Holocaust Graphic Narratives

Victoria Aarons holds the position of O.R. and Eva Mitchell Distinguished Professor of Literature at Trinity University, where she teaches courses on American Jewish and Holocaust literatures.

"Holocaust Graphic Novels is a gem. The author is a master of her subject, discussing the many contributions made by graphic Holocaust novels with great erudition. In Aarons' intelligent and insightful readings, the caesura induced by the Shoah continues to send intergenerational psychological shock waves."— Alan Berger, author of Children of Job: American Second-Generation Witnesses to the Holocaust"Holocaust Graphic Narratives brims with shrewd perceptions, making a necessary case for the significance of this formerly marginalized medium in its grappling with the impossible task of remembrance."— Philip Roth Studies"Holocaust Graphic Narratives offers a brilliant analysis of central, representative works that have appeared in the wake of Spiegelman's Maus and provides a vital way for us to re-envision the landscape of post-Holocaust testimony."— Eric Sundquist, author of Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America"Holocaust Graphic Narratives is a thoroughly engaging exploration of the history and memory, with applications far beyond comic studies. In what should become a commonly assigned and suggested text, Aarons opens the doors to new ways of approaching the act of bearing witness through graphic narratives."— Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics"Aarons has made a significant contribution to the discourse surrounding graphic narratives dealing with the Shoah. Her discussion of the relationship between word and image is always enlightening...Aarons has offered her readers an intellectual road map with which to read the ever-increasing number of third- and—as the prophet Joel foretold—soon-to-be fourth-generation of Holocaust graphic narratives."— Shofar"[Aaron's] use of memory as a lens and her selection of contemporary graphic narratives make this an insightful and important exploration of the ways in which the medium of the graphic novel is ideally suited for examining the Holocaust and other such complex narratives. Highly recommended."— ChoiceThis is the book that many of us have been waiting for. Aarons's brilliant book offers readers genuinely exciting theoretical and deeply revelatory close explorations of both image and language in a wide range of Holocaust graphic narratives. The author's critical insights into the profound intersectionality of modern Jewish identity, language, memory, modern midrash and testimony are dazzlingly sophisticated, her prose always lucid and appealing. This nuanced and pathbreaking study should be at the top of the list for anyone curious about how graphic artists explore their subjectivities in relation to the weight of painful history; Aarons provides a truly essential resource for classrooms and scholars of the Holocaust as well as intergenerational trauma and commemoration in a wide variety of contexts.— Ranen Omer-Sherman, author of Imagining the Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature & Film"Aarons shows how the graphic novel's rich juxtapositions of text and image extends the monumental arc of the Holocaust's photographic legacy from the immutable past into the subjective and ever-evolving present." — H-Net

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Holocaust Graphic Narratives: Visual Testimonies of Memory1          The Performance of Memory: Miriam Katin's We Are On Our Own,A Child Survivor's (Auto)Biographical Memoir2          Memory Frames: Mendel's Daughter, A Second-Generation Perspective3          "Replacing absence with memory": Bernice Eisenstein's Graphic MemoirI Was the Child of Holocaust Survivors4          Flying Couch: A Third-Generation Tapestry of Memory5          Yossel: April 19, 1943: Possible Histories6          Visual Landscapes of Memory: Fracturing Time and SpaceEpilogue: An Inheritance of MemoryAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndexAbout the Author