Tagged with biography

Alisa Harris was kind enough to donate an extra copy of this book to Barnard. I couldn’t keep my mitts off of the delectable book long enough for it to get cataloged, so I read through it before turning it over to technical services. It’s a juicy compendium of comics by women, many of whom will look familiar to zine and minicomics fans: Liz Baillie, Alisa, Missy Kulik, Cathy Leamy, Danica Novgorodoff, and MK Reed.

Saffian’s birth parents made contact with her via telephone a month before her 24th birthday. She wasn’t prepared for that. What follows is the three year journey to her becoming prepared to meet with them, and her three biological siblings.

Cantwell’s writing in American Girl is just as good as Manhattan, When I Was Young, though it’s a little more impressionistic. Perhaps that’s I found it less satisfying than its sequel. I still recommend it. Should I bother with the third of the Trilogy, Speaking with Strangers?

Don’t you hate when young (like 21), middle-class, heterosexual white guys write smart, funny, sensitive books that you can’t help but kind of love? I know I do. Kevin Roose’s story of doing a semester “abroad” from Brown at Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) is a total page-turner, and like a responsible ethnographer, he does not condescend to his native population (except perhaps by occasionally referring to his underground research with evangelical Christians as ethnography).

I did want to see what Christian college was like, with as little prejudgment as possible. I knew that wouldn’t be easy--you can’t neutralize a lifetime of bias overnight--but I wanted to try my best. So my second decision was: no cheap shots. If I went to Liberty, it would be to learn with an open mind, not to mock Liberty students or the evangelical world in toto.