Graphic Novel Review: Remember Us to Life. A Graphic Memoir

reviewed by Ishita Sehgal, IU Bloomington 

Joanna Rubin Dranger. Remember Us to Life. A Graphic Memoir. Berkeley, CA:  Ten Speed Press, 2025. 432 pp. US $40.00 (Hardcover). ISBN:  978-0-5938-3690-3. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/769055/remember-us-to-life-by-joanna-rubin-dranger/

  

 

 

Remember Us to Life is an amalgamation of the history of the Holocaust and the lived experiences of Jews. Originally published in Swedish, the story follows the history of Dranger’s extended family, focusing on her grandparents, who lost family members to the concentration camps in Germany and Norway. The medium she uses to represent these stories applies the aid of a monochrome, black and white narrative, which is supported by the scattered use of color. The color is visible, when she uses original photographs, old handwritten memorabilia, and documents to emphasize the harrowing memories.

Throughout the book, Dranger is searching for a past that seems to be lost, or as she realizes, is too painful to remember. Her art shines through the story as her frameless pages, which intermingle with the stories, memories, and narratives, bring together the thematic of the memoir. She jumps between the present and the past, but, at the same time, she puts herself in the position of the survivors and imagines how different the experience would be. The story she narrates is specific to her family, but the way she presents it, is a story of every Jew during the years between 1935-1945. Her approach is multi-faceted, with the use of graphic illustrations, family photographs, and painting. Dranger attempts to construct the history of the lost family, but keeps her Swedish positionality as the focal point. Through the course of the memoir, she is seen critiquing Sweden’s role during World War II. The title itself envelopes the theme of the memoir, which is to never forget any of the lives that were lost during the Holocaust and to remember the atrocities vetted out on them.

Winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2023, Remember Us to Life became the first graphic novel to receive this honor, exemplifying the strength of graphic storytelling. Dranger’s genre-defining memoir highlights the silences of the Holocaust through the family’s lens. The memoir uncovers the narratives of her extended family, who moved or escaped to different parts of the world, and the connections they had with their familial roots. This book becomes a beacon of light through the collective amnesia about the Holocaust and the loss of family. Her strong personal research, her attempt to find out long-lost relatives, is not just for writing her memoir, but is also about giving the deceased family members a name and making sure they are never forgotten.

 

The complexity of walking to the corner with someone: A Swedish book review

 by Gerald Heng

                                          Walk me to the corner     

                                              Anneli Furmark  

                                            Montreal: D&Q

Somewhat by whimsical chance, I picked up Anneli Furmark's Walk me to the corner at the Stockholm library Seriebiblioteket. Anneli Furmark is a well known Swedish painter and comic artist who has a few books (mostly in Swedish) under her belt including Red Winter, one of 2016 Angouleme official selection. She is based in northern Sweden. You can take a look at her works at her website. Seriebiblioteket is one of Stockholm's public libraries, but is dedicated to the world of comics and comics scholarship, and is where I go to get my irregular dose of new comics-reading materiel. I have been meaning to read her book for a while now, but had not got around to it. It has now been two weeks since I checked it out and it is a beguiling book. I been going back to different sections of the book again and again. I might have to get my own copy of the book, as it is almost time to return it to the library. I don't think I will be done exploring this book thoroughly for a while yet, maybe because it is touching on something that is weighing heavily on my mind at the moment.

The book's main protagonist, Elise, shows her thoughts and her desire for Dagmar, and the subsequent consequences of that on her marriage to Henrik. The book also follows Elise's logic and thinking including her selfish reactions to Henrik's rejection of her ideal world, where her desire for Dagmar should have no impact on her marriage, because she still loves him the most. The story-lines wander through dinner with girlfriends, walks with her son, sessions with a therapist and frustration with a Swedish flyttkartong*, are all wonderfully engrossing. The ending part, 'Amusement Park,' is spot on in its analogy.

I am not sure if the story-lines in the book come from her life or from other sources, but Furmark has done a masterful work putting the age-old delicate twin topics of love and desire down on the pages. I keep going back to this question, "What is love?" The desire part is pretty much laid out in the book as Elsie's relationship with Dagmar, but the love part is quite unclear. Elise claims she love both Dagmar and Henrik, but to varying degrees. This gets more convoluted later on when Henrik told Elise he has started his own romantic relationship with someone which leads to Elise falling apart, unable to deal with this revelation.  Maybe the question is intended to be unanswered in the book. This is probably something everyone will have to decide for one's self due to its very nebulous and capricious nature. Maybe it is human nature -- to love oneself the most -- finally at the end of that question.  There is a self-centered duality hinted at in Elise's dinner with her girlfriends where she tells of the wonderfulness of having a passionate relationship with someone she completely connects with, but yet she still needs the long term comforting safety of her marriage with Henrik. So it's apparently a question with no one correct answer, excluding major religions' thinking about fidelity.

Her use of ink, pencil, watercolors washes, more pencil shading, color pencils to tell the story leaves me in awe. The artwork is a mishmash of different techniques but its use to tell the story is perfect. It gels so well for me. If you haven't read it yet, I recommend it highly.

* A wonderful cardboard moving box which comes flat, but builds into a box without any tape and has its own subculture in Sweden and is highly sought after in South Africa, as I discovered when I moved there for work.