Review:
I decided to read this because I enjoyed Bagieu's graphic novel Brazen. This memoir deals with lots of different topics: female friendships, grief, girls' struggles with our bodies (wanting to be seen, but not objectified). I really appreciated Bagieu's empathy and love for her younger self.
There's a bit near the beginning where teen Bagieu and her boyfriend had sex and she freaked out later on when it burned to pee. She and her boyfriend made an appointment with a gynecologist, who then found herself having to explain the basics of safe sex to these two naive youngsters (the boyfriend went to a Catholic school that replaced a semester on sex education with geology, and Bagieu's knowledge wasn't much better). I couldn't help but think about the teens in my area who could probably use the very basic information in even just these few graphic novel panels. Unfortunately, this volume is going to end up in my "donate sometime between now and never" box because it talks about and (gasp) depicts teen sex, and my Dean of Libraries would worry that it'd be in violation of Texas' SB20. It was frustrating enough arguing (successfully, I think) that Heartstopper didn't violate SB20 and shouldn't be removed from the collection.
Some of the vertical panel stuff was a little hard for me to follow, but overall I enjoyed this.
No comments:
Post a Comment