Couple Therapy by
This graphic novel, with extra therapist notes, allows you to sit in as three fictional couples enter the counselling room.
Graphic Medicine Manifesto by
This inaugural volume in the Graphic Medicine series establishes the principles of graphic medicine and begins to map the field. The volume combines scholarly essays by members of the editorial team with previously unpublished visual narratives by Ian Williams and MK Czerwiec, and it includes arresting visual work from a wide range of graphic medicine practitioners. The book's first section, featuring essays by Scott Smith and Susan Squier, argues that as a new area of scholarship, research on graphic medicine has the potential to challenge the conventional boundaries of academic disciplines, raise questions about their foundations, and reinvigorate literary scholarship-and the notion of the literary text-for a broader audience. The second section, incorporating essays by Michael Green and Kimberly Myers, demonstrates that graphic medicine narratives can engage members of the health professions with literary and visual representations and symbolic practices that offer patients, family members, physicians, and other caregivers new ways to experience and work with the complex challenges of the medical experience. The final section, by Ian Williams and MK Czerwiec, focuses on the practice of creating graphic narratives, iconography, drawing as a social practice, and the nature of comics as visual rhetoric. A conclusion (in comics form) testifies to the diverse and growing graphic medicine community. Two valuable bibliographies guide readers to comics and scholarly works relevant to the field.
Lissa: a story about medical promise, friendship, and revolution by
Anna is the daughter of Americans working in Cairo. But she feels more at home with the humble family of her friend Layla, who lives in the doorman's shack adjacent to Anna's apartment building. As the women grow up, their unlikely friendship is put to the test as they each face a family health crisis. Gulfs of misunderstanding emerge, as Anna deals with her family history of breast cancer, and Layla makes difficult decisions about her father's kidney failure. When the Arab Spring in Egypt erupts, each gets swept up in the revolutionary fervor in Tahrir Square. Amidst this personal and political turmoil, Anna and Layla must reckon with illness, risk, and loss in different ways. Ultimately they come to learn the power of friendship and the importance of hope against all odds -- that lissa, there is still time to fight for a better tomorrow, together.
My Degeneration by
How does one deal with a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease at the age of forty-three? My Degeneration, by former Anchorage Daily News staff cartoonist Peter Dunlap-Shohl, answers the question with humor and passion, recounting the author's attempt to come to grips with the "malicious whimsy" of this chronic, progressive, and disabling disease. This graphic novel tracks Dunlap-Shohl's journey through depression, the worsening symptoms of the disease, the juggling of medications and their side effects, the impact on relations with family and community, and the raft of mental and physical changes wrought by the malady. My Degeneration examines the current state of Parkinson's care, including doctor/patient relations and the repercussions of a disease that, among other things, impairs movement, can rob patients of their ability to speak or write, degrades sufferers' ability to deal with complexity, and interferes with the sense of balance. Readers learn what it's like to undergo a dramatic, demanding, and audacious bit of high-tech brain surgery that can mysteriously restore much of a patient's control over symptoms. But My Degeneration is more than a Parkinson's memoir. Dunlap-Shohl gives the person newly diagnosed with Parkinson's disease the information necessary to cope with it on a day-to-day basis. He chronicles the changes that life with the disease can bring to the way one sees the world and the way one is seen by the wider community. Dunlap-Shohl imparts a realistic basis for hope-hope not only to carry on, but to enjoy a decent quality of life.
Taking Turns by
In 1994, at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, MK Czerwiec took her first nursing job, at Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago, as part of the caregiving staff of HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371. Taking Turns pulls back the curtain on life in the ward. A shining example of excellence in the treatment and care of patients, Unit 371 was a community for thousands of patients and families affected by HIV and AIDS and the people who cared for them. This graphic novel combines Czerwiec's memories with the oral histories of patients, family members, and staff. It depicts life and death in the ward, the ways the unit affected and informed those who passed through it, and how many look back on their time there today. Czerwiec joined Unit 371 at a pivotal time in the history of AIDS: deaths from the syndrome in the Midwest peaked in 1995 and then dropped drastically in the following years, with the release of antiretroviral protease inhibitors. This positive turn of events led to a decline in patient populations and, ultimately, to the closure of Unit 371. Czerwiec's restrained, inviting drawing style and carefully considered narrative examine individual, institutional, and community responses to the AIDS epidemic-as well as the role that art can play in the grieving process. Deeply personal yet made up of many voices, this history of daily life in a unique AIDS care unit is an open, honest look at suffering, grief, and hope among a community of medical professionals and patients at the heart of the epidemic.
Trauma Is Really Strange by
What is trauma? How does it change the way our brains work? And how canwe overcome it? When something traumatic happens to us, we dissociateand our bodies shut down their normal processes. This unique comicexplains the strange nature of trauma and how it confuses the brain andaffects the body. With wonderful artwork, cat and mouse metaphors,essential scientific facts, and a healthy dose of wit, the narratorreveals how trauma resolution involves changing the body'sphysiology. This book also describes techniques that can achieve this,including Trauma Releasing Exercises that allow the body to shake awaytension, safely releasing the deep muscular patterns of stress andtrauma.
