5 Feminist Graphic Novels to Begin Your Obsession

Persepolis (Complete Series)

by Marjane Satrapi

 

Persepolis is a graphic novel memoir detailing the author’s Iranian childhood before and after the Islamic revolution. The series covers family, transition, nostalgia, assimilation, and growing up. Satrapi brings you right into her heart and home.

 

Alex’s Take: MUST READ. My first graphic novel series. Satrapi’s story is so different from my own and yet the way she tells it - in drawings and words - makes it familiar somehow. Satrapi writes about her life and personal experience regarding nationality and agency. This series is for everyone. Seriously...read it today.

Fun Home

by Alison Bechdel

 

In Fun Home, Bechdel writes about her father’s life and death focusing on how his closeted sexuality came to influence the way she views her own sexuality. Fun Home has been adapted to be a popular, award-winning broadway show!

 

Alex’s Take: Next stop on the train of must read feminist graphic novel classics… Fun Home is difficult, vulnerable, and funny. Bechdel’s fraught relationship with her father is at times beautifully symmetric and at others times significantly divergent. Bechdel focuses on this relationship to write about sexuality, memory, and growing up.

The Infinite Wait (and Other Stories)

by Julia Wertz

 

Though Julia Wertz has written a number of graphic novels, The Infinite Wait is one of her more vulnerable and feminist ones! In it, Wertz discusses growing up, being diagnosed with Lupus, and falling in love with comics.

 

Alex’s Take: Julia Wertz deserves so much praise! This graphic novel is for you if: a) you want to approach feminist disabilities studies from the perspective of personal experience ; b) you want to laugh; c) you just want to read a graphic novel with great images and an engaging storyline!

Tomboy

by Liz Prince

 

In Tomboy, Liz Prince reviews her relationship to boyish behavior, clothes, and interests. Prince confronts her own hatred for girlish stuff, unraveling gender expression and internalized misogyny in the process.

 

Alex’s Take: Tomboy is great because it reminds us that gender expression is a spectrum often times unrelated to gender identity. Prince’s ability to challenge her own dislike of stereotypically feminine clothes, activities, and mannerisms forces us to examine our own beliefs (re: skirts, pink, and cheerleaders).

Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

story by Octavia Butler, adaptation by Damian Duffy

 

Adapted from Octavia Butler’s groundbreaking Kindred, the graphic novel version brings you the same characters, conflict, and magic in new form! Butler’s story follows Dana, an African-American working class woman who is thrust back in time from 1976 to a working plantation in the 19th Century U.S. South. The plot deals with race, history, memory, and racial entanglements when it comes to love & family.

Alex’s Take: This graphic novel is great for both readers who have and have not read Butler’s original version. While some detail is sacrificed in the illustrated version, the added visual element brings the story to life in new ways! The book is gripping and goes fast!

Big thanks to the Seattle Public Library!