Category: News

This is the first installment of a series on sexual assault and comics. If you haven’t yet read the introduction, you might want to check it out for a little context.
Sexuality is not a black-and-white matter; neither, therefore, is consent. There are infinite shades of gray between consent as defined in the Antioch Policy and the legal and medical definitions of sexual assault. Although we can agree on certain terms and definitions for sexual violence, those definitions are far from universal, and they’re thick with semantic subtleties and qualifiers.
When sexual violence finds its way into comics–when writers choose to portray sexual violence in comics–that ambiguity comes into immediate conflict with the traditionally cut-and-dried morality of mainstream superheroes. In worlds where right is right and wrong is wrong and each is defined by colorful costumes, it’s hard to express the confusing and often conflicting cultural and individual factors that surround and therefore define an assault. Even after the popularization of grim ‘n gritty antiheroes and the introduction of a degree of moral ambiguity to comics, the form remains more likely than most to oversimplify both characters and their actions. Furthermore, they’re only gradually emerging from a long tradition of sexism, if not outright misogyny, and the problematic portrayal of women in comics further complicates the issue of sexual assault within the medium.
Sexual assault is almost impossible to express well or respectfully when the characters concerned are themselves simplified to the point of stereotypes. It’s an intensely personal act and experience whose nature and repercussions are heavily colored by both cultural nuances and the individuals involved. Unfortunately, it’s also become a popular shortcut for ‘developing’ female characters. In this capacity, it tends to fall into one of three plot roles: an attempt to give the character a ‘dark’ history, usually as a context or explanation for neuroses; a female hero’s primary motivation for heroism or her catalyst for becoming a hero; or a means of diminishing a strong female character by emphasizing her vulnerability.*
In the first instance, the sexual assault generally has occurred at some point in the character’s comparatively distant past, usually in conjunction with other adversity: she may have been assaulted by an unsavory parent, guardian, or relative whose behavior was symptomatic of the general moral vacuum in which she was raised; or the assault may have served as implicit punishment for her own moral delinquency (i.e. drug abuse, promiscuity, etc.). In these scenarios, the victim is usually portrayed as a complete innocent–at worst, temporarily misled but basically virtuous–and the perpetrator is totally reprehensible and inhuman, an utter rogue who appears sympathetic only when he is deliberately manipulating his victims. He is also generally in a position of power–a parent or other older relative, a pimp, etc.–and the rape usually happens in connection with other abuse.
In the second instance, the sexual assault is the female character’s motivation for becoming a superhero. In these cases, the victim is either deeply traumatized and relegated to a semi-comatose state; or she is immediately incited to a life of crime-fighting, either as a means to revenge or as a way of preventing other women from suffering a similar fate. In these cases, the assailant is almost always a stranger or, at most, an acquaintance, and the assault is usually anonymous, apparently arbitrary, and particularly brutal.
In the final instance, a female character who is already a hero is assaulted as a means of emphasizing her vulnerability and/or femininity: in effect, ‘cutting her down to size.’ This instance is particularly insidious, as it is most often used as a means of diminishing a previously powerful and confident female character. If the assault is completed, the character is generally deeply traumatized and left either catatonic or violently self-destructive to an extent that affects the character’s ability to function as a hero for an extended period of time; if it is attempted, it is generally prevented by the intercession of a male superhero. Either way, the ultimate result is the disempowerment of the character.
What all three scenarios have in common are gross overgeneralizations, sloppy storytelling which relies on crude stereotypes and clichés, and deeply misogynistic and heterosexist undertones. They buy into–and sell back–the most harmful sort of myths about sexual violence because they are too lazy or too ignorant to look beyond popular disinformation.
It is possible to write a mainstream comics story about sexual assault well and respectfully; it has been done (and in my next column, I’m going to give you some tips on how to do it). But it requires writers to abandon shallow tropes in favor of less superficial–and sometimes less marketable–stories; to reexamine–and often reject–their and the industry’s assumptions about gender, power, and sexuality.
*I’m going to go into more depth about gender and sexuality issues later this month. In this column, however, to accurately reflect the portrayal of sexual violence in comics, all three of these scenarios assume a male assailant and a female victim. This in itself is symptomatic of a tremendous problem in the ways in which many mainstream comics address–or overlook–sexual assault. It is extremely important to be aware that not all sexual violence is heterosexual; that not all aggressors are male and not all victims are female.

Today is April second. It’s the second week of spring. It’s almost Passover; almost Easter; day after April Fools’. It’s also the second day of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
This month, I’m gonna do something a little different in Inside Out (as opposed to the whopping…er…two months’ worth of precedent that I’ve set). I’m going to write a month’s worth of columns about sexual assault issues in comic books and how they correspond to real life. If you have any doubt that I can fill a month with this topic, here’s something to chew on: in order to cover everything I want to, I’m probably going to be posting semiweekly for the duration of April. Although I already have a fair idea of the topics I want to discuss, if you have any questions, suggestions, or requests, please let me know in the forum.
Here’s my angle: I am a comics professional; I care deeply about the comics industry and about its quality and integrity. I am also a feminist, and sexual assault is a feminist issue (actually, it’s everyone’s issue, but it’s of particular concern from a feminist angle).
My connection to and concern about sexual assault goes back further than my connection to and concern about the comics industry; almost as far back as my involvement in feminism. I’ve been involved in anti-sexual assault activism for almost half my life, from Take Back the Night, to the Clothesline Project, to the victims’ rights lobby. I spent four-plus years working directly with sexual assault survivors as a volunteer crisis advocate. I have created and taught high school, college, and community sexual violence education curricula. I have held survivors’ hands in the emergency room. I have written fact-sheets. I have seen faces and heard stories. I’ve also talked to and worked with perpetrators. This is an issue I care a lot about, and one regarding which I can speak with relative authority.
So, that’s me; now for you.
Sexual violence thrives on silence and complacency. My goal this month is to speak up and be heard, and to encourage you to do the same: I dearly hope that the discussions this series of columns starts will substantially outlive the month of April. One potential venue for that discussion is the Inside Out board on the Girl-Wonder forum. However, before you start, I want to lay down some ground rules:

1. Girl-Wonder strives to be a safe space for survivors. You do not question someone’s story. You do not refute someone’s story. You do not belittle or blame someone who has had the courage to speak about his or her experiences. Victim blaming on my board is grounds for immediate moderator intervention, and I will be moderating these threads very closely.
2. If you aren’t sure what comprises appropriate participation in such a discussion, you are more than welcome to PM me. In the meantime, take a little while to listen. Sometimes, conscious listening can be a more valuable contribution to a discussion than speech.
3. While I am trained and certified as a crisis advocate, I don’t have the time, energy, or support system to act in that capacity right now. While I will be more than happy to listen to anyone with something to share, I cannot be your counselor. If you’re in need of counseling or direct intervention services, I will be happy to refer you to resources in your region.
4. TRIGGER WARNING: Both the columns and their discussion threads will more than likely contain trauma triggers. Please be safe.
   The first content will be posted in the next few days. Stay tuned for updates.
   In the meantime, you can discuss this column here.

This past week at work, I got roped into reading for an essay contest. I know, I know. But the topic looked fun‘How Buffy Changed My Life’and besides, even if there were a few thousand entries, they were all supposed to be 250 or fewer words.
So, I read.
I was expecting pretty cliché responses, with fluffy content. After all, the prize was an appearance in Season Eight: the sort of thing that draws out the scariest corners of fandom. And yeah, there was some fluff. A few ‘I’m not really that into Buffy but I want to be on teevee and I know I’d be a star! Pick me lol k?’ (No. And Season Eight is direct to comics, kiddo. Do your damn homework).
But of the two-hundred-odd entries I read, the vast, vast majority were sincere. We heard from people who had identified strongly enough with characters to overcome major physical and psychological disabilities. Girls who had turned on Buffy and found a strong woman they related to, where they least expected her: in the dead center of the prime-time lineup. We got essays from men who talked about finding the first show and character they were proud to share with their mothers, their sisters, their daughters and wives; people who wrote that Buffy had inspired them to learn martial arts; read fantasy; study filmmaking; connect with their families; return to school; leave abusive partners; come out; stay alive. Those are just a fraction of the responses I read, and I read barely a tenth of the total.
There’s this tendency in the feminist comics community to be a bit prickly about Joss Whedon, because people keep touting him as someone who writes ‘for women,’ and we aren’t fond of being told what to read. But here’s the thing: Joss doesn’t write ‘for women.’ He writes for people. He creates characters and stories that transcend boundaries of gender, of age, of race, of sexual orientation and nationality. And that’s something we could use more of in a field that’s overwhelmingly focused towards young, straight, upper-middle-class white men. This is a guy whose favorite superhero wasand probably still isa gawky, geeky girl. He’s someone who can write stories in which gender isn’t every female character’s defining feature, in which queer characters are more than stereotypes. I may not be Buffy and Joss’s biggest fan, but if more characters and writers would follow their leads, I think comics would be much better for it.
And that’d change my life.
How have women in comics changed yours?

My mom is unbelievably badass. She has a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry and rides a big damn motorcycle. She’s politically active and involved in ecology and sustainable design. But none of that can hold a candle to what she does for a living: she teaches middle school. She doesn’t do this because she lost a bet, or as penance for a life of crime. She does it voluntarily. She’s that hardcore.
When I go to visit my parents, I inevitably end up spending time in my mom’s classroom. Usually, I bring her lunch at some point, and we hang out and talk. She teaches at a fairly small Montessori school, which many of her pupils have attended since they were two. I went there for second through fifth grade (there was no middle school back then). Most of the teachers have known me since I was a little kid, and I’ve known a lot of the students since they were toddlers. Some are younger siblings of the kids I went to school with. Some, I used to babysit. And now, they’re all hulking teenagers with attitudes. They talk about sex. It’s a bit disconcerting.
So, when Mom asked me to come talk to her students about making comics, I was torn between elation and horror. I love talking about comics, and I love the idea of corrupting a younger generation, but I am fucking terrified of adolescents. In my mind, eleven-to-fourteen-year-olds are what you get when you cross the worst aspects of violent mobs and mass media. When I’m around middle-school students, I become an awkward twelve-year-old: the definition of uncool, the flat-chested, frizzy-haired kid who hides behind thick glasses and thicker books, who gets called ‘dyke’ and worse by her peers, who would flay her alive if they knew she still built spaceships out of chairs with her best friend. I start to stammer. I lose my carefully cultivated dry wit.
‘Okay,’ I said.
I spent a lot of time developing content for the presentation, but I spent even longer worrying about how I would come across. Middle school is a time when kids tend to embrace dictated roles—particularly in terms of gender—and actively reject anything that smells of otherness. Montessori kids are often more progressive than most, but they’re still adolescents, and they’re still intensely judgmental.
At the same time, I agonized over how much attention I should devote to social issues related to comics. Should I talk about Women in Refrigerators? Should I mention gender disparity? Should I try to make concessions to diversity at the risk of inaccurately presenting the pervasive homogeny I spend so much time railing against? Should I emphasize the female comics community, or would that further alienate the girls? My mom warned me that the collective attention span of her students was a little under forty-five minutes and asked me not to wear my ‘I am wearing little pants to hide my genitals’ CBLDF t-shirt. I began to worry about age-appropriate content and imagine angry letters from parents.
And then there was the presentation itself. I’ve taught classes and given lectures and workshops before: the critical difference is that they’ve all been to undergraduates, not middle-schoolers. Would they be interested? Did kids today even read comics at all? I panicked some more.
Finally, I showed up at her classroom armed with a box of books, thirty pages of official Dark Horse artboard, two sets of handouts, and my laptop. I had a PowerPoint presentation prepared that went through the definition of comics and the idea of comics as literature, a short history of the medium (especially in terms of social issues and censorship) and a step-by-step guide to the creation of a page. I figured that even if they hated it, they’d have a few cool souvenirs and maybe even learn something.
They were good during the presentation: participated when I asked questions and stayed pretty quiet otherwise. Afterwards, I split them into groups and set them free to make their own comics.
Mandy, the other teacher, pulled me aside. ‘That was incredible,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen them get so into a guest speaker!’ I spent the next few hours wandering through the classroom in a happy daze, answering questions and helping them make their comics (‘I don’t know if you can say ‘crap’ in your comic. You’ll have to ask your teacher.’). Seventh-graders thought I was cool! They thought comics were cool! And, most incredible, they thought the idea of comics as a medium for social commentary was awesome! They thought female superheroes and creators were awesome! They were incredibly excited when I taught them the word ‘metafiction’ and continued to try to slip it into conversations all afternoon!
These kids, these marvelous, strange creatures are growing into the next generation of fans. They’re reading good books—and they’re learning to look at comics and literature from new critical and creative angles. Yeah, they’re into silly teenager stuff, but they’re also into Maus and Hellboy and Little Lulu, and more important, they’re into their own ideas. They’re writing and drawing their own strips and finding their voices, and I suspect that they’ll be harder than most to silence.
And now, the moral of the story: these kids are coming of age at a tremendous turning point in the world of comics. They’re growing up in a world where comics are still deeply flawed, produced by an industry that’s overwhelmingly male-dominated and often hideously sexist if not outright misogynist. But at the same time, they’re growing up in a world that has Girl-Wonder, and Friends of Lulu, where the visible faces of comics—creators and fandom—are gradually growing to reflect more than one race and gender.
And that’s pretty damn cool.
‘I’m sure you know there’s lots to learn
But that’s not your fault, that’s just your turn.’
-Dar Williams, ‘Teenagers, Kick Our Butts’
March 12th, 2007
Categories: Uncategorized . Author: Rachel Edidin

Girl-Wonder.org is pleased to announce that it is holding elections for the Board of Directors for its governing body, Gworg.
Gworg is an incorporated non-profit feminist organization dedicated to fostering an attentive, empowered comics fan community, to encouraging respect and high-quality character depiction, and to assisting the professional development of women working in the field of comics. Anyone who supports these aims is eligible to become a member, and all members are able to vote, stand for office, and nominate others to the Board.
Becoming a Director is an excellent opportunity to support and direct the progress of Girl-Wonder.org! Moreover, since Gworg is a registered non-profit organization, this also makes a great entry of volunteer work on your resume.
We will be accepting new members and Board nominations from Monday, January 9th through Monday, January 30th. Elections will be announced on Monday, February 6th. Members will then have until Monday, February 13th to vote for this year’s Gworg Board of Directors.
Click here to learn more about becoming a member and/or joining the Board!

I’ve got a weakness for foodie manga. Yes, it’s a genre of Japanese comics about eating, and by all accounts it should be boring stuff. Typically, foodie manga meshes food facts (the cultural history of a dish, how it’s best prepared) with characters over-reacting to the deliciousness of said food, all within a candy-coated semblance of a plot that only exists to get the characters to eat more and talk more about food. It sounds boring, but it’s not. Trust me on this.
Enter Fumi Yoshinaga’s Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy, which, despite having a mouthful for a title (GROAN), is one of the better foodie manga I’ve read. Perhaps it’s the form. Not Love is a series of 15 vignettes that take place at 15 real restaurants in Tokyo. It’s heavier on plot than typical foodie manga, and follows a year or so in the lives of manga artist Y-Naga and her friends as they enjoy phenomenal meals and stumble through careers and relationships. It is very loosely based on Yoshinaga’s life (see the similarity in names and careers between Y-Naga and the author), and features a great cast of rotating characters.
I was particularly impressed with a chapter in which Y-Naga takes her friend A-Dou out for sushi. Y-Naga has written comics about gay characters, but never realized that A-Dou was gay. Throughout the dinner, the two bond over an incredibly illustrated meal, and Y-Naga explores her own prejudices and assumptions about gay culture. It’s a little heavy-handed at times, but nice to see such a subject addressed with some nuance.
Not Love is a travelogue of sorts, but also serves as a cultural document. It works well in translation, providing an inside peek into contemporary Japanese food culture. It occurred to me more than once while reading that I needed to take this book with me as a restaurant guide when I go to Tokyo.
Yoshinaga’s other works that have been translated into English include Ooku and All My Darling Daughters. Both are worth a read as well.

Violence: Next to none, unless you’re a vegetarian.
Sexualized Violence: None
Gender: There are several solid women characters. Y-Naga is a single career woman who, though she would like to settle down someday, is in no hurry.
The Bechdel-Wallace Test: Pass! Y-Naga and her male and female friends do discuss their romantic lives, but also discuss food and personal values.
Minorities: This is a Japanese comic about urban Japanese life. There isn’t much room for other cultures here.
Parents May Wish to Be Aware: Characters do discuss sex and homosexuality, but nothing is overly offensive, lewd, or condemning of other lifestyles.
Review by Erin Polgreen

Stan Lee’s writings on comics–and indeed, his early comics–have the kind of enthusiasm about making comics that I did when I was nine and first decided to learn how to do it. Since then, my enthusiasm has been tempered by the frustration and effort involved trying to understand the production and theory in greater depth.
Books like this are a shot in the arm!
It starts with a little history of the field–as one might expect, Stan’s own experience is recalled in more detail. I’m not weeping over the brevity of the section on the Nineties, though.
Chapters two, three and four talk about drawing, specifically materials and anatomy. Really, this is too large a part of the process to rely on this book alone unless the art part is not going to be on your plate–but, fortunately, there’s a list of recommended reading included, and I can vouch for the ten of the fourteen on the list that I own. Books, I haz them.
Chapter five and six have some of the great rarer stuff. Five talks about design choices, as they apply to character acting and panel action; six gets into character naming and costumes. Anecdotes!
Chapter seven is dear to my heart. Environments, or backgrounds as they are often dismissively called, are discussed, yes, but there’s more! The book discusses how to use Google’s SketchUp to help with perspective for objects like houses–and in some detail. So, for you who are desperately terrified of complex perspective, this one’s for you. (I don’t blame you.)
Chapter eight is worth the price of the book alone.
Why? Because it deals with one of the most difficult and technical parts of comics–and the part of the mix that makes comics what they are.
Layouts, people! Stan discusses eye path, cinematic continuity, camera angles, clarity… and then there’s the true chewy gold centre for aspiring comic makers.
Mistakes. Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff. Jezreel Morales produces a four-page layout of an action scene with specific problems, which Stan then discusses–not only what’s gone awry, but why. It includes my pet peeve, rampant abuse of panel break-out!
Another useful element is a sample 3-age breakdown/layout by Wilson Tortosa, which is designed to be worked up to completion or expanded upon in new ways by a developing artist. How cool is that?
Developing artists may enjoy chapter nine especially. It discusses pencilling styles, and showcases some very different, but quite effective, pencillers and discusses the development of style over time–Al Rio starting out as a clone of J. Scott Campbell? Having only become familiar with Rio fairly recently, it’s heartening to see how much a style can grow. But then, I can barely picture the stark differences between early Deodato and modern Deodato, and I own a good chunk of his Wonder Woman run. Does not compute!
Speaking of Deodato, there’s some process pages where the book demonstrates how to use photoreference properly–that is, as to support your carefully-considered layout design, not as a replacement for purveyors of pornface. Derivative pornface at that.
Chapters ten, eleven, and twelve deal with inking, lettering, and colouring, and covers are discussed in good detail. The final chapter is concerned with portfolios and getting work in the industry. The indexes include, as mentioned, the reading list, some schools offering courses in comics (all American), and even places to find art supplies.
As a primer on the many and varied aspects of production, I haven’t found a better one. Some of the content is similar to How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way, but unlike that book, this has quite a breadth of artists in it and has a broader focus.
It’s not without problems–there’s a section on representing ethnicities that’s not really worth listening to. This is a standard, pervasive problem with almost every drawing book I ever encountered–everybody’s got that European body and face. Blah. Hunt ye down Joumana Medlej’s resources for ethnotypes instead. Also, there’s some of the usual stuff about female characters needing to remain sensual without heavy emphasis on muscle… of course, the last full illustration in the book is Frank Cho’s physically powerful Red Sonja with a big axe on her shoulder, so take that as you will. There’s a few issues like that, but nothing that makes me want to kill-kill-never-stop.
It’s a big field, and Stan’s experience is put to good use discussing not just the practises but also the reasoning behind them. And call me a keener, but I’d rather have a slab of a book that gives a more complete picture than a dozen skinny ones–and this book isn’t even a slab. For real facility, you will need to supplement this book with others in the field in question. But the reading list has some excellent material, and I do encourage checking out some of the titles listed.
Seriously, this is at the top of my list on technical grounds alone, but it’s also served by Stan himself–you know he loves comics, and that comes through. That kind of spirit is a tonic for me when I’m banging my head against the latest production problem, and makes me remember why I love comics in the first place.
Violence: Present, and varies–because it’s not a narrative, the art jumps all over the place in style and content.
Sexualized Violence: None.
Gender: Inherent problem of anatomy discussion–plus the usual silliness about drawing women. Not egregious.
The Bechdel-Wallace Test: Not really applicable.
Minorities: Just ignore everything on pages 70-71 that discuss ethnicity in particular and looking for Joumana Medlej’s series on ethnotypes.
Parents May Wish to Be Aware: There’s comic book violence and more than a little cleavage.
Review by Winterbourne.

Girl-Wonder is proud to announce our newest blog, No More Invisible Girls, where we talk to and about women who love comics to show that we’re not just a fringe group. Check out our first question: How did you get into comics?

John Allison’s Bad Machinery follows on the heels of his brilliant Scary Go Round, which ran for seven years of (largely) understated English surrealism and fantasy. Bad Machinery stays in the same universe (and in the West Yorkshire city of Tackleford), with a few beloved characters still around, but shifts its focus down a
generation to the twelve-year-old set. The girls (bright Shauna, impulsive Charlotte and troublemaker Mildred) and the boys (shy Jack, ambitious Linton and good-hearted Sonny) engage in a friendly rivalry to solve mysteries and right wrongs. Obligingly, Tackleford is full of that sort of thing spirits, monsters, trolls and magic pencils abound.
Moving from the teens and twenty-somethings of Scary Go Round to the children of Bad Machinery lets Allison give his natural gift for dialogue full rein. His cast of smart, guileless kids all have distinctive voices and a sharp phrasing which was SGR’s hallmark. Awkward relationships are as engaging as monster hunting when rendered in in his colourful, expressive style.
Violence: Some bullying, some cartoonish monster-fighting. Nothing serious.
Sexualized Violence: None.
Gender: The girls (who have roughly equal time, perhaps a little more, with the boys) are pro-active, clever and irrepressible. They are distinctively female without being stereotyped.
The Bechdel-Wallace Test: Passes near-constantly.
Minorities: Linton and his family (who are black) are the only significant non-white characters.
Parents May Wish to Be Aware: Apart from the occasional bullying scenes, I can’t think of anything.
Review by Sean Halsey

Neil Young’s Greendale is a graphic novel adaptation of the album of the same name by — you guessed it — Neil Young. If you’re a Neil Young fan and you’re reading this website, odds are you’ve already read this book. But if you’re not, it’s important to note that this graphic novel requires absolutely no knowledge of that album or of Neil Young in general. It only requires that you be a person who’s interested in the coming-of-age tale of a teenage girl tapping into previously-unknown power, brought to stunning life by Cliff Chiang’s art.
With this book, writer Joshua Dysart takes the basic ideas of Greendale, a concept album about the Iraq War, environmentalism, and a small California town’s reaction to it all, and turns it into a beautiful story about one 17-year-old girl, Sun Green, whose female family members have always held some amount of sway over the forces of nature. Sun is a girl who is deeply concerned about the world around her, an avowed pacifist and environmentalist who doesn’t understand, in 2003, why the whole planet seems to be going to hell. Meanwhile, things are spinning out of control within the small, close-knit circle of her family, and a mysterious devil presence is set on making them even worse. It’s up to Sun to realize exactly what kind of power she has and use it to combat those evils, both personal and global.
The book has a strong narrative, despite how meandering the original music is, and the people of Greendale, California all feel deeply real. The focus on matrilineal power is especially awesome, as Sun draws strength from her female ancestors, all of whom have distinct personalities. But the biggest highlight of the book is probably Chiang’s art, which is clean, soft, expressive, and simply gorgeous. The most mundane elements of the book shine under his pencils, and the fantastical elements positively sparkle. Even if this doesn’t sound like the book for you, I recommend flipping through it in a bookstore or a library just to check out the art.
But mostly I recommend this book to anyone who, like me, found themselves in high school in the harsh, confusing days of the early 2000s and wished they, like Sun Green, had the power to change the world.
Violence: A few moments of gun violence, including a murder and an attempted suicide, and a few scattered scenes of minor fantastical violence. But the protagonist’s pacifist beliefs mitigate the violence and definitively cast it in a negative light.
Sexualized Violence: None that I can recall. Even the devil character’s violence is completely nonsexual.
Gender: This is the story of a young woman coming of age and taking charge of her own inner power, as passed down matrilineally throughout her family’s history. It’s a profoundly feminist book about female agency.
The Bechdel-Wallace Test: The book absolutely passes, as Sun has conversations with various female relatives and a classmate with no reference to men whatsoever.
Minorities: Easily the weakest point in the book, especially given the California setting. This is largely because almost all of the characters are members of Sun’s (white) family, but all of the supporting characters are also white.
Parents May Wish to Be Aware: I would rate this book at least PG-13; there is definitely implied sex in addition to the aforementioned violence. But nothing is particularly graphic, and the moments of near-nudity are completely tasteful.
Review by Jennifer Margret Smith