Liana Finck

"In this graphic memoir, Liana Finck goes in search of that thing she has lost--her shadow, she calls it, but one might also think of it as the "otherness" or "strangeness" that has defined her since birth, that part of her that has always made her feel as though she is living in exile from the world. In Passing for Human, Finck is on a quest for self-understanding and self-acceptance, and along the way she seeks to answer some eternal questions:...

"How do you know if you're ready to have a baby? How do you know if you might be pregnant? And how do you deal with peeing all the time and being hungry all the time and fielding well-meaning but kind of insulting advice and finding a doula and being dropped by your old friends and learning why it's called mom brain and not dad brain and spending half your life on hold with your insurance company and the tyranny of the milestones you're not meeting...

Liana Finck's wonderful A Bintel Brief is a book about that lost world of pickle barrels and dybbcks, but it's more than that. It's also about how the ghostly past overlaps with and informs the present.

"Isaac Bashevis Singer's 'Gimpl tam' was published in Yiddish in 1945, about a month before Nazi Surrender. A story of bullying and the potential for revenge, is the deathbed confession of an orphaned baker who is targeted by his community for ridicule and practical jokes. Gimpl has come to be seen as a symbol of the Jewish people in the diaspora, and minorities in general. Should they be passive in the face of aggression? Or should they defend themselves?...