• Kierkegaard
• Fear and Trembling
• Eve Ensler
• I Love Dick by Chris Kraus
• Slant Six by Erin Belieu
• The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
• Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
• Don’t Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine
• Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
• The Gift by Barbara Browning
• Mary Roach
• Natalie Shapero
• After Claude by Iris Owens
• Valleyspeak by Cait Weiss Orcutt
• Clive Cussler
• Anne Rice
• Dostoevsky
• Freud
• Keats

I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir by Malaka Gharib

Title: I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir
Author: Malaka Gharib
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
ISBN: 978-0525575115
Genre: Graphic Memoir
Pages: 160
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 stars

Malaka Gharib is Half-Filipino, Half-Egyptian, and born in the USA. This graphic memoir is about her life and her family on both sides. This memoir is also about identity, growing up in the US of A – being a part of the country and yet alienated. I know a lot of authors have written about this in some form or the other, however, I also believe that every book written in this sub-genre always sadly has something new to provide. The issue of racism, being a different skin colour, following a different way of life, and being ridiculed for it just doesn’t go away. It is always there – sometimes way too visible, and at other times not so much.

I liked this graphic memoir, in fact loved it, because it made me wonder about my confusion about identity (of course of a different kind) while growing up. I could hard relate to it – I could understand the dilemma of what to follow and what not to. Malaka’s life if seen from the greener side of the grass was very exciting growing-up to parents who came from different parts of the world. The opportunity then to know more about different cultures, and understand was twice-fold. At the same time, the need to fit in and belong is age-old. No one who hasn’t fit in will understand the pain of not belonging.

I Was Their American Dream familiarises you with cultures and traditions you perhaps weren’t aware of. I love reading books that do that, more so in the form of say a graphic memoir that isn’t too taxing. Sometimes you need such reads to also get the “reading momentum” going. Malaka’s illustrations are fun. There are also places where she wants readers to engage with her – so there is an activity to make a zine with her or dress a cut-out of hers, so on and so forth.

There are a lot of books like these – on identity, migration, immigration, the need to belong, and yet there is something about this one that struck home and stayed. It is honest, it talks plainly about how at one point she wanted to be a part of the “white” community so bad, and also how to deal with your past and where you come from. More than anything, what should one do with it, if at all one wants to. I Was Their American Dream is a lovely graphic memoir on how we see the world and ourselves in it.

Qualification: A Graphic Memoir in Twelve Steps by David Heatley

Title: Qualification: A Graphic Memoir in 12 Steps
Author: David Heatley
Publisher: Pantheon Books, Knopf
ISBN: 978-0375425400
Genre: Graphic Memoir
Pages: 416
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 stars

Whenever I read a graphic memoir, a thought comes to mind: Does the nature of the memoir in graphic form take something away from the experience of the author? Or does the reader feel more involved in the author’s life because the story is being told in pictures as well? Does it matter at all? Or do you feel like a voyeur stepping into someone else’s life (if only for a short while) and perhaps even judging them for their choices and how it all panned out for them?

Qualification: A Graphic Memoir in Twelve Steps is a memoir of addiction to 12-Step programs. I had never heard of something like this before, and this is what attracted me to this memoir. Heatley has issues and attends 12-Step programs for those. Till he also has some issues which he doesn’t and attends twelve-step programs for those too.

It all begins with his parents (as it always does?). Their troubled marriage, and seeking counseling, attending programs, and then some more. The book brims with black humour, at every stage, perhaps trying to reduce the impact of the not-so-pretty-picture painted by Heatley (which of course is nothing but the truth).

Qualification traces the journey of the author through the various programs – and I was surprised at how many were there in the US of A. I don’t know if we have so many in India, given how we only seem to know majorly about Alcoholic Anonymous and that’s that. We see Heatley’s life up close and personal and maybe that’s why it is also a little too much at times – from all the addiction to what went on in his head and his perception of others around him only gives rise to empathy, compassion, and love.

What comes out of this memoir is David’s relationships with the people around him and how they impact his relationship with addiction. Heatley tells it like it happened. The quirks, the eccentricities, the highs, and the lows as they took place, and where he is today as a person (well, some glimpse of it).

Qualification is a read that makes you look at your addictions that perhaps you haven’t faced or known of yet. It is a book that helped me for sure to understand my demons when it comes to book-hoarding, buying, and more. Now to only do something about it.

Having said all of this, Qualification is a memoir that stays and makes its presence felt in the most unassuming manner. I caught myself thinking about what happens to me when I am faced with the catalysts of my addictions and how I react thereof. Qualification will maybe also help you see yourself. Read it. It is completely worth it.

 

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob

Title: Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
Author: Mira Jacob
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 978-1408880166
Genre: Graphic Memoirs
Pages: 368
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5 stars

We don’t know what life has in store for us till it flings itself in our faces. Then we know. Then we truly begin to see as it unfolds itself. Mira Jacob’s Good Talk is not just a memoir. It isn’t just a conversation. It is so much more that as I sit and type this, I literally have gooseflesh.

It is a book about identity, about interracial marriage, about when do we know we are citizens of a country? Is there a certificate that gets handed out? We are constantly seeking validation about ourselves – be the way we look, or the way we feel, and most certainly the way we think. What if you needed validation that you belong to a country? What would you feel then? Good Talk is mostly about it, a lot about it, and sometimes less about it.

It is about trying to explain to a seven-year-old that he belongs. That being of the same skin colour do not make families. That it’s okay for his father to be white and his mother and him to be brown. It is more than that. It is about given the freedom to love, to choose, to make your decisions, and to also regret them.

The book travels between the past and the present – and what I realised as I read it was that not much has changed. The issues of race are the same in America. Brown bodies or black ones or anyone who isn’t white is fractured when it comes down to living life in the United States of America. In some way or the other that is. Good Talk is about Mira giving answers to her seven-year-old son’s questions about race, America, and modern politics.

The push and the pull that comes with it, and the several questions that she never side steps, but involves her husband Jed as well in the process. In all of this, the reader also moves back and forth in Mira’s life – the past to the present and how it all threads together – her insecurities while growing-up brown in America and her son’s in the present environment. The juxtaposition on some level is surreal. Obviously her son is too young to experience more, but I am sure that is another book for another time.

Good Talk is about resilience and what it takes to navigate the world we live in and its interconnectedness. It is a book that resonates the time we live in, and heavily at that. It is the era when a man is willing to build a wall to keep the “other” out. Who is the other? Are we the others? Or are the others the people who want to box and categorise people? Who are devoid of empathy? Who are devoid of sentiment? We might think we are isolated and something happening in Africa may not be linked to us, but we need to think again about everything and its impact.

Good Talk is not an easy read. More so it isn’t something we can read and forget. It applies to all of us. After all, aren’t we all a part of a family?

Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

Title: Hey, Kiddo: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction
Author: Jarrett J. Krosoczka
Publisher: Graphix, Scholastic
ISBN: 978-0545902472
Genre: Graphic Memoirs, Comics
Pages: 320
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4 stars

I love graphic memoirs. They make the pain of the protagonist bearable to the reader. It doesn’t feel all that much to handle, but it is. Because it is done in the form of pictures and that makes it even more real. Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka is a graphic memoir that will cut like a knife and make you see the true brilliance of the graphic memoir.

Jarrett is in kindergarten when his teacher asks him to draw his family. We all know that some of us have more complicated families than others. Jarrett’s mom is an addict, his father is a mystery and Jarrett doesn’t know where to search for him, or even his name for that matter. He lives with his grandparents who are old and don’t know how to take care of a child anymore, but they try their best. In all of this is Jarrett trying to go through childhood – making his life more real and normal, and finally leading to his teenage years when he wants to know more about his family.

Hey, Kiddo is ironically hilarious. It is the kind of book that is feel-good and not-so-feel-good at the same time. The trauma that one goes through if one parent is an addict is unimaginable, and to add to that a father who isn’t around, just makes it worse. This book is like a support group in itself – in a strange way it just helps you soldier on.

Hey, Kiddo is one of those graphic memoirs that will help conversations in families – where relatives are stand-in parents, where there can be hope for the young, and more than anything else what does family really mean. I know a lot of memoirs perhaps have been written of this nature, and yet to me this book stood out and struck a chord even though I have never gone through something like this. That’s the power of good storytelling, I guess.