Book review: Jewish Women in Comics: Bodies and Borders

reviewed by John A. Lent

Heike Bauer, Andrea Greenbaum, and Sarah Lightman, eds. Jewish Women in Comics:  Bodies and Borders. Syracuse, NY:  Syracuse University Press, 2023. 296 pp. US $39.95 Paperback. ISBN  978-0-8156-3781-3. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/5160/jewish-women-in-comics/

Using the words of editors Heike Bauer, Andrea Greenbaum, and Sara Lightman, Jewish Women in Comics:  Bodies and Borders “turns to comics to examine how Jewish women’s lives are constituted by gender, sexuality, religion, history, and culture.” The editors acknowledge they proceeded to do this by borrowing the organizational structure of Lightman’s 2014 Graphic Details:  Confessional Comics by Jewish Women, the first book on Jewish women and comics. That structure consisted of reproductions of specific comics with introductions by researchers, interviews, and critical essays; nearly all works portrayed or studied are autobiographical or autobiography-inspired.

Most of the comics reproduced are short (under ten pages), each including a handful or fewer pages of introductory remarks, in a case or two, not insightful or useful, being little more an a rehashing of the story’s plot. Much more in-depth and related to Jewishness are F. K. Schoeman’s analysis of Miriam Libicki’s “minor pregnancy scare,” that brings in topics such as Jews and mice, Jewish law about menstruating women, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and Michael Green and MK Czerwiec’s introduction to Marissa Moss and Joshua Feder’s Last Things:  A Graphic Memoir of Loss and Love, where they recount how Moss decided to use the graphic medicine form to tell about her husband’s seven month illness that led to his death, and, subsequently, her use of Jewish ritual to fill the emptiness after his demise.

The comics themselves do a more than credible job capturing the dilemmas, and the emotions attached, that Jewish women (and non-Jewish women?) encounter, including illness, trauma, motherhood, queerness, menstruation, miscarriages, infertility, war, and family life. The stories around these issues are captivating and meaningful‒Emily Steinberg’s “infertility journey,” symbolized by an ever-growing egg as she confidently thinks she will become pregnant, sadly ending with a drawing of her encased in a broken egg; Nancy K. Miller’s cartoon collages depicting her traveling to another realm of existence “upon being diagnosed with lung cancer, and Sarah Lightman’s “deeply confessional account of the ways we come to form identities and articulate selves through stories.” Helen Blejerman’s Lulu la sensationelle is innovative in approach as she tells of her alter ego, seven-year-old Lulu, who deals with her mother who has a nervous breakdown and moves into the bathroom. Unique is that the story is told without a glimpse of Lulu or her mother. The story that veteran cartoonist Sharon Rudahl tells, Die Bubbeh (The Grandmother), is more fully drawn and developed; it tells how her grandmother fled an antisemitic situation in Ukraine with her arranged-marriage husband and son, leaving behind her lover and the dreams they had. Rudahl asserts, “This is the story of my life in a previous incarnation‒the story of my grandmother Eva.”

The interviews presented are with Amy Kurzweil, concerning her book, Flying Couch; Rutu Modan, about her process of working, the interview done in a comic book format; Trina Robbins, sketchily relating her career, enriched with Trina’s “say it as it is” talk; Ilana Zeffren, on “comics, cats, and LGBTQ+ life in Israel”; Emil Ferris, discussing assorted topics (her new Jewish identity, horror film’s impact on social commentary, gender politics, and more), and Nino Biniashvili, mostly about her book, On the Edge of the Black Sea. The interviews vary in comprehensiveness and interest, depending on the skills of the interviewers. Standing out are those of Sandra Chiritescu, with Amy Kurzweil; Andrea Greenbaum, with Emil Ferris, and Oded Na’aman with Nino Biniashvili.

Six essays round out the 20 chapters, treating such subjects as nostalgia, queer identity, motherhood, gender, and domestic boundaries in Jewish comics, and “The Challenges and Opportunities of Scholarly-Artistic Collaboration.” The collection benefits from a thought-provoking introduction, numerous black-and-white and color illustrations, and an appropriate-size bibliography.

One point made in the introduction needs clarification and may be challengeable‒the “whiteness of comics.” The editors mention the whiteness of comics studies at one point and whiteness of comics a couple of sentences later. Concerning the latter, they provide an example of the “perpetuation of anti-Black stereotypes,” by citing a very old example, Eisner’s “Ebony White.” If this stereotype persists, more recent examples should be given. If it has abated, then they should say so. As for comic studies, there has been much improvement in recent years, with books about Black comic art generally and individual artists, and more academic articles with the establishment of more journals, a major one edited by a Black woman. International Journal of Comic Art has carried all manuscripts submitted by or about non-whites. International Journal of Comic Art and, I am sure, other journals welcome such articles; what is needed is the writing and submission of them.

Overall, Jewish Women in Comics… succeeds at what it attempts to accomplish, providing a well-rounded array of comics, interviews, and essays; covering the subject in the United States and abroad; using sufficient sources, and fashioning a very readable and enjoyable account of a segment of comics, religious, and women’s studies.