Graphic Medicine: Life Writing and Comics from Biography

In Graphic Medicine, the new monograph from the Biography quarterly, comics artists and scholars of life writing, literature, and comics explore the lived experience of illness and disability through original texts, images, and the dynamic interplay between the two.

The essays and autobiographical comics in this collection respond to the medical humanities’ call for different perceptions and representations of illness and disability than those found in conventional medical discourse. The collection expands and troubles our understanding of the relationships between patients and doctors, nurses, social workers, caregivers, and family members, considering such encounters in terms of cultural context, language, gender, class, and ethnicity. By treating illness and disability as an experience of fundamentally changed living, rather than a separate narrative episode organized by treatment, recovery, and a return to “normal life,” Graphic Medicine asks what it means to give and receive care.

During the past decade, graphic medicine comics have proliferated—an outpouring accelerated recently by the greatest health crisis in a century. Here, guest editors Erin La Cour and Anna Poletti discuss the collection.


University of Hawai‘i Press: Tell us how this special issue came together.

La Cour and Poletti: The idea for the special issue came from the Amsterdam Comics Conference in 2018, where there were a number of papers that explored graphic medicine. We became interested in bringing scholars and artists together to think about how the discourse of graphic medicine had developed and what future directions it might move in. We wanted to create an opportunity for interdisciplinary and intergenerational conversations about narratives of illness and disability in comics form, as well as consider what the limits of graphic medicine might be.

The final page of John Miers’s comic “Conflict Compromise?: An Imagined Conversation with John Hicklenton and Lindsay Cooper about Living with Multiple Sclerosis” in Graphic Medicine, pp. 25–38
The final page of John Miers’s comic “Conflict Compromise?: An Imagined Conversation with John Hicklenton and Lindsay Cooper about Living with Multiple Sclerosis” in Graphic Medicine, pp. 25–38

UHP: In the introduction, you pose the questions, “What can lifewriting scholars add to the burgeoning interest in life writing in comics form, and how might this new field of interest provoke lifewriting scholars to think differently about life writing?” How do you think this collection might provide an answer?

Editors: Our hope is that the special issue answers these questions by demonstrating that practitioners who reflect on their creative work are some of the most important theorists of graphic medicine’s potential uses and limitations. We also think that the investment in graphic medicine as a way of intervening in how medicine is practiced provides life writing scholars with fresh challenges in terms of thinking about how life writing is used, and the kinds of stakes people and institutions have in personal storytelling.

“Frame of Mind #1” by Nancy K. Miller in her essay “‘Is This Recover?’: Chronicity and Closure in Graphic Illness Memoir” in Graphic Medicine, pp. 53–70


“Frame of Mind #1” by Nancy K. Miller in her essay “‘Is This Recover?’: Chronicity and Closure in Graphic Illness Memoir” in Graphic Medicine, pp. 53–70

UHP: The cover features the work of Grant Gronewold, whose work does not “seek to translate the experience of chronic illness” but offers the “opportunity to learn the language” the artist developed to describe his world. Why did you choose to feature Gronewold on the cover, and how does this image serve as an entry to the collection?

Editors: We chose to commission an original image from Grant because of his highly developed symbolism: his images reward close attention and repeated viewing. We believe his work powerfully demonstrates that comics can (and do) communicate something of the experience of illness and disability that prose or poetry cannot. The way he places the figure in a landscape alongside objects of medical treatment (the giant scalpel, the bag of “patient clothes”) registers the social and political position of someone who is ill very evocatively and, we think, signals the thought-provoking nature of the comics and articles the special issue contains.

 “Disability Daily Drawn: A Comics Collaboration” by JoAnn Purcell in collaboration with Simone Purcell Randmaa in Graphic Medicine, pp. 97–115
“Disability Daily Drawn: A Comics Collaboration” by JoAnn Purcell in collaboration with Simone Purcell Randmaa in Graphic Medicine, pp. 97–115

UHP: What was the most challenging thing about creating this collection?

Editors: Without doubt, the pandemic. We had originally planned to bring all our contributors together for a physical meeting where the pieces would be workshopped, and we had to move that online. Our contributors were generous and flexible in finding other ways to read and respond to each other’s work.

Final page of Safdar Ahmed’s “Graphic Confessions and the Vulnerability Hangover from Hell” in Graphic Medicine, pp. 133–146
Final page of Safdar Ahmed’s “Graphic Confessions and the Vulnerability Hangover from Hell” in Graphic Medicine, pp. 133–146

 

UHP:  Since its publication, how has the response been?

Editors: We are getting lots of positive feedback about how beautiful the book is. A number of colleagues have commented on how much they like the range of contributions and the critical perspective the contributors bring to graphic medicine in terms of ethics and aesthetics.

UHP:  How do you hope to see this collection exist in your field and the wider community?

Editors: Our hope is that some of the graphic medicine programs in medical schools might adopt the collection so that health communicators and doctors can continue to reflect on their role as readers and distributors of life writing about illness and disability.

Cover of Graphic Medicine the Manoa Journal Volume 32 Issue (2020)
Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, vol. 44, nos. 2 & 3, 2021

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Read Graphic Medicine on Project MUSE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Free Special Issue: Celebrating 60+ Issues of U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal

A new digital-only special issue from U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal is now available free to readers on Project MUSE. 

“Celebrating 60+ Issues of U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal centers on three themes that often appear in the journal: mobility, storytelling, and activism. The journal is the world’s oldest periodical devoted to the study of gender and Japan and was founded in 1988 by Japanese feminists who were educated in the United States.

The issue brings together seven previously published articles of significance, which:

  • Profiles women from diverse backgrounds who worked abroad during different historical moments and changed how people in Japan, the United States, and France regarded each other 
  • Explores how cancer disrupts women’s life courses and relationships, including the first English translation of Ogino Anna’s quasi-autobiographical short story, “Nue / 鵺”
  • Analyzes the prevalent images of sweets and desserts in shōjo manga in how they symbolize power relationships and essentialize girls
  • Investigates the online feminist movement #KuToo, which disclosed exploitative workplace and political cultures and empowered women to try to change them

“All of these seven articles explain that, due to laws, social conventions, business practices, and other factors, women have faced different choices in work and family and different access to education, jobs, and politics than people of other genders. They show how women have coped with public and personal traumas, initiated movements for change and equality, and formed communities. They account for diversity among Japanese women and dispel stereotypes. They capture accounts omitted from historical records,” writes Alisa Freedman in the special issue’s introduction.

Alisa Freedman served as the the journal’s editor-in-chief from 2016-2022, is a professor of Japanese literature, cultural studies, and gender at the University of Oregon, and author of several books. She dedicates the commemorative issue to the journals’ previous editors: Drs. Yoko Kawashima, Noriko Mizuta, Sally A. Hastings, and Jan Bardsley.

Read the commemorative issue free on Project MUSE here.