Catrena's+Annotated+Bibliography

Bechdel, Alison. //Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic //. Boston: First Mariner Books, 2006. N. pag. Print.

 This graphic novel is a reflective memoir about the struggles she went through with her off beat family. She chronicles her experiences of spending days in a funeral home growing up, her strained relationship with her father, his strained relationship with her mother and her identity as a lesbian. It also focuses on her father's closeted homosexuality. The plot is relieved through the images and the text serves as the narrative voice. The emotional novel ends with the narrator finally talking with her father about his affairs and struggles with homosexuality before his being hit and killed by a truck.

McCloud, Scott. //Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art //. New York: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993. N. pag. Print.

 Scott McCloud writes about how comics use conventions to affect meaning. The entire book is written as a comic and there is a narrator, but the information is factual and useful. The book touches on issues of setting up scenes, narrative plot structures, Balancing images and text, page arrangements and coloring in strips. The book provides in depth explanations of different techniques used to create interesting plots without boring readers.

Satrapi, Marjane. //Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood //. New York: Random House, 2003. N. pag. Print.

Persepolis chronicles the childhood of a girl during the Iran revolution. It follows the narrator through her struggles with the over-throwing government's forced veils, and her family's secret communist identities. It combines simplistic, yet graphic illustrations with the language serving as a reflective narrative voice. The plot includes tales of school and family vacation, and politically charged torture scenes and cultural exploration.

Yang, Gene L. //American Born Chinese //. New York: First Second, 2006. N. pag. Print.

This is graphic novel about a young Chinese-American growing up while struggling with his cultural identity. The plot is exposed as three different story lines that seem unrelated until the end of the book. Each story has it's own set of characters, ranging from a white family with an extremely racist stereotypical depiction of a Chinese person as a visiting cousin, to a rendition of the Chinese folk tale of the Monkey King who wanted to be human in order to go to parties with the other mythical kings. The plot also heavily relies on the relationship between the protagonist and his Chinese best friend, who is ridiculed in school for being foreign. The plot comes together at the end, revealing that the protagonist has had a problem with himself as a Chinese-American and had been projecting that onto his best friend. After the protagonist accepts himself, he and his best friend mend their relationship and the book ends.