Lower East Side Librarian

I was on the fence about the first installment of this cheerleaders undercover series, and I’m indifferent about the second one. Well, maybe a teeny bit anti.

This is a fast, enjoyable read, and gives you an idea of what life is like for women in Afghanistan. Ms. Rodriguez is a likable if not always reliable narrator. As she says herself, "Sometimes I wonder if I'm doing much good here. There are many of us Westerners who want to help Afghan women, but our efforts don't always help them in the ways that we hope they will. ... It takes a long time to understand how the complexities of these women's lives differ from the complexities of ours." (p.259)

Joey's gender transition stories are everything that you could want in a minicomic. They're honest, well-drawn, compelling, and at least once an issue, LOL funny. I don't say LOL casually, I actually mean it. The strip that got me in issue one is the 4th installment of Joey's conversation with herself, "Am I a bitch now?" about whether her now passing and openly identifying as female--and taking hormones--has, you know. If that scares you, know that this isn't an attack on assertive womanhood. Check out the first installment, and you'll understand:

Why must Olivia be a teenager in love with her finishing school headmistress? First published in 1949, it was a hot item. Per The Christian Science Monitor, libraries couldn't get it onto the shelves. Comparing Olivia and 1984, also recently published, Eric Forbes-Boyd writes in the CSM on July 21, 1949:

C's full-color handwritten and illustrated mini- 24-hourish perzine depicts her winter solstice day-in-the-life. She does a holiday craft project, but is unsuccessful at luring her son to participate--no Norman Rockwell memories for Emiliano! The next page is colored in saffron to match some Buddhist monks Celia saw waiting on the el train platform with her. She goes on to list and draw things she saw and heard in her travels that day and the contents of the single bag of stuff she bought at Whole Foods that set her back more than $80. There are also little anecdotes, music-inspired memories, and train haiku (morning meal is a / half gallon of Kemp's milk and / a "shut the fuck up").