Passing for Human
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
**LONGLISTED FOR THE COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE 2020**
Melancholy and funny, personal and surreal, Passing for Human is a neurological coming-of-age story in which Liana Finck goes in search of that thing she has lost – her shadow, that part of her that has always felt as though she is living in exile from the world. On a quest for self-understanding and self-acceptance, along the way, she seeks to answer some eternal questions: What makes us whole? What parts of ourselves do we hide or ignore or chase away – because they’re embarrassing, or inconvenient – and at what cost?
Part magical odyssey, part feminist creation myth, Passing for Human is most of all an extraordinary, moving meditation on what it means to be an artist and a woman.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alienation is both blessing and curse in this elegant graphic memoir of being the odd woman out. Leola's family has always been strange quiet, anxious, prone to dreaming. Though this propelled her parents into successful careers as an architect and a doctor, Leola wears her oddity like a ball and chain. She shies away from other children and finds herself exiled from classroom hierarchies. In metanarrative interludes, Leola even restarts the book itself, plagued with doubt over its quality. But as she discovers, being different doesn't just drive you away from others it can lead you to authenticity, as well. Finck intertwines her jittery, dense line work with fairy tale whimsy: sentient shadows climb in through windows, anxieties are literal rats that nibble at her as she works, God is a queen on a cloud who presides over an Edenic stage set. Though a lesser artist might have leaned on such magical realism as a crutch, Finck's whimsy acts as a microscope to better understand family, romance, and isolation. This story is as tender as it is wry, depicting, for instance, despair with goofy drawings of robots and princesses. Becoming human is a lifelong task but Finck illustrates it with humor and panache.)
