Looking for a cozy way to spend a Sunday afternoon? May direct your attention to: the graphic memoir. Need a good ugly cry to wring out your emotional knots? Once again, try the graphic memoir. Seeking a little perspective on your less than stellar childhood by looking for parallels in the lives of other unhappy adolescents? I say again, the graphic memoir is your answer. Whatever your reason for reading, odds are, the graphic memoir has you covered. If you’re looking for the most iconic of the comics, you’re in luck – these are the 10 best graphic memoirs ever penned.
Gender Queer
Gender Queer is the adolescent account of Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns. While the author originally wrote this graphic memoir to better explain to eir family what it’s like to be trans and asexual, the novel grew to become a coming of age touchstone for queer youth across America. It also became one of the most vocally criticized, and was the most banned book in the nation in 2021. While right wing pundits have tried to bury the novel, the controversy surrounding it only catapulted it further into the public eye. After all, who doesn’t love a good banned book? The novel follows Maia on eir coming out journey, covering everything from gender dysphoria, first relationships, to the author’s adolescent love of queer fan-fiction. A touching examination of the non-binary experience, Gender Queer should be required reading for LGBTQ+ youth and the allies who support them.
Blankets
Reading Blankets by Craig Thompson is like getting kicked in the stomach by a unicorn – throughly majestic and excruciatingly painful. It’s the tender story of young Craig’s experiences in church camp, where, like many other young Christians, he had a life changing encounter with first love. The devout Craig crosses paths with Reina, a young fundamentalist wavering in her faith. Despite blissful beginnings, the young couple’s winter romance is frozen in its tracks by family pressures and faith crises, before finally shattering like an icicle dropped on the pavement. For the ex-faithful, it’s an especially painful read – a glimpse into a past where sexual longing and devotion to God were inseparably linked, and yet totally irreconcilable. Ouch.
Spinning
Spinning by Tillie Walden is the graphic account of the author’s young life as a figure skater – a sport she hated with every fiber of her adolescent soul. While Tillie once held onto Olympic dreams, the pressure of competition left a void inside of her that winning awards couldn’t fill. After realizing that she was gay, young Tillie was unable to square her budding sexual identity with the crushingly heteronormative culture of figure skating, and was forced to walk away. Spinning is a love letter to childhood overachievers everywhere, those cajoled into thinking that their value came from what they could accomplish opposed to who they are. It’s a cathartic read about self-acceptance at all costs. Even when it means disappointing others, it’s always worth it. Besides, being forced to smile as often as figure skaters are is truly exhausting for your face muscles – no kid should be forced to look that happy.
Persepolis
Persepolis is the autobiography of Marjane Satrapi, a woman who came of age during the Islamic Revolution in Iran. While the nation embraced progressive reform in the latter half of the 20th century, a counter-revolution caused a massive shift towards theological conservatism. For a young woman like Marjane, this meant that she could no longer dress the way she wanted to, and her professional and personal choices were suddenly subject to strict limitations. Combined with its budding war with Iraq, the country that Marjane grew up in was suddenly plagued with strife – a strife that left its mark on Marjane’s still-developing sense of self. Drawn in somber black and white, this is one of the greatest graphic works ever penned – memoir or otherwise.
Maus
The only graphic novel to ever win the Pulitzer Prize, Art Spiegelman’s Maus is often hailed as the single greatest work in the medium. It’s account of Art’s troubled relationship with his ailing father, a man who barely escaped the Holocaust. The novel depicts its characters as anthropomorphized animals, with Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, to create a striking visual metaphor to represent a people who were hunted and preyed upon. It’s a thoroughly powerful read about one of the most devastating atrocities in human history, and the trauma that was passed down upon the descendants of those who survived.
The Best We Could Do
Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do is the story of a family who fled the horrors of the Vietnam War, and struggled to adjust to their subsequent life in America. Beginning with an account of the author’s parents’ lives at the beginning of the conflict, the novel shows Thi Bui’s harrowing escape from fallen South Vietnam while she was still a child. While safe from the violence in the United States, the family found it difficult to fit in with the culture of the nation in 1970’s – a culture that was often unkind to outsiders. The novel highlights the weight of the sacrifices that Thi Bui’s parents made in order to give their child a brighter future, and the scars that were left on the family from the turmoil of the past.
Stitches
Stitches is the harrowing graphic memoir of David Small, whose adolescent life was forever altered in the span of a day. Prone to respiratory sickness as a child, David was subjected to radiation treatments from his radiologist father – during a time when the bodily effects of radiation were still poorly understood. After a growth appears on David’s neck, he’s sent in for a routine surgery, but awakens in horror to find that one of his vocal cords was removed as a complication. Rendered almost entirely mute, the adolescent David has to readjust to life – and bear the weight of his parents’ misplaced feelings of anger guilt. It’s the story of a precociously talented young child who discovers at a young age what every artists learns at some point in their career – that art has the power to heal seemingly un-healable wounds, and give voice to unspeakable pain.
Fun Home
Fun Home by Alison Bechdel is the graphic novel that inspired the Broadway hit musical – an account of one woman’s relationship to her estranged father. After Alison came out as a lesbian in college, her father Bruce came out of the closet as well. Not long after, Bruce passed away due to apparent suicide. Reeling from the tragedy, Alison is left to piece together the details of her father’s life – one he spent as a married English teacher and funeral director in rural Pennsylvania. Throughout his life, Bruce kept his family at arm’s length – an emotional distance that Alison later attributed to his inner turmoil surrounding his sexuality. As devastating as it is devastatingly funny, this tragicomedy explores the complicated emotions Alison feels towards her departed father – grief, confusion, and of course, love.
They Called Us Enemy
They Called Us Enemy by George Takei is the story of the Star Trek star’s traumatic youth, part of which was spent behind barbed wire in an American concentration camp. Victims of Japanese internment laws, Takei and a hundred thousand other U.S. citizens were imprisoned under a form of institutionalized racism, forced to live out years as prisoners of their own government. Throughout the novel, Takei sheds light on his family’s struggle to adjust to the harrowing circumstances – as well as his father’s unshakeable belief in the democracy that incarcerated their family. Though heartbreaking and harrowing, the novel is also a story of hope – the experience planted a seed in Takei that led him to become one of the most prominent Americans in the nation, the actor that multiple generations of sci-fi fans came to love.
My Friend Dahmer
My Friend Dahmer is an illustrated account of author Derf Backderf’s highschool friendship with a boy named Jeff – a boy who would grow up to become one of the most infamous serial killers in American history. While Jeffery Dahmer’s cannibalistic murders are famous, few know the history of the man responsible for the crimes. Before become a killer, Dahmer was a like many other high school outcasts – bullied by classmates, neglected by parents, a kid simply struggling to fit in. While the novel doesn’t absolve Dahmer for his crimes, it paints a sympathetic portrait of a young man attempting to reconcile with his dark urges – his binge drinking, his need for attention, and his fascination with roadkill. By bestowing humanity upon a man universally regarded as inhumane, Backderf gives a glimpse into a world where Dahmer’s reality could have been different. Had his caregivers been more attentive, had his classmates been kinder, had he been given an constructive outlet for his destructive impulses, teenage Jeffery Dahmer’s life been diverted from the dark future for which he is known.
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