The Contradictions
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
The Eisner Award-winning story about a student figuring out radical politics in a messy world
Sophie is young and queer and into feminist theory. She decides to study abroad, choosing Paris for no firm reason beyond liking French comics. Feeling a bit lonely and out of place, she’s desperate for community and a sense of belonging. She stumbles into what/who she’s looking for when she meets Zena. An anarchist student-activist committed to veganism and shoplifting, Zena offers Sophie a whole new political ideology that feels electric. Enamored—of Zena, of the idea of living more righteously—Sophie finds herself swept up in a whirlwind friendship that blows her even further from her rural California roots as they embark on a disastrous hitchhiking trip to Amsterdam and Berlin, full of couch surfing, drug tripping, and radical book fairs.
Capturing that time in your life where you’re meeting new people and learning about the world—when everything feels vital and urgent—The Contradictions is Sophie Yanow’s fictionalized coming-of-age story. Sophie’s attempts at ideological purity are challenged time and again, putting into question the plausibility of a life of dogma in a world filled with contradictions. Keenly observed, frank, and very funny, The Contradictions speaks to a specific reality while also being incredibly relatable, reminding us that we are all imperfect people in an imperfect world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yanow (War of Streets and Houses) captures with wit and insight the conflicts inherent in being young and remaining idealistic in her Eisner Award winning autofiction. A queer 20-year-old, Yanow starts off her college foreign exchange program in Paris waiting for life to get exciting: "So far I felt I had few stories worth telling.... If something was going to change, surely this was the place for it." Financially strapped and unsure of herself, she befriends a woman named Zena, who introduces her to anarchist ideals such as veganism, squatting, worker-owned cooperatives and shoplifting. The pair then embark on a spring break road trip, hitchhiking through Amsterdam, Ghent, and Berlin. Though Yanow initially admires Zena and tries to emulate her, including going "vegan for the trip, like in solidarity," tensions soon arise, as Yanow realizes that walking their idealistic talk trips up on complicated realities. Yanow's invigorating clear-line cartooning, which recalls Otto Soglow, matches perfectly with her deadpan, observational storytelling. Her angular, long-limbed characters bound about from minimalist white-space panels to carefully detailed European cityscapes. Appealing both to indie comics fans on the cusp of coming-of-age to those looking back decades to their own youthful follies, this assured, smart chronicle is a winner.
