Not Oprah's Book Club: Bad Habits

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Photobucket Image Hosting I'm a big fan of Soft Skull press, which is sort of a haven for the kind of creative stuff that the mainstream publishing industry is notoriously scared of--graphic novels, photojournalism, queer lit, youth political analysis. Check them out, if you haven't already.

One of their latest releases is Bad Habits: A Love Story by Cubana artist Christy C. Road. It's a mostly autobiographical graphical novel about her "personal revolution" from bad habit-prone, self-punishing punk wanderer to independently-minded, self-protecting punk philosopher. You can't help but sort of fall in love with the angsty, gritty drama of it all. Like when she writes passages like this:

And, like Brooklyn, the human heart is divided into several humble portals, each with a function, relevance, history, and culture distinct to its region. Every developmental blow cripples the antiquity of its boroughs, and every imperfect experience cripples the wellbeing of every corner of the heart. But the city doesn't stop and the human heart trudges with clandestine motivation.

The book is filled with feminist polemic brought down to the palpable level of everyday reflection. It's most searing when she contrasts traditional power structure's perspective of her versus her own gorgeously drawn, deeply felt reality: "According to the law, I'm just some bipolar junky who happened to have been sexually assaulted once or twice, and later mind-fucked by some crass romantic I shouldn't have trusted anyway...the the conservative many, I was the scum of the earth, and my allies were just numbers. To me, we were the things that went bump, rack, and hump, in the night."

Bump on Road, bump on.

UPDATE: Celina interviewed Road, along with Diane DiMassa, back in June.

Posted by Courtney - September 11, 2008, at 09:52AM | in Books

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