Graphic Details

Sarah Lightman is a co-founder and co-director of Laydeez do Comics, a UK-based comics forum with branches around the world, and co-curator of and exhibiting artist in the internationally touring “Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women.” She lives in London.

“an engaging book...recommended”—Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews; “Graphic Details succeeds as a stand-alone guidebook to some of the best Jewish women comics artists working today”—Jewish Book Council; “Sarah Lightman is like the poster-child for a new kind of feminism activist—scholar, artist, curator, and cheerleader for comics that reveal and shape new forms of Jewish consciousness… Graphic Details is much more than a book. It is an exhibition about women who make an exhibition of themselves; a re-envisioning of the comics canon that has too often been seen as exclusively male; a celebration of difference; and a deeply immersive response to what it might mean to be a Jewish woman artist in the 21st century. …the range and depth of experience the book covers is both engaging and moving”—Jewish Quarterly; “a much-needed book both because of its specific information and for the fact it touches on subjects long ignored”—Lilith Magazine; “important and exciting...offers new perspectives on extremely talented and well-known comics creators...truly a collection for everyone and for all times and seasons”—ImageTexT; “valu[able]”—European Comic Art; “exciting...delivers an important insight into a still-undervalued field of study”— TORCH The Oxford Research Center in the Humanities; “a wonderful resource...Lightman is clearly a tour de force, and the energy and care required to assemble [this book] produced a vital, hybrid, indubitably important volume from which people can discover and appreciate new idioms”—Hillary Chute, Images; “Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews is an overdue, indispensable, and enthralling look at some of the best cartoonists working today.”—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home and Are You My Mother?; “This fascinating book opens the door to a world most of us did not know existed: the graphic universe created by Jewish women comics artists. Through interviews, biographies, personal reflections, and critical essays, Graphic Details provides an astonishing guided tour of contemporary sequential art at the forefront of visual culture. If the combination of Jewish, women, funny, comics, and art seems perplexing at first glance, the pages of Sarah Lightman’s beautifully curated collection will change your mind. A must-read.”—Nancy K. Miller, author of What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past.

• Table of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgments: Imagetextlines—Confessions ofCo-Curator, Editor and Artist (Sarah Lightman) Part I: IntroductionsGraphic Confessions of Jewish Women: Exposing Themselves Through Pictures and Raw Personal Stories (Michael Kaminer) Sticking Their Tongues Out at the World (Dan Friedman)The Latest Revolutionary Chapter? (Zachary Paul Levine) Telling Their Own Stories (Sarah Jaffe) Part II: EssaysHerstory of Jewish ComicCharlotte Salomon, Graphic Artist (Ariela Freedman) The Book of Sarah—Life or ­Reconstruction? Situating Sarah Lightman’s Illustrated Diary (Pnina Rosenberg) Mi Yimtza? Finding Jewish Identity Through Women’s Autobiographical Art (Evelyn Tauben) Our Drawn Bodies, Our Drawn SelvesFetal Attractions: Diane Noomin’s “Baby Talk: A Tale of 3 4 Miscarriages” (1995) and My Journal of a Miscarriage, 1973 (Joanne Leonard)Graphic Lesbian Continuum: Ilana Zeffren (Heike Bauer) Traces of Subjectivity: The Embodied Author in the Work of Ariel Schrag (Natalie Pendergast) Comic ComedyThe Turd That Won’t Flush: The Comedy of Jewish ­Self-Hatred in the Work of Corinne Pearlman, Aline ­Kominsky-Crumb, Miss ­Lasko-Gross and Ariel Schrag (David Brauner) The Comedy of Confession (Judy Batalion) Part III: InterviewsBernice Eisenstein and the Persistence of Memory (Michael Kaminer)How to Understand Sarah Glidden in 2,000 Words or Less (Michael Kaminer)Sarah Lazarovic: On Politics, Big Glasses and Not Shopping (Michael Kaminer)“A portrait of the world through my eyes”: An Interview with Miss ­Lasko-Gross (Tahneer Oksman)Thinking Panoramically: An Interview with Lauren Weinstein (Tahneer Oksman)“I thought hand wringing about my peculiar form of ­British-Jewish assimilation was a little niche I had”: Corinne Pearlman Lays Down Her Jewish Cards (Paul Gravett and Sarah Lightman) From the Other Side of the World to North America: An Interview with Racheli Rottner (Noa Lea Cohn) Part IV: “Graphic Details”: Artists, Artworks and ConfessionsVanessa Davis (Tahneer Oksman)Bernice Eisenstein (Malcolm Lester)Sarah Glidden (Julia Wertz)Miriam Katin (Ranen ­Omer-Sherman)Aline ­Kominsky-Crumb (F. K. Clementi)Miss ­Lasko-Gross (Rob Clough)Sarah Lazarovic (Alison Broverman)Miriam Libicki (Ranen ­Omer-Sherman)Sarah Lightman (Roger Sabin)Diane Noomin (Sarah Lightman)Corinne Pearlman (Arthur Oppenheimer)Trina Robbins (Rachel Pollack) Racheli Rottner (Ariel Kahn)Sharon Rudahl (Paul Buhle) Laurie Sandell (Michael Kaminer) Ariel Schrag (Noah Berlatsky)Lauren Weinstein (Nicole Rudick) Ilana Zeffren (Gil Hovav) About the Contributors Index