Graphic Reproduction: A Comics Anthology Jenell Johnson (Mellon-Morgridge Professor of the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-Madison) 9780271080949

This comics anthology delves deeply into the messy and often taboo subject of human reproduction. Featuring work by luminaries such as Carol Tyler, Alison Bechdel, and Joyce Farmer, Graphic Reproduction is an illustrated challenge to dominant cultural narratives about conception, pregnancy, and childbirth.

The comics here expose the contradictions, complexities, and confluences around diverse individual experiences of the entire reproductive process, from trying to conceive to child loss and childbirth. Jenell Johnson's introduction situates comics about reproduction within the growing field of graphic medicine and reveals how they provide a discursive forum in which concepts can be explored and presented as uncertainties rather than as part of a prescribed or expected narrative. Through comics such as Lyn Chevley's groundbreaking "Abortion Eve," Bethany Doane's "Pushing Back: A Home Birth Story," Leah Hayes's "Not Funny Ha-Ha," and "Losing Thomas & Ella: A Father's Story," by Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower, the collection explores a myriad of reproductive experiences and perspectives. The result is a provocative, multifaceted portrait of one of the most basic and complicated of all human experiences, one that can be hilarious and heartbreaking.

Featuring work by well-known comics artists as well as exciting new voices, this incisive collection is an important and timely resource for understanding how reproduction intersects with sociocultural issues. The afterword and a section of discussion exercises and questions make it a perfect teaching tool.

Jenell Johnson is Mellon-Morgridge Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History.

"Essential for anyone concerned with reproductive health care, this collection will also supply much-needed perspective to parents and would-be parents."

-Martha Cornog Library Journal

"The stories are heartfelt, relevant, and entertaining. The art is warm and engaging. Altogether, it's both an important teaching tool and a study in empathy."

-Graphic Policy

"As Graphic Reproduction spells out in black and white: the human reproductive experience gives life to the gray. It's personal and political, hilarious and heartbreaking, joyful and painful, and everything in between. Forget the shoulds. It's complicated, and that's okay. This is what reproduction looks like."

-Kitty Lindsay Los Angeles Review of Books

"This collection of comic narratives gives voice to non-normative, marginalized, and, in some cases, stigmatized stories in the arena of human reproduction. By sharing these rich stories, assumptions are challenged, biases are exposed, and stigma is lifted. These are stories of resistance to silence, norms, and expectations. These are stories that return voice, and the collection is an important contribution to Graphic Medicine."

-MK Czerwiec,author of Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371

"Using textual and visual means, Graphic Reproduction not only documents reproduction in new ways but also forwards new conceptualizations of the range of activities, behaviors, and experiences within the idea of 'reproduction.' This is a rich contribution to the areas of the humanities, health and medicine, and reproduction."

-Erin Heidt-Forsythe,Penn State University

"Graphic Reproduction's compelling and often heartrending comics cover aspects of reproduction-including infertility, abortion and miscarriage, labor, and postpartum depression-that are often excluded from popular discourse. Jenell Johnson's careful, lyrical, and thorough introduction offers a resource for instructors beyond the excellent discussion questions that conclude the manuscript. Comics are well suited to depicting pregnancy for many reasons, but most enticing is the fact that, as Johnson notes, they allow us to imagine and visualize more hopeful reproductive futures."

-Chloe Silverman,author of Understanding Autism: Parents, Doctors, and the History of a Disorder

"A pedagogically practical, intellectually rigorous, and aesthetically pleasing volume with well-thought-out selections from the literature."

-Alan S. Weber Configurations

"Comics tell the stories of artists and elicit emotions in the readers that would not have been made possible by solely words. In subject matter so sensitive and sometimes polarizing, the collection allows a safe space in which to become immersed in the human reproductive experience."

-Mary Smith Doody's Review Service