juushika

I refused to read novels/fictionalized memoirs in my writing research because one (1) thing had to remain my own & joyful, but graphic novels are like an hour so they're fair game.


Title: Youth Group
Author: Jordan Morris
Illustrator: Bowen McCurdy
Published: First Second, 2014
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 570,480
Text Number: 2159
Read Because: as above, ebook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review:
Our protagonist tries youth group at her mother's urging, finding embarrassing abstinence posters ... and for-real demon hunting. When Buffy-style urban fantasy demon hunting is tied to real-world specific religions instead of a vague cultural Christianity, it asks a lot of worldbuilding questions no one's answering. Here's another: how can an evangelical youth group be nostalgic, dorky, and sadly acknowledge but then literally bury its problematic conservatism when *gestures to the state of things, c/o evangelical Christianity.* I was never going to be able to read this in good faith, and the forced joke-per-page snark isn't my style. It's got good intentions, good momentum, and the urban fantasy plot is straightforward but effective; and I appreciate the ground-level view into the culture. I still hated it, in a gentle sort of way.


Title: American Born Chinese
Author: Gene Luen Yang
Illustrator: Lark Pien
Published: First Second, 2006
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 235
Total Page Count: 570,715
Text Number: 2160
Read Because: as above, ebook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: I'm not crazy about the art, which is effective but heavy, thick and static and—okay, the real problem may be that I remembered I'm afraid of monkeys, and this is 1/3 monkey. But I'm impressed by the structure: three very different narratives run in parallel and then seamlessly, effectively unite. Affecting and clever, literally greater than the sum of its parts, even when individual plots, namely the high school drama, are pretty standard.


Title: Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story
Author: Sarah Myer
Published: First Second, 2023
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 570,985
Text Number: 2161
Read Because: as above, ebook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: It's not you, well-intended and valuable book, it's me. The lineweight makes the sketchy art heavy and messy, a significant drawback in a book about being saved by art; and, a personal issue, I bounce off of narratives about mental health/trauma breakthroughs. So this isn't for me, which is fine; it's still legible and engaging, and opens dialogue about the intersectional experience of transracial adoptions; worth my time, despite my petty complaints.

( Wow Juu that's a lot of themed books; any particular reason? )

Reading these as research makes me an ungracious reader, focused on utility over craft. So I'm shoving these together, with apologies. Recording names as they appear on covers, also with apologies.


Title: Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning
Author: Cathy Park Hong
Narrator: Cathy Park Hong
Published: Random House Audio, 2020
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 210
Total Page Count: 567,855
Text Number: 2149
Read Because: as above; audiobook through the Multnomah County Library & listened while repainting the new (read: last year's remodeled) trim in the bathroom to match the rest of the trim in the bathroom (the remodel guys cut corners) (did the effort of paint patching and tediously doing the most finicky painting work imaginable to alter the trim by one (1) shade and level of gloss pay off? you bet your ass it did; bathroom looks great now)
Review: This starts broad, which isn't the same thing as generalized, and then moves local, to specific case studies from the author's personal life and otherwise; all circling themes of marginalized experience with specific conditional privileges and social expectations, "minor feelings" as a mirror to racist mircoaggressions. Compelling, selfish, pretentious, righteously ungrateful—I found this useful in its limited capacity; the narrowing perspective is indicative, the limitations and bias borne of one private life even when the intent is intersectional.


Title: The Best We Could Do
Author: Thi Bui
Published: Abrams ComicArts, 2017
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 330
Total Page Count: 568,185
Text Number: 2150
Read Because: as above, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Starting in the present, then cycling backwards: a generational memoir of a family of Taiwanese refugees. In the introduction, the author discusses turning this into a graphic novel in order to make the narrative more accessible; a good call. I like the faces but don't think this is doing anything especially interesting with the medium, and the panels fall apart in action sequences, particularly the boat journey; but accessible, that it is, human and emotive and less talky than it would be as straight text, effectively nesting narrations, allowing interview and first person account to exist immediately and in conversation, the graphic novel's brevity forcing the syntheses to be short and intense. "This—not any particular part of Vietnamese culture—is my inheritance: the inexplicable need and extraordinary ability to run when shit hits the fan."

(This is where I learned about the Chinese occupation of northern Vietnam, 1945–1946; the author's paternal grandmother immigrated from Vietnam to China when the Chinese withdrew, which is a detail I'm borrowing from the other side.)


Title: The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Niú péng zá yì, Memories of the Cowshed)
Author: Ji Xianlin
Translator: Chenxing Jiang
Published: New York Review Books, 2016 (1998)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 215
Total Page Count: 568,400
Text Number: 2151
Read Because: as above, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Minus the inappropriate comparisons to the Holocaust*, I appreciate Zha Jianying's introduction: a little useful context, but, moreso, contextualizing the tone, which is sardonic and dismissive even when recounting intimate suffering and humiliation, a distinctive coping mechanism that I keep finding in survivor testimony of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Between the introductions and the afterword, this is a slight, repetitive text; I don't mind, as the repetition helps it sink in, a private horror of limited scope set within a cultural travesty so large it all but defies comprehension.

( * )


Title: Red Scarf Girl
Author: Ji-li Jiang
Published: HarperTrophy, 2010 (1997)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 285
Total Page Count: 568,685
Text Number: 2152
Read Because: as above, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This achieves its aims of exploring the malleable, manipulated overlap of being a young girl at the beginning of the Chinese Cultural Revolution; it's what I needed to read to internalize the social forces at play. Propaganda, conformity, and shame are a potent combination, and the resulting persistent anxiety sits alongside the quiet mundanity of daily life. The particularly limited scope and middle grade voice/audience is constraining, but I'm not reading this in isolation so I don't care.


Title: Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution
Author: Tania Branigan
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 2023
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 305
Total Page Count: 568,990
Text Number: 2153
Read Because: as above, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: I came to this with specific questions raised by Chinese Cultural Revolution memoirs and Wikipedia, and one by one found all answered. Doubtless this isn't the only book on the subject that could do so, but I was particularly curious about the Revolution's long shadow, so appreciate that focus here. The balance of human interest to history and cultural trend is off, the history delivered piecemeal and the larger trends promised mostly on the basis of "just trust me." This invites a contrarian impulse to contest the author's personal judgments of each human interest story's authenticity and validity; a counterproductive impulse, when the Revolution was defined by destabilization and complicity, when victim and perpetrator so often shifted and overlapped. But the general thrust is towards that nuance, discomforted by answers which are authentic in their inadequacy:

( Quotes. )

Title: The Sinner (Die Sünderin)
Author: Petra Hammesfahr
Translator: J. Maxwell Brownjohn
Published: Penguin Books, 2017 (1999)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 390
Total Page Count: 567,265
Text Number: 2147
Read Because: once again, this gay incest book list; ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: "She always said 'we' when she meant me."

A whydunit: what motivated a young mother to stab an apparent stranger to death on the beach? I came to this for a weird sibling relationship, and sure did get one. But it's buried, successfully and otherwise. A narrative of obscured memories and motives, this is cyclical and oblique, intentionally but nonetheless inauthentic and distant, and I couldn't tell you if it's German literature or Brownjohn's translation or Hammesfahr's voice, but the writing is stiff and the PoV hops disorientating. After such convolution, a neat resolution feels insincere. All this makes for a difficult thriller, lacking momentum and failing to earn its payoff, and yet I like the intent and component pieces. An effort was made! Unsuccessfully.

Title: RG Veda
Author: CLAMP
Published: Darkhorse, 2016–7 (1989–96)
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 2070 (197+200+192+208+208+208+200+200+192+264)
Total Page Count: 566,540
Text Number: 2136–2145
Read Because: still working through manga referenced in that "the joke is that Hannibal is quite specifically a 90s dark shoujo anime/manga/light novel" Tumblr post also I just like CLAMP, borrowed from Multnomah Public Library via Hoopla
Review: This feels as it is, CLAMP's first effort: their later structure and themes are present, but in trial form. The mythic inspiration and structure, combined with retrospectively familiar and not particularly complex characters, keeps early chapters of this at a distance: character archetypes bond while defeating episodic, oversized villains; meanwhile, big and intense and much deeper interpersonal relationships are forming, queer and indelibly rooted in violence or social transgression, but these are backloaded into a too-little-too-late denouement. I'm glad I read it, it's certainly relevant to my interests, but I'm more glad CLAMP realized what they were able to achieve here and carried it forward; X in particular shares DNA, a mythic quality cut with more interpersonal, character-driven arcs, but the balance in X is significantly better and also it's one of the best manga (let's go ahead and say) of all time, so—it takes practice like this to achieve something like that.

Title: Box Hill
Author: Adam Mars-Jones
Published: New Directions, 2020
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 140
Total Page Count: 564,350
Text Number: 2134
Read Because: reviewed by Rosamund, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Our protagonist is eighteen when he literally stumbles over a biker and into a sadomasochistic relationship. Reflected upon here in a conversational, concise but unedited-feeling dive: the examined but unstructured consequences of a formative sexual relationship. It's compelling, rendered oblique—not as a mystery, but veiled by what isn't spoken in the relationship, and how even a retrospective view evidences a lack of self-knowledge. Some of that circuitousness doesn't work for me, particularly in the protagonist's family life; but as a glimpse into a very specific culture and moment of time, so certain in its way is and yet so transient, yet still reaching in consequence, this really engaged me.

Title: Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard
Author: Sara Wheeler
Published: Random House Publishing Group, 2007 (2001)
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 380
Total Page Count: 564,085
Text Number: 2131
Read Because: reasons obvious, the cold boy who opened the door; ebook purchased! with dollars! from Kobo
Review: A biography of Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who was present on Scott's final Antarctic expedition and wrote the, can we safely say? best Arctic memoir; Cherry's the reason I got into this stuff, and I've been saving this memoir for a rainy day knowing I would probably love it too much. Delighted to say that I do. The slow start is not indicative; Cherry's family background is important, but this is really the least engaging way to present it. But things pick up, and remain engaging long after the highlight events in Antarctica or even the writing or publication of the book. Gossipy, but in a way I would call productive, primarily because it's more interested in accuracy than cogent character arcs, allowing a messy nuance in Cherry and his interpersonal relationships. He often comes off poorly, and his privilege is frequently unsympathetic; humbling that what did him in was at much trauma as his privileged ability to withdraw, self-isolate, and obsessively focus on trauma, which eroded his coping mechanisms. So, uh, jot that down. None of this undermines the thoughtful, retrospective efficacy and even the complicated hope of Worst Journey; there's a bitter beauty in that one great work that this larger context complicates but celebrates.

The highlight in my mental catalog of Antarctic exploration facts is Cherry's changing opinion on Scott; there are temptations, again, to build clear arcs re: Scott's public reception over time, but that reception has always been multifaceted, and Cherry had a particularly close and faceted view. There's something tender about grief and blame when allowed this consideration—a statement that can apply equally to Cherry's life and Scott's doomed expedition.


(Also in my mental catalog: Wheeler just comes out and says that the overwinter Crozier journey exhausted Birdie and Wilson (and, hey, Cherry too, who turned out to be one of the better sledgers despite *gestures*) and thus sabotaged the effort at the Pole, which was one of my first thoughts when reading Worst Journey. Actually, it's what tipped me from "this is interesting" to "wait, couldn't getting frostbite make you more susceptible to frostbite?" (answer: yes: frostbite causes vasomotor damage which impairs circulation which makes subsequent frostbite more likely) "and so couldn't Bad Sledging create More Bad Sledging and doesn't this explain some of the failure of the expedition?" This isn't groundbreaking, it's clear that Scott's failure was a combination of a dozen dozen factors and exhaustion &c. was just one facet, but I don't know if I've ever seen (in a fair bit of reading) someone straight up correlate the two journeys; it felt weirdly vindicating.)

Title: Private Rites
Author: Julia Armfield
Narrator: Hannah van der Westhuysen
Published: Macmillan Audio, 2024
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 563,645
Text Number: 2129
Read Because: this review (accurate but sadly not indicative), audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Three sisters, all lesbians, all troubled, are reunited by their father's death while, around them, climate change builds to a slow apocalypse. My takeaway is as with most genre fiction meets literary fiction: I'm not fond of the latter, and when combined both suffer. Very talky about the slow banality of the end times and about grief, sometimes effectively but often overwrought; and I'm not sold on the mystery of the framing conceit, particularly in its resolution. This is fine, but failed to work for me in a mild, persistent way.

(Going to chock this up to audio reading, but I could never tell the older sisters apart. One was a therapist, one was married, one was getting divorced, one was angry, only being Angry™ was rightly the characterization all the way down the line, so they smushed into an angry therapist vacillating between the best relationship in the book and incipient divorce. Oops?)

Discovered at the bottom of my book review file and proof that I really gotta notta let things accumulate with the intent of posting them in bulk, because the risk is that I never will. Anyway, these are rereads primarily from 2023 and 2024, with one from 2025

( Enchantress from the Stars, Sylvia Engdahl )

( Solaris, Stanisław Lem )

( Mortal Fire, Elizabeth Knox )

( The Fierce Yellow Pumpkin, Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Richard Egielski )

( Axiom's End, Lindsay Ellis )

( Truth of the Divine, Lindsay Ellis )

( The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin )

( The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin )

( The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin )

( Blood and Chocolate, Annette Crutis Klause )

( The Silver Kiss, Annette Curtis Klause )

( A Wind in the Door, Madeline L'Engle )

( Millions of Cats, Wanda Gág )

( Wilder Girls, Rory Power )

( The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling )

( Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Eric LaRocca )

Go read Pinky & Pepper Forever! Fondly pressing my UIR tag to its forehead like a produce sticker.


Title: The Confessional
Author: Paige Hender
Published: Silver Sprocket, 2025
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 200
Total Page Count: 562,355
Text Number: 2122
Read Because: reading the publisher, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library via Hoopla
Review: A young vampire struggling to adapt to her new life begins a questionable romance with a vigilante priest. This is solid, polished, and satisfying: consistent art that has a lot of fun with background details and monster design, a distinct historical setting, and a combo of dark, manipulative romance and vampire found family. I like it! And it's effectively a first novel, with the subsequent limitations that I'd expect, particularly in heavy-handed resolutions to the interpersonal elements, that kept me from doing more than liking it.


Title: Pinky & Pepper Forever
Author: Eddy Atoms
Published: Silver Sprocket, 2025 (2018)
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 135
Total Page Count: 562,490
Text Number: 2123
Read Because: reading the publisher, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library via Hoopla
Review: Puppygirl art school girlfriends break up when Pinky commits suicide, and get back together when Pepper follows her to hell. This (furry, cartoony, of a certain age and angst) isn't my style; it grew on me, anyway. The metaphor of inhabiting, owning, & enjoying societal (expectations of) suffering is effective and, better, a lot of fun. Distinctive, vibrant, strongly figured; dynamic character/relationship arcs without ever compromising on codependent lesbian pups.

The comic is 80 pages; the 2025 special edition has a bunch of bonus material. Great bonus material, too; the mixed-media style and development of OCs who began as fashion dolls enriches the reading experience.


Title: Cry Wolf Girl
Author: Ariel Slamet Ries
Published: Silver Sprocket, 2019
Rating: N/A
Page Count: 50
Total Page Count: 562,540
Text Number: 2124
Read Because: reading the publisher, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library via Hoopla
Review: I don't get on with narratives that are just about mental illness. Vibrant, effective art; read it, it works; but I bounced off it like a rubber ball.