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

“I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir,” by Malaka Gharib. Clarkson Potter/Publishers, April 2019. 160 pp. Paperback, $16.99. 13 to adult.

Find or order a copy at Fables Books, 215 South Main Street in downtown Goshen, Indiana.

Writer, artist, and correspondent Malaka Gharib sets up the tension of her story from Chapter One:

That’s a lot of pressure for a kid and her backpack, as that close-up panel in the top right suggests. Gharib’s father was from Egypt, her mother from the Philippines, which meant that after they divorced, Gharib spent summers in Egypt with her dad and the rest of the year with her mom’s family and her extended relatives in Cerritos, California. Continue reading ““I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir,” by Malaka Gharib”

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“PTSD,” by Guillaume Singelin

“PTSD,” by Guillaume Singelin. First Second, February 2019. 208 pp. Hardcover, $24.99. Adult, maybe older teen (some graphic violence).

“PTSD” opens with the elements: wind, rain, cold and other forces beyond human control. A woman named Jun, striking for her red hair and eye patch, navigates a dark city teeming with sights, smells, sounds, and textures so rich as to be claustrophobic. A veteran, Jun spends much of the story struggling for control of her self, her life, and especially the addictions she’s been unable to shake since the war in which she served as a sharpshooter.

Continue reading ““PTSD,” by Guillaume Singelin”

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“Hey, You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”: The Fifth Beatle

This post was originally published in the “Elkhart Truth” in August 2014. I thought it was a good time to resurrect it, because “Yesterday” is about to disappear from theaters. It’s a beautiful and brilliant film whether or not you know the Beatles’s music well, and it’s definitely worth catching on the big screen before it disappears.

“The Fifth Beatle,” written by Vivek Tiwary and illustrated by Andrew C. Robinson and Kyle Baker is not a book about The Beatles themselves—plenty of those have been published, and plenty more are surely on the way. Neither is this book about the person usually referred to as the fifth Beatle: Pete Best, the drummer who preceded Ringo Starr.

The book’s title instead comes from a 1999 quote by Paul McCartney: “If anyone was the Fifth Beatle, it was Brian.” Brian Epstein was the manager—and some would argue the “designer”—of the Beatles, the man who transformed a witty and talented but ragged band into the polished, worldwide zeitgeist we remember them as today. Continue reading ““Hey, You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away”: The Fifth Beatle”