Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha Archives - Page 3 of 31

The Peanutbutter Sisters and Other American Stories by Rumi Hara [in Booklist]

29 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Repost, Short Stories

Rumi Hara’s sophomore title (after Nori, 2020) is another shorts collection, featuring seven stories predominantly in black-and-white, interrupted by interstitial scenes that when puzzled together form “The Builders,” a nearly wordless narrative drawn on a black background yet bursting with vivid blooms. These eponymous builders...

Keeping Two by Jordan Crane [in Shelf Awareness]

20 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Jordan Crane (The Last Lonely Saturday) spent more than two decades creating Keeping Two, a magnificently multilayered graphic novel that empathically addresses the universal human fears of losing those most beloved. In the course of a single evening, the story introduces, challenges, and reconnects two...

Mister Lightbulb by Wojtek Wawszczyk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones [in Booklist]

15 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Polish, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW Award-winning animator Wojtek Wawszczyk’s graphic debut, which won the Polish Comics Association’s 2019 Best Graphic Novel award, is available now for English-language readers thanks to this translation by the lauded Antonia Lloyd-Jones. A decade-plus in the making, this epic bildungsroman superbly imbues the surreal...

Rave by Jessica Campbell [in Shelf Awareness]

08 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Canadian artist Jessica Campbell (XTC69) introduces Rave with a provocative epigraph from controversial televangelist Pat Robertson that condemns feminism as "anti-family ...

Made in Korea (vol. 1) by Jeremy Holt, illustrated by George Schall [in Booklist]

06 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Korean American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Bill and Suelynn Evans of Conroe, Texas, can’t have kids. Their experience at their wealthy friends’ son’s birthday party inspires a search for a proxy of their own. In this not-too-distant reality, “the smartest men on the planet” are consumed with “makin’ phony kids”...

Walk Me to the Corner by Anneli Furmark, translated by Hanna Strömberg [in Shelf Awareness]

01 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Swedish, Translation

In Walk Me to the Corner, Swedish painter and comic artist Anneli Furmark explores the transformative joy and heartbreaking consequences of unexpectedly falling in love in middle age. "What would you choose?," a group of women friends discuss during dinner. "To be fine all the time...

Border Crossings: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway by Emma Fick [in Booklist]

25 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost

Artist Emma Fick’s illustrated travelogue combines intricate art and intimate observations – vibrantly colored and distinctly hand-lettered – of a Beijing-to-Moscow expedition on the Trans-Siberian Railway. In May 2015, while in Finland with her then-boyfriend-now-husband, the pair found a used book, Trans-Siberian Handbook, that had...

Time Zone J by Julie Doucet [in Shelf Awareness]

15 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

Julie Doucet is a legendary alternative comics pioneer, especially in an arena dominated by men. Her fame was further elevated by her frustrated abandonment of the industry in 2006. Her semi-autobiographical Dirty Plotte (quite the double entendre: "plotte" is Québécois slang for the c-word) began as...

Booklist Backlist: Tales of Dementia [in Booklist]

02 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, European, Fiction, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Jewish, Lists, Malaysian American, Memoir, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Palestinian American, Repost, Spanish, Translation

Gerda Saunders, who wrote Memory’s Last Breath (2017), an exquisitely bittersweet record chronicling her experiences with dementia, is one of my most beloved friends. We have books in common, in that we find great solace and escape in the (well-)written word. Inspired by our last visit...

Hakim’s Odyssey, Book 2: From Turkey to Greece by Fabien Toulmé, translated by Hannah Chute [in Booklist]

22 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, French, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW French graphic creator Fabien Toulmé opens the second of three volumes featuring Syrian refugee Hakim and his extended family with a clever recap of the first entry, facilitated by Toulmé’s young daughter, who asks to accompany him for the next interview: Toulmé lays out...

Ish by Adam de Souza [in Booklist]

04 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Short Stories

Canadian cartoonist/illustrator Adam de Souza gathers three previously published zines – ish (2017), and so you write it down (2018), and coda (2021) – to forge a loose journey confronting devastating loss and subsequent attempts at moving forward. In a narrative divided into brief vignettes, de Souza initially presents...

Crushing by Sophie Burrows [in Booklist]

27 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW From just the cover, the color red immediately suggests a strangers-to-not narrative; that floating heart in the title underscores what’s to come. But knowing what happens doesn’t diminish in any way Sophie Burrows’ poignant, timely, mostly wordless graphic debut. Set in London, where Burrows also...

Leonard Cohen: On a Wire by Philippe Girard, translated by Helge Dascher and Karen Houle [in Shelf Awareness]

14 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Canadian, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Jewish, Nonfiction, Repost, Translation

Award-winning Canadian cartoonist Philippe Girard (Obituary Man) admirably condenses seven decades into a concise 120 pages in Leonard Cohen: On a Wire. It's a valuable introduction to the tumultuous life of the iconic singer/songwriter/poet perhaps best remembered for his classic "Hallelujah," eventually covered by some...

Passport by Sophia Glock [in Shelf Awareness]

09 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Few titles need official CIA permission to be published, but Sophia Glock's perceptive graphic novel memoir, Passport, had to go through the "daunting and complicated task" of obtaining the CIA's Publication Review Board approval. Glock's parents were "intelligence officers," an admission they disclosed when they...

Discipline by Dash Shaw [in Booklist]

06 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Graphic titles about Quakers aren't exactly a hot topic – or are they? This season brings two Quaker-related comics in quick succession: David Lester's Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay and this, Dash Shaw's Discipline, a haunting fictionalization of a teenage Quaker Civil War soldier. Quakers...

Tunnels by Rutu Modan, translated by Ishai Mishory [in Shelf Awareness]

30 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Israeli, Repost, Translation

No one knows what happened to the Ark of the Covenant, the legendary vessel holding Moses' engraved Ten Commandments, but "archeologists, mystics, and adventurers still seek for it in vain," explains Eisner-winning comics creator Rutu Modan in an introductory note to her intriguing graphic title...

No One Else by R. Kikuo Johnson [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hawaiian, Repost

In the 15 years since his 2006 graphic book debut with the award-winning Night Fisher, R. Kikuo Johnson's titles have been precious few even as his detailed art becomes increasingly recognizable on New Yorker covers. His third book, No One Else, might seem spare at...

Never Open It: The Taboo Trilogy by Ken Niimura, translated by Stephen Blanford [in Booklist]

24 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Repost, Translation, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Three ancient, traditional Japanese myths get fabulously, subversively transformed in Tokyo-based, Spanish Japanese graphic creator Ken Niimura’s (Henshin, 2014) irresistible latest. “Never Open It” was, once upon a time, “Urashima Tarō,” a “Rip Van Winkle”-like tale about a fisherman who saves a turtle from...

Living with Viola by Rosena Fung [in Booklist]

23 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost

When new kid Livy enters middle school, she doesn’t yet have friends, but she’s not exactly alone. Viola, her identical blue shadow no one else can see, never leaves her, but she voices every poisonous thought, insisting Livy is a “total disaster” doomed to be...

Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel by David Lester, with Marcus Rediker and Paul Buhle [in Shelf Awareness]

19 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Biography, Black/African American, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW Benjamin Lay, small in stature with dwarfism, was a monumental historical figure almost lost until historian Marcus Rediker published The Fearless Benjamin Lay (2017), which returned Lay to prominence as "the first revolutionary abolitionist." Canadian artist David Lester energetically distills Rediker's biography into a...

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