Teva Harrison (1976–2019)

Engrossing and moving autobiographical cartoons, vignettes and short essays about living with a terminal illness.

With such short snippets, the book does get a little too random at times, and in general I'm not a fan of hybrid graphic novels. Here, every one-page cartoon is followed by one to two pages of text that comments on the cartoon or reiterates and expands upon the theme of the cartoon. The repetition detracts and makes me wish the cartoons were allowed to stand on their own, but its understandable that Harrison wanted to get as much in as quickly as possible. And what she does capture is very valuable.… (meer)

This is a sort of graphic novel style book. Comics and short narratives drawn and written by Teva Harrison, who was diagnosed at age 37 (3 years ago) with metastatic breast cancer. It's a chronicle of her journey and was a quick read, at once heart-breaking and uplifting. She was American by birth but has lived here in Toronto for years. I first heard of this book when I heard an interview with her on the radio when it was published earlier this year. In fact, she will be speaking at my local library next Tuesday and I am hoping to go see her. She is a brave, talented and articulate woman ( one of the blurbs on the cover is by Joseph Boyden who has high praise for this memoir!)

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Edited to add that I wrote this review when I first read this book, in 2016. Teva Harrison died in April 2019 at the too-young age of 42. She has a new book of poetry coming out shortly.

https://www.cbc.ca/books/read-an-excerpt-from-teva-harrison-s-poetry-collection-...… (meer)