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Aya by Marguerite Abouet. Ivory Coast, 1978. Family and friends gather at Aya’s house every evening to watch the country’s first television ad campaign promoting the fortifying effects of Solibra, “the strong man’s beer.” It’s a golden time, and the nation, too–an oasis of affluence and stability in West Africa–seems fueled by something wondrous. Who’s to know that the Ivorian miracle is nearing its end? In the sun-warmed streets of working-class Yopougon, aka Yop City, holidays are around the corner, the open-air bars and discos are starting to fill up, and trouble of a different kind is about to raise eyebrows. At night, an empty table in the market square under the stars is all the privacy young lovers can hope for, and what happens there is soon everybody’s business.
The Man in the McIntosh Suit by Rina Ayuyang. A Filipino-American take on Depression-era noir featuring mistaken identities, speakeasies, and lost love. The year is 1929 and Bobot is just another migrant worker in rural California. Or rather, a migrant worker with a law degree from the Philippines reduced to manual labor in America. Bobot, like so many other young Filipinos, finds himself bunking in the fields, picking fruit by day. When his cousin writes claiming to have spotted his estranged wife in nearby San Francisco, he swipes a co-worker’s favorite nightclub suit and heads to the big city to find her. What follows is classic noir with seedy dives, mouthy pool sharks, and obsession. Rina Ayuyang indulges her passion for old Hollywood and elaborate movie musicals while exploring her immigrant roots in a playful and mysterious drama, creating something she never saw but always had hoped for–a classic tale about people who looked just like her. The Man in the McIntosh Suit is a gripping, romantic, and psychological exploration of a fledgling community chasing the American dream in an unwelcoming society heightened by racial hostility and the bubbling undercurrent of the coming Great Depression.
The Stretcher Bearers by Reid Beaman. Maxwell Fox didn’t know what he would witness in France. America had only been in the Great War since April 2, 1917. Nothing could have prepared him for the horrors that awaited him and the rest of the men of the 4th Infantry “Ivy” Division. As the Meuse-Argonne Offensive raged on, Maxwell became assigned to a unit of stretcher bearers, men who were tasked with running into harm’s way to rescue their fallen brethren from the clutches of death. This wouldn’t be an easy job, but with Graham, Frank, and Ralph by his side, Maxwell had to rely on his team and hope to survive. A dark and honest look at the bond of brotherhood during war, The Stretcher Bearers tells the unforgettable tale of a young soldier trying to save the lives of wounded soldiers and keep the men he’d formed a bond with alive. But in the “war to end all wars,” no one was safe.
Memories from Limón by Edo Brenes. Ramiro leaves the British drizzle and his beloved fiancé Yoss to investigate his family history back home in Costa Rica. What starts as an innocent fascination with an old family photo album leads to conversations with the older generations and revelations he is not prepared for. This intimate and evocative graphic novel uncovers a family secret, set against the idyllic Caribbean coastline in one of the most beautiful countries in Latin America. Author Edo Brenes weaves together the heartbreaking and humbling stories of three generations. Love and life is a struggle in paradise: welcome to Limón.
The Day the Klan Came to Town by Bill Campbell. The year is 1923. The Ku Klux Klan is at the height of its power in the US as membership swells into the millions and they expand beyond their original southern borders. As they grow, so do their targets. As they continue their campaigns of terror against African Americans, their list now includes Catholics and Jews, southern and eastern Europeans, all in the name of “white supremacy.” But they are no longer considered a terrorist organization. By adding the messages of moral decency, family values, and temperance, the Klan has slapped on a thin veneer of respectability and has become a “civic organization,” attracting ordinary citizens, law enforcement, and politicians to their particular brand of white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant “Americanism.” Pennsylvania enthusiastically joined that wave. That was when the Grand Dragon of Pennsylvania decided to display the Klan’s newfound power in a show of force. He chose a small town outside of Pittsburgh named after Andrew Carnegie; a small, unassuming borough full of “Catholics and Jews,” the perfect place to teach these immigrants “a lesson.” Some thirty thousand members of the Klan gathered from as far as Kentucky for “Karnegie Day.” After initiating new members, they armed themselves with torches and guns to descend upon the town to show them exactly what Americanism was all about. The Day the Klan Came to Town is a fictionalized retelling of the riot, focusing on a Sicilian immigrant, Primo Salerno. He is not a leader; he’s a man with a troubled past. He was pulled from the sulfur mines of Sicily as a teen to fight in the First World War. Afterward, he became the focus of a local fascist and was forced to emigrate to the United States. He doesn’t want to fight but feels that he may have no choice. The entire town needs him-and indeed everybody-to make a stand.
Madame Livingstone: The Great War in the Congo by Christophe Cassiau-Haurie. […]Based on the true story of the unlikely partnership between a Belgian and an African who were responsible for the sinking of a German battleship in the Congo during the First World War. Aviator Gaston Mercier, lieutenant in the Royal Belgian Army, arrives at Lake Tanganyika, Congo in 1915 on orders to sink a critical German warship, the Graf Von Götzen. To find out the ship’s exact position, he is assigned a guide, an enigmatic, mixed-race African and the supposed son of the famous explorer David Livingstone who is nicknamed “Mrs. Livingstone” for the Scottish kilt he wears. Little by little, while the war between Belgian and German colonial powers rages on and the pair hunt down the Graf Von Götzen, the young Belgian pilot learns more about the land around him from Mrs. Livingstone and discovers the irrevocable and tragic effects of colonialism on the local people.
The Journey of Marcel Grob by Phillipe Collin. In the dead of night, eighty-three-year-old Marcel Grob is sequestered by an investigating judge who questions him about his past. Particularly beginning on June 28, 1944, the day when “Marzell,” like ten thousand of his German-speaking peers from the French borderland province of Alsace, became a member of the Nazis’ infamous Waffen SS. But did the teenager volunteer, or was he conscripted by the Nazis? Was he a “Malgré-nous,” one of those forced to comply, or was he a war criminal? To establish the truth of his troubled past, Marcel Grob will have to revisit painful memories as an adolescent forced to fight in Italy with the sinister Reichsführer division. Determined to prove his innocence, Marcel begins the story of a long journey into night.
Queenie: Godmother of Harlem by Elizabeth Colomba. Queenie follows the life of Stephanie Saint-Clair—the infamous criminal who made herself a legend in Harlem in the 1930s. Born on a plantation in the French colony of Martinique, Saint-Clair left the island in 1912 and headed for the United States, eager to make a new life for herself. In New York she found success, rising up through poverty and battling extreme racism to become the ruthless queen of Harlem’s mafia and a fierce defender of the Black community. A racketeer and a bootlegger, Saint-Clair dedicated her wealth and compassion to the struggling masses of Harlem, giving loans and paying debts to those around her. But with Prohibition ending, and under threat by Italian mobsters seeking to take control of her operation, she launched a merciless war to save her territory and her skin. In an America still swollen by depression and segregation, Saint-Clair understood that her image was a tool she could use to establish her power and wield as a weapon against her opponents.
Victory Parade by Leela Corman. One of a group of women working as welders in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Rose Arensberg has fallen in love with a disabled veteran while awaiting the return of her husband, Sam, a soldier in the American army serving in Europe. As we follow the bittersweet, heartbreaking stories of Rose and her fellow Rosie-the-Riveters, we’re immersed in the day-to-day challenges of life on the home front as seen through the eyes of these resilient women, as well as through the eyes of Eleanor, Rose’s impressionable young daughter, and Ruth, the German Jewish refugee Rose has taken into their home. Ruth’s desperate attempt to exorcise the nightmare of growing up in pre-war Nazi Germany takes her into the world of professional women wrestlers—with devastating consequences. And Sam’s encounters with the horrors of a liberated concentration camp follow him home to Brooklyn in the form of terrifying flashbacks that will leave him scarred forever.
Days of Sand by Aimée de Jongh. United States, 1937. In the middle of the Great Depression, 22-year-old photographer John Clark is brought in by the Farm Security Administration to document the calamitous conditions of the Dust Bowl in the central and southern states, in order to bring the farmers’ plight to the public eye. When he starts working through his shooting script, however, he finds his subjects to be unreceptive. What good are a couple of photos against relentless and deadly dust storms? The more he shoots, the more John discovers the awful extent of their struggles, and comes to question his own role and responsibilities in this tragedy sweeping through the center of the country.
The Night Witches by Garth Ennis. As the German Army smashes deep into Soviet Russia and the defenders of the Motherland retreat in disarray a unique new squadron arrives at a Russian forward airbase. Like all night bomber units they will risk fiery death flying obsolete biplanes against the invader–but unlike the rest these pilots and navigators are women. In the lethal skies of the Eastern front they will become a legend–known to friend and foe alike as The Night Witches.With casualties mounting and the conflict devouring more and more of her comrades Lieutenant Anna Kharkova quickly grows from a naive teenager to a hardened combat veteran. The Nazi foe is bad enough but the dreadful power of her country’s secret police makes death in battle almost preferable. Badly wounded and exiled from her own people Anna begins an odyssey that will take her from the killing fields of the Second World War to the horrific Soviet punishment camps–and at the top of the world high above the freezing Arctic Ocean the Night Witch finds she has one last card to play.
The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim. The Waiting is the fictional story of Gwija, told by her novelist daughter Jina. When Gwija was 17 years old, after hearing that the Japanese were seizing unmarried girls, her family married her in a hurry to a man she didn’t know. Japan fell, Korea gained its independence, and the couple started a family. But peace didn’t come. The young family–now four–fled south. On the road, while breastfeeding and changing her daughter, Gwija was separated from her husband and son. Then 70 years passed. Seventy years of waiting. Gwija is now an elderly woman and Jina can’t stop thinking about the promise she made to help find her brother.
A Visit to Moscow by Rafael B. Grossman. An American rabbi enters Soviet Russia to investigate reports of persecution among the Jewish community. Though heavily monitored once he enters the state, one day the rabbi manages to sneak away in a taxi and discovers a secret that will change his life forever. Inspired by the true experience of Rabbi Rafael Grossman, A visit to Moscow captures the formidable perseverance of the Jewish people during the “Let My People Go” movement, a modern exodus that is often overlooked.
Blood of the Virgin by Sammy Harkham. Set in and around 1971 in Los Angeles, Blood of the Virgin follows an immigrant film editor named Seymour who is desperate to make his own movies. But without money or clout, he has no choice but to spend his days slumming it for the worst and most exploitative production company in town. When Seymour is given the chance to make a film of his own, his unbending principles and relentless drive violently clash with an industry that rewards everything but principles and drive. As Seymour’s blind ambition pushes the movie along, his home life grows increasingly fraught. Blood of the Virgin uses the film’s production as a means to spiral out in time and space to create an epic novel that explores the intersection of parenthood, 20th-century America, sex, the immigrant experience, and the era of grindhouse movies. Like a kaleidoscope, Blood of the Virgin shifts and evolves with each frame, allowing the reader to zoom out and see that at its core, this book is about the making of a man.
MPLS Sound by Joseph Illidge. The ultimate love letter to the funky pop-rock sound that made The Artist Formerly Known as Prince a legend. When Prince burst onto the pop scene in 1978, he put Minneapolis on the music map. Many up-and-coming bands followed the trail that he blazed. MPLS Sound is the story of one such group–Starchild, led by a young woman inspired by Prince to start her own revolution. Through her journey, we see from within exactly how His Royal Badness transformed the entire Minneapolis scene.
Incognegro by Mat Johnson. In the early 20th Century, when lynchings were commonplace throughout the American South, a few courageous reporters from the North risked their lives to expose these atrocities. They were African-American men who, due to their light skin color, could “pass” among the white folks. They called this dangerous assignment going “incognegro.” Zane Pinchback, a reporter for the New York-based New Holland Herald, is sent to investigate the arrest of his own brother, charged with the brutal murder of a white woman in Mississippi. With a lynch mob already swarming, Zane must stay “incognegro” long enough to uncover the truth behind the murder in order to save his brother– and himself.
Parallel by Matthias Lehmann. Karl Kling’s story is one of revelations, and these he has addressed in a letter to his daughter, Hella, who had disowned Karl many years ago. Karl’s letter is a cri de coeur from a father to a daughter he never really got to know, and he comes clean to her about his failed marriages, his fractured family relations–and his love for men. Taking place between the end of World War II and the 1980s, Parallel chronicles Karl’s efforts to comply with social norms in order to keep his sexuality a secret. It also paints a picture of a life torn between conformity and rebellion, and the cruel realities of twentieth-century German society, where homosexuality was proscribed and punishable until 1994. Matthias Lehmann poignantly depicts the story of a decades-long yearning to live an open and free life, and the price Karl and those he loves must pay for it. It is also a story of finding the courage to finally tell the truth no matter the obstacles…or the cost.
Berlin by Jason Lutes. Berlin is one of the high-water marks of the medium: rich in its well-researched historical detail, compassionate in its character studies, and as timely as ever in its depiction of a society slowly awakening to the stranglehold of fascism. Berlin is an intricate look at the fall of the Weimar Republic through the eyes of its citizens–Marthe Müller, a young woman escaping the memory of a brother killed in World War I, Kurt Severing, an idealistic journalist losing faith in the printed word as fascism and extremism take hold; the Brauns, a family torn apart by poverty and politics. Lutes weaves these characters’ lives into the larger fabric of a city slowly ripping apart. The city itself is the central protagonist in this historical fiction. Lavish salons, crumbling sidewalks, dusty attics, and train stations: all these places come alive in Lutes’ masterful hand. Weimar Berlin was the world’s metropolis, where intellectualism, creativity, and sensuous liberal values thrived, and Lutes maps its tragic, inevitable decline.
Five Stalks of Grain by Adrian Lysenko. In 1932, as famine rages across Ukraine, the Soviet government calls for the harshest punishment for those who keep for themselves even five stalks of grain. When their mother is accused of hoarding and summarily killed, Nadia and Taras must leave their home on a desperate quest for survival. Attempting to navigate a closed country, to stay together, and to stay alive, Nadia and Taras must face secret police, soldiers, and fellow citizens forced to abandon charity and sometimes even humanity in the face of impossible hunger. Unsure who to trust and unable to find refuge, they search for somewhere, anywhere, where they can be safe.
Fire on the Water by Scott MacGregor. This original graphic novel imagines the lives of blue-collar workers involved in the real-life Lake Erie tunnel disaster of 1916 in Cleveland. Author Scott MacGregor and illustrator Gary Dumm tell the intersecting stories of a brilliant African American inventor, Ben Beltran (based on the real-life Garrett Morgan, Sr.), desperate immigrants tunneling beneath Lake Erie, and corrupt overseers who risk countless lives for profit. As historical fiction, Fire on the Water sheds light not only on one of America’s earliest man-made ecological disasters but also on racism and the economic disparity between classes in the Midwest at the turn of the century.
Giant by Mikaël. Early 1930s. We find Giant, a mysterious Irish colossus who, with his fellow immigrants, sweats blood to build the skyscrapers of Rockefeller Center. For a while, he has not received a reply to the typewritten letters and money he sends to the other side of the ocean to Mary Ann, the wife of one of his colleagues who died accidentally. Giant, who seems to be afraid of nothing, still has not found the courage to reveal to the young woman that she is a widow… What does her silence mean? What would happen if she had left for the New World to join her husband? An entrancing everyday working class tale with a majestic background.
We Are Not Strangers by Josh Tuininga. Marco Calvo always knew his grandfather, affectionately called Papoo, was a good man. After all, he was named for him. A first-generation Jewish immigrant, Papoo was hardworking, smart, and caring. When Papoo peacefully passes away, Marco expected the funeral to be simple. However, he is caught off guard by something unusual. Among his close family and friends are mourners he doesn’t recognize-Japanese- American families-and no one is quite sure who they are or why they are at the service. How did these strangers know his grandfather so well? Set in the multicultural Central District of Seattle during World War II and inspired by author Josh Tuininga’s family experiences, We Are Not Strangers explores a unique situation of Japanese and Jewish Americans living side by side in a country at war. Following Marco’s grandfather’s perspective, we learn of his life as a Sephardic Jewish immigrant living in America and his struggles as he settles into an America gearing up its war efforts. Despite the war raging just outside US borders, Papoo befriends Sam Akiyama, a Japanese man who finds his world upended from President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. Determined to keep Sam’s business afloat while he and his family are unjustly imprisoned, he and Papoo create a plan that will change the Akiyama’s lives forever.
War of the Blink by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. [This] is the story of a fisherman who suspects a party of raiders is descending upon his island home. When his warnings are not heeded, the man sets out to guard the village on his own, only to find himself caught up in a high-stakes game of kidnap and bluff. All this leads to a final showdown, in which one of the sides must blink first―and the villagers find a surprising way to save face and their home, and avoid bloodshed. Combining traditional Northwest coast and Japanese comic art in Yahgulanaas’ own, dizzingly original mish-mash, War of the Blink is a timeless fable about the bravery it takes to choose peace over war.
Irmina by Barbara Yelin. In the mid-1930s, Irmina, an ambitious young German, moves to London. At a cocktail party, she meets Howard Green, one of the first black students at Oxford, who, like Irmina, is working towards an independent existence. However, their relationship comes to an abrupt end when Irmina, constrained by the political situation in Hitler’s Germany, is forced to return home. As war approaches and her contact with Howard is broken, it becomes clear to Irmina that prosperity will only be possible through the betrayal of her ideals. In the award-winning Irmina, Barbara Yelin presents a troubling drama about the tension between integrity and social advancement, reflecting with compassion and intelligence on the complicity that results from the choice, conscious or otherwise, to look away.