New ebooks From Canadian Indies
Description
Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives presents critical essays on contemporary Canadian cartoonists working in graphic life narrative, from confession to memoir to biography. The contributors draw on literary theory, visual studies, and cultural history to show how Canadian cartoonists have become so prominent in the international market for comic books based on real-life experiences. The essays explore the visual styles and storytelling techniques of Canadian cartoonists, as well as their shared concern with the spectacular vulnerability of the self. Canadian Graphic also considers the role of graphic life narratives in reimagining the national past, including Indigenous–settler relations, both world wars, and Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.
Contributors use a range of approaches to analyze the political, aesthetic, and narrative tensions in these works between self and other, memory and history, individual and collective. An original contribution to the study of auto/biography, alternative comics, and Canadian print culture, Canadian Graphic proposes new ways of reading the intersection of comics and auto/ biography both within and across national boundaries.
Awards
- Joint winner, AAUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Show (Design Excellence)
- Winner, Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary Criticism
Editorial Reviews
"The wealth of information from the texts analysed and the critics’ innovative approaches to them leave readers with an invaluable source, essential for anyone interested in the fields of comics and life writing, as well as the intersections between the two. The insightful, nuanced readings that draw from different theoretical frameworks and disciplines offer examples as to how to analyse graphic life narratives but also as to the vast potential the medium of comics offers to the genre of auto/biography. -- Olga Michael, University of Central Lancashire, English Studies in Canada
— English Studies in Canada
“An essential resource for anyone interested in Canadian comics, life writing, and political issues. Beautifully produced with a useful introduction and fascinating essays about major and emerging cartoonists in Canada and Quebec, Canadian Graphic puts the study of Canadian autobiographical and biographical comics on the academic map and shows us ways to think about one of the most exciting developments in Canadian cultural expression today.”
— Julie Rak, University of Alberta, author of Boom! Manufacturing Memoir for the Popular Market (WLU Press, 2013)
"The assemblage of essays in Canadian Graphic demonstrates that comics in Canada is a dynamic and vibrant medium through which to explore contemporary ways of representing shifting identities, race, gender, and agency. ...the deployment of a variety of theoretical perspectives and the demonstration of how these illuminate graphic texts serve as models for ongoing comprehension and scholarly work on the form. No other volume at this point has yet engaged so thoroughly the current state of Canadian graphic production, and further studies will need to refer to this germinal study, which already signals the way forward."
— Biography
"As Canada is increasingly looked up to as a social and political model to follow, this collection provides up-close, original and challenging insights into the inner life, musings,and internal struggles of a modern, multicultural and substantially inclusive society. ... Canadian cartoonists have actively contributed since the 1940s to shape the transnational comics industry in North America, although their most distinctive legacy arguably lies in the alternative and underground scenes, strongly revitalised since the late 1970s. Candida Rifkind’s and Linda Warley’s staple anthology of graphic life narratives conspicuously shows that Canada – in more ways than one – is still blazing the trail."
— Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics
