Liz Prince

Tomboy was lent to me by a co-worker. This is my first graphic memoir and, other than paging through some when I worked at Borders, my first experience with reading in the "graphic" form. I LOVED this! As a cis-woman who started out very much a Tomboy in my youth I could really identify with some of moments that Liz Prince shares. Recently at work I've been spending lots of time discussing gender fluidity and thinking about gender norms and their restrictions - this was right book at the show more right time for me. It is funny, sad and dead on. Thank you Liz Prince!!

Highly recommend this for anyone who struggles to fit into gender expectations of those around them but even more so for adults who don't understand the concept that many 15-30 year olds today have embraced - gender is fluid. Trying to force young (and old)people into a binary system just doesn't work anymore. show less

Picked this up at the comic store today, sat down to read it and didn't stop until I was done. SO GOOD.

Surely part of the reason I was so enthralled was that there were so many similarities with my life. I was a total tomboy too.
-I was humiliated when forced to wear a dress
-I wanted to dress like a boy and do boy things and wondered why this meant both boys and girls thought I was an asshole
-I went through a teen/tween phase of hating girls because boys were so much cooler and realizing show more later that it was really the expectations and treatment society placed on women that I hated.
-A new teacher mistook me for a boy once, and wouldn't believe the other kids in my class when they insisted I was a girl.
-Strangers told me I was going into the girls' bathroom as if I were making a mistake...and I was kind of flattered by this.
-One time I had a great time playing with a boy I had just met at an after-school program. When the teachers said "Diana, your mom is here," the boy was horrified to find out that he'd spent the last 2 hours having fun with a GIRL.
-The last page is still totally me: getting mistaken for a man as a 5'5" adult, wearing a skirt and a form-fitting blouse, swaggering away thinking "Still got it." (I've had 4 people call me "sir" or inquire about my gender since my last haircut.) ;)

Anyway, it was almost eerie how much this mirrored my life. The art was charming, the writing was great. Highly recommended. show less

The short review:

AWWW, YEAH!!!! WOOHOO! SRSLY! I HAZ A HAPPINESS!

Slightly more detail:

How do I love thee, Liz Prince? Let me count the ways:

Your drawing is deeply appealing – the kind of deceptively casual-looking art that clearly takes a lot of thought.

Your writing flows with seemingly effortless ease.

Your dialogue is utterly authentic.

Your story includes all kinds of wonderful detail, but never meanders.

You let me know that I wasn't the only one who grew up with that creepy "Bloody Mary show more in the mirror" urban legend that terrified me all through my childhood but especially during power outages.

You made me laugh hard enough to have to apologize to the neighbors with the "You're under ARREST!" "And on FIRE!" page.

And after your funny, thoughtful, glued-me-to-my-seat telling of a story I could relate to in so many ways, you made me tear up and cheer out loud on what I thought was the last page of that story, and then crack up and cheer out loud on the last page of a wonderfully unexpected epilogue.

Two "YES!" moments in two pages.

Five stars.

All my love, and please write another book soon. show less

This was sadly a miss for me. I love Liz Prince's autobio, but the story here felt underdeveloped. Amanda Kirk's artwork has a certain appeal but felt the wrong match for the book; it required an artist with a stronger knack for backgrounds and scene setting to help clarify certain sections.