rickjones's Reviews (1.66k)

This is a neat little anthology presenting manga from a variety of artists who primarily work with other art forms. Though these stories are brief, their uniqueness captured my interest and imagination. I enjoyed absorbing each one and look forward to reading the proceeding volumes once they're all published in English. I highly recommend this book to others who love manga and comic arts in general.

This collection showcases poetry and comics that are seamlessly merged to create unique and purposeful graphic narratives. A variety of perspectives and experiences of womanhood and gender are showcased here, written and drawn by talented and esteemed people of different ages and backgrounds, all with important messages to impart to us, the reader.

While poetry interests me, I know little about it as an art form, so I did have difficulty interpreting meaning from some of the texts. The study guide at the end of the book was invaluable for me, as it allowed me to further my understanding and appreciation for what I had just read, and think more deeply about each piece.

I would recommend this anthology to other readers. Even if you're like me and aren't practiced at reading poetry, you will likely find words and images here that will strongly resonate with you.

Funny, thrilling and disturbing, Horrorstör presents a haunting with a Ikea-esque gimmick. Graphics of furniture options introduce each chapter with witty captions alongside warnings of what's to come as they grow increasingly demented. The amount of detail put into these false catalog pages and other graphic additions definitely added to the humor, horror, and immersion of the story. I felt that the plot was engaging and genuinely terrifying, but the characters felt somewhat flat, though that seems fairly standard for the horror genre. They're mainly there to experience the meat of the story by enduring hours of terror in their labyrinthian place of employment. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to read a scary story that doesn't take itself too seriously. 

In the acknowledgments of this book, Morgan Rogers describes her work as a "triumph" and I have to say I agree. Honey Girl explores multiple hurdles causing its title character to stumble off the path she had meticulously followed her entire adult life, until she starts to question whether she should even step back onto it at all.

Our protagonist, Grace, is introduced to us newly graduated from a PhD program in astronomy, and just married to a hazy siren of a woman she hardly knows and remembers more like a dream than a real girl. Days prior she had stormed out of the high-level position she was groomed for her by her academic mentor after enduring a tirade of racist microaggressions and accusations from her interviewers. Her future in her field, her family, and in her haphazard marriage weigh on her and soon inspire overwhelming levels of anxiety she has to unravel with help from others. While Grace may feel lonely and like a disappointment to herself and her parents and mentors, she is surrounded by love. She's practically glowing with it, as love flows towards her like sunlight from those devoted to her. They lift her up through their words, their acts of physical reassurance, and their belief that she is brimming with potential as certain as the universe is vast. Each passage of the love expressed between Grace, Yuki, and their friends on either side of the continental United States was uplifting to say the least, and definitely my favorite part of the reading experience. It's easy to imagine how Grace has survived the rigorous studies and racist microaggressions of her astronomy program with these people to support her and remind her of her worth. 

The majority of the book winds through Grace's reluctance to accept that she's allowed to want things that aren't practical, that aren't grinding, that aren't her adamant idea of "the best". Witnessing her work through her emotions and grow into a person who is kinder to themselves and no longer aiming to be perfect is rough but rewarding to read. Many will likely relate to Grace's frustrations in forming the future she dreamed of and strived towards, but this book is especially written to validate and encourage Black LGBTQ+ women who find themselves expected to be stronger than everyone else, yet still dismissed when they've met these racist demands. Grace eventually learns that her "best" future is one she wants to enjoy living, and that ending her guilt over seeking it will be an arduous but possible process. Each character in this book was created with thought and love that shines through on the page, even when their imperfections are being highlighted. I highly recommend this book to anyone who appreciations stories with characters who seem three-dimensional enough to be real people. My only regret in reading this is that it ended, I will sorely miss spending time in Grace's universe.

This was an interesting and labyrinthine book that twisted in directions I hadn't expected. Margaret isn't exactly the most endearing protagonist, she's self absorbed, judgmental, and obsessed with righteousness. She also is largely in denial of how serious her eating disorder and her tendency to stay locked inside herself really are. Her journey to accepting that she must quit denying herself to model girlhood, and that she may not even be a girl at all, is not straightforward, and honestly somewhat unsatisfying to read. I understood her story and where it was headed, and how it had to end, because I've lived pieces of it myself, but I'm not sure I'd have made sense of what she was going through otherwise. 

I also found the paranormal aspects of this book off-putting. They stick out like a sore thumb in what is otherwise a down-to-earth narrative about identity, which left me wondering if these events had really been experienced, or were simply imagined by a younger, unbalanced Margaret who was unable to face reality. The last letter in the book hints that this might be the case, but it's never made explicitly clear. Maybe this element of the story does not or won't bother other readers, but it kinda gets under my skin. 

In my opinion, the strongest features of this book are how eating disorders, dissatisfaction with the self and the world it knows, growing up, misogyny, and transgender identity, were all approached and written as the intricate and perplexing experiences that they are. Too often it seems tempting for fiction writers to simplify how people, especially teenagers, endure these uncertainties and move towards healthy adulthood. Margaret's experiences with realizing she is queer and seeking treatment for her eating disorder are anything but simple, even her diagnosis cannot be specified and categorized simply. While at the treatment center she initially begins to self-destruct, but later gets to know other people who disrupt and enlighten her knowledge of how mental illness manifests, and what it means to grow into your own power. 

I would recommend this book to others who are alright with reading a narrative that doesn't provide them with easy answers. The majority of the story takes place in a treatment center for adolescents with eating disorders, so we're mostly reading about the perspectives of young people who are very unhappy with themselves, and often self destructive. Please keep this in mind, as some of what they think and say may be triggering if you have an eating disorder or are in recovery from one.

Of One Blood begins with Reuel, a young man who seems suspiciously withdrawn and fixated on the occult. Once one of his experiments recovers Dianthe, a lovely woman he's had visions of, from the dead, it's easy to assume that tragedy will ensue from this meddling with the natural order. Yet this event is surprisingly not the epicenter of the horror that befalls our protagonists. Rather, the horror in Of One Blood is found in the legacy of racism, enslavement, and white imperialism that envelops and links each of our leading characters in ways which devastate them all. The "hidden self" in Hopkins' subtitle can be assumed to refer to Reuel and Dianthe's strategical hiding of their Black heritage in order to survive in white proper society, yet the word holds far deeper meaning which unravels as the text progresses.

Hopkins' prose is enticingly written, she excelled with providing imagery to enhance our understanding of the characters' emotions and their environments. This story can be described and viewed through the lens of multiple genres, as it progresses in directions that cannot be confined to a single one. In many ways Of One Blood is a product of its time, yet in others, its examination of racial identity and the social rules generations of the powerful have constructed around it are relevant to the modern day. I would recommend reading this classic, but also to find an edition that provides you with historical and literary context that you may find useful throughout your reading. 

While this anthology isn't inspirational in the exact sense I had hoped for, it brims with inventive storytelling and world building. Most of the futures presented here are ones that survive anew after an apocalypse, with those remaining attempting to mold a kinder and more collaborative world that the one their forefathers destroyed. Other stories present a piece of the creator's dreams for a future, like ones where androids live alongside us, or prison sentences are reimagined. I would recommend this anthology to other readers. The art and writing within is innovative, creative, and will make you wonder about the variety of options our near descendants may be faced with while building a viable future.

While every story in this anthology is well written and drawn, I can't help but to feel disappointed with the proportion of stories that were written by white people about white privilege and white racists, especially those stories which refused to accept that the United States is a nation founded by racists and steeped in it to this day. Even the opening contributor pointed out that the readers only had the opportunity to hear his words instead of those from a more worthy person of color because of white privilege. I don't have any intimate knowledge of how the process of gathering contributors for this anthology went, but the aforementioned problem seems like it should have been one within the project's control. I don't say this with the purpose of finding someone to place blame with, as I'm sure everyone involved had good intentions, but this was an underlying issue I could not ignore.

It seems to me that an understanding of how white privilege functions, specifically in United States society, could have been assumed as possessed knowledge by a majority of those who were funding or would later purchase this book, making stories about the subject obsolete. I had really been hoping to read more stories by people of color who often aren't afforded an uplifting platform to tell them, instead of stories by white people trying to make a point that racism is scary and evil. Obviously, those affected by racism themselves already grasp this, at a deeper level than the white creators, or myself, or any other white person can comprehend, even when we're listening to them. I do wish I was granted opportunity to listen more in these pages. 

Thank you to the contributors of color who did provide their stories of how they empower themselves to live through hatred with hope and love for themselves and their communities. Your resilience is never to be taken lightly, and in a just world you would no longer need to possess so much of it. Hopefully with collective action we will one day see that world emerging around us all, with your storytelling remaining a gift that moved us towards it. 

Through the lore of the original Frankenstein emerges this layered horror story surrounding a group of neighbors going about their lives during the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Much like the title creation itself, Frankenstein in Baghdad possesses a narrative stitched together from the perspectives and fears of multiple Iraqi victims of war, successfully humanizing these people who have long been ignored by the originator of their pain. The story focuses solely on characters who are Iraqi, with U.S. military operatives portrayed as shadowy and indifferent figures in the background of their lives, but make no mistake, "it was the Americans who were behind this monster".

Our story begins after a junk dealer, Hadi, collected the body parts of bombing victims left in the street and compiled them to physically construct the creature he calls "Whatsitsname". He made this gruesome task his mission in the hopes that these remainders of corpses "wouldn't be treated as trash, so [they] would be respected like other dead people and given a proper burial". Unknown to Hadi, life is bestowed upon this assembly of loss when the soul of yet another bombing victim possesses the Whatsitsname, who is then claimed by a grieving mother as the answer to her prayers for her son's return from war. The Whatsitsname was made entire by victims whose lives and bodies were ripped apart, their deaths never avenged and their hurt never resolved. Thus it quickly becomes engrossed in an quest for revenge it soon learns is never ending, as it must continue collecting the parts of new victims to sustain itself, even though its very notion of victimhood grows murkier with each part vindicated.

Numerous passages throughout this book read as profound understandings of fear, revenge, and humanity. Saadawi both utilizes and elevates Frankenstein's portrayal of grief as a righteous pain that can prove itself monstrous if left as a wound unhealing. Yet in his adaption the grief which molds a monster is not possessed solely by one man, but by an entire country. I highly recommend this book to those who feel they can handle the subject matter. My only dissatisfaction with it lies with the ending, which felt somewhat rushed, especially in comparison to the tightly woven narratives of the previous chapters. Yet overall, I found this novel both deeply disturbing and emotionally moving, often at the same time. Every accolade given to it has been diligently earned.