Leela Corman

Oh! I loved this tale of Jewish twin sisters whose lives take divergent paths--one becomes a dancer and prostitute, the other a protégé of an OBGYN who performs illegal abortions. The stark black and white was just perfect for the turn-of-the-century New York setting, and the use of Yiddish really puts you right into their community. This is SO SAD but SO GOOD.

*Many thanks to Pantheon Books for the gifted copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own. This book was published on April 02, 2024.*

Set in 1943, Victory Parade by Leela Corman is a brutal yet profoundly moving meditation on the horrors of war and trauma, the challenges faced by the women who contributed to the WWII effort back home while they waited for their men to return from the war front, Jewish refugees fleeing persecution and the physical and psychological scars left on show more those returning from home.

The narrative, presented in vivid watercolor, follows the cast of characters among whom are Rose, a married woman employed as a welder in Brooklyn who is involved in a relationship with a disabled veteran; Ruth, a German Jewish refugee taken in by Rose who finds a violent outlet to vent the simmering rage she harbors; and Sam, Rose’s husband who returns home destined to be haunted by visions of what he witnessed in the liberated concentration camps. Through haunting imagery illustrator Leela Corman presents their stories - perspectives from their past, present and beyond– real and surreal – cathartic, nightmarish and devastating.

Intense and dark yet brilliantly composed, this graphic novel is an experience that I would not hesitate to recommend to those who read WWII fiction. show less

An interesting failure.

In the closing months of World War II, a Jewish woman named Rose Arensberg works a factory job in Brooklyn and has an affair with a co-worker while her husband is deployed with a unit in Germany. She has a daughter, Eleanor, and has also taken in a Jewish refugee from Germany, Ruth Leib, a young woman who finds herself pulled into the world of professional women's wrestling when she is fired from her waitress job. The storytelling wobbles a bit with the dialogue and show more the overuse of dream sequences, but I was slowly engaging with this offbeat look at homefront struggles and relationships, especially Ruth's glorious but tortured wrestling career. But then the wrestling storyline ends in a most abrupt and unsatisfying manner. And before I could really process that unfortunate turn, the last section of the book basically dumps all that came before to suddenly center the story on Ruth's husband and a concentration camp in Germany with a crap-ton more hallucinatory and dream sequences.

There are some intriguing and powerful scenes, but it just doesn't comes together as a whole for me: too much dreaming, too little Ruth, and an ending that feels like it belongs in an entirely different book.

(Best of 2024 Project: I'm reading all the graphic novels that made it onto one or more of these lists:
• Washington Post 10 Best Graphic Novels of 2024
• Publishers Weekly 2024 Graphic Novel Critics Poll
• NPR's Books We Love 2024: Favorite Comics and Graphic Novels

This book made all three lists.)

FOR REFERENCE:

Portions of this book originally appeared, in different form, in Tablet in 2017 (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/com...) and in The Believer in Spring 2018 [#118, April/May 2018] and Summer 2019 [#125, June/July 2019] (https://www.thebeliever.net/). show less

Corman's absorbing book follows the lives of twin sisters Esther and Fanya, the children of Russian Jews, on the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side. Beginning in 1909 when the six-year-old girls work alongside their seamstress mother, the tale follows each of their divergent lives. The young Fanya attracts the attention of the "lady-doctor" Bronia, who performs illegal abortions. Bronia teaches her how to read and mentors Fanya in the medical arts. Corman's evocative portrayal of show more health care for women in those pre-Roe V. Wade days effectively showcases why abortion must remain legal. Esther finds paying work for a woman who runs a burlesque theater and a whorehouse. While there, she learns about and eventually relies on her sexuality to find her place in society.
Unterzakhn (Yiddish for "Underthings") follows the twins throughout their lives, chronicling their loves, successes, failures, and losses, while exploring the roles -- sexual, intellectual, familial -- of women. Corman produces an exceptional portrayal, deserving much laudatory praise and acclaim, of immigrant and Jewish life on par with the works of [a:Will Eisner|1642|Will Eisner|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1202618782p2/1642.jpg] and [a:Art Spiegelman|5117|Art Spiegelman|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1206557373p2/5117.jpg]. show less