New, Upcoming, and Undiscovered Graphic History and Memoir

This series is extremely popular in my house. After the My Hero Academia manga, they are, in fact, probably the most read and reread volumes to grace our shelves (well, they’re supposed to grace the shelves but they usually grace the couch or the ottoman or the floor). The kids like them because the art is both fantastic and hilarious, and I like them because the history is really pretty excellent and both spawn seem to pick up a new fact each time they go story spelunking. During his Comic Con panel, Hale showed a preview of book 10 in the series, Blades of Freedom (Amulet, October 27th, 2020), set during the Haitian Revolution and the Louisiana Purchase.

Walker and Anderson’s new book discusses not only the founding and political efforts of the Black Panther party but their social, educational, and healthcare campaigns intended to uplift the Black community as a whole. This volume focuses on the individuals who drove the movement, the events that defined it, and the legacy that endures today. (Ten Speed, January 26, 2021) Walker’s intent in choosing the graphic history format over straight prose (his first graphic history, The Life of Frederick Douglass, was created with Damon Smyth and released in 2019) is to provide a greater cross-section of the population, including a wider age range and a wider educational range, with access to history.

Robin Ha spent the first 14 years of her life in Korea living with her mother, and every summer the duo escaped on a big, wonderful trip. Then, during that 14th summer, they headed from Seoul to Huntsville, Alabama where Robin’s world was blown apart: her mother announced she was getting married and they would be staying in the States. Forever. Bereft of her friends, cut off from everything she’s known including her beloved comic books, completely out of place in her new family and her new school, furious with the mother who, until then, had been her dearest partner in crime, Robin doesn’t know how to cope with all the changes…until she has the chance to take a class about drawing comics. (HarperCollins)

Named one of the best books of 2019 by NPR, Gharib’s memoir somehow slipped under my radar and I’m so glad to know about it now. The daughter of both Filipino and Egyptian immigrants, Gharib had to learn to negotiate not only American culture, but those of both of her parents as well, to hold on to both sets of traditions while on the search for her authentic self. Can she live up to the dreams her mother and father had for themselves and transplanted on to her? What if she wants something different, something other? What if she doesn’t know what she wants? What does it mean to be American when so much of you comes from other places but you were born here? Travel Gharib’s past with her as she finds the answers to these questions…and finds even more. (Clarkson Potter)

Our fight didn’t start with the fight to vote. As far back as there’s been gender, there’s been gender bias, and as long as we’ve been framed by men as “the weaker sex” we’ve been battling to prove them wrong. Kendall and D’Amico highlight some of the struggle’s leaders across history, from kickbutt queens to those who marched for Civil Rights and beyond in this graphic history for all ages—and all genders.