Stories about Silence

[sasha_feather]

Silence and the Word, both a story and an essay, by Mary Ann Mohanraj. Text available online. Explicit. This story is about how the author is a writer of erotica, can read the stories aloud at bookstores, but has trouble speaking her own desires to her lovers.

Stiches: a memoir by David Small, graphic novel, 2009. YouTube trailer for this book. Gothic, haunting, full of raw emotion; this book is about Small's childhood growing up in a repressive, silent family in Detroit. He was taught silence as a behavior, and after a surgery during his youth, he lost half his vocal cords and therefore lost his voice above a whisper. Small retreats into art and explores his dreams, looking to understand his own existence. I enjoyed this book a lot and read it quickly, but would have liked a bit more reflection and more of the author's adult life and experience. Portions of this book are quite dark and disturbing and probably not suited for younger readers.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Stitches populated some of my nightmares, equally disturbing for adults! I hear you (!) re: more reflection, although the one image of him crawling/diving into the pages he's drawing is worth many pages of exposition on art as a way to understand and to heal.

[sasha_feather]

I found myself comparing this book to Fun Home and to Blankets: two graphic novel memoirs about repressive families and coming of age, and both of those had more words, more insights, more reflection, and Fun Home especially has more equivocation about Bechdel's father. I do think there is a place for the kind of raw emotional processing that Stitches has, but I like the other two better. (And! Obviously, the author has trouble with words. But maybe drawing some of those later, healing things...?)

On a graphic novel-memoir kick, I picked up Persepolis to re-read, but I'm stalling out on it a bit.

[jesse_the_k]

Check out Carol Tyler's Late Bloomer -- not as tight a narrative, but lovely drawing bopping back and forth over twenty years.

ETA: another epic coming-of-age-as-a-gay-man-memoir is Stuck Rubber Baby from Howard Cruse.

Both at your local MPL branch (where they love graphic novels!)

[sasha_feather]

Thank you! I've reserved them.