Starred review from May 11, 2020
Hawthorne (the Deadpool series) chronicles his white-knuckle relationship with a rage-prone mother through potent graphic storytelling tightly braided with anger, love, and a longing to put sense to a childhood marked by trauma. He portrays his single mother as possessing superhero toughness (“Blanca the unflappable” saves strangers in peril—and went out looting in New York’s 1977 blackout) and as an unpredictable force of nature, equally suggestible to Santeria and Catholic superstitions from her native Puerto Rico. Convinced a curse has been put on the family, Blanca abruptly moves them to York, Pa., in the early 1980s. There, her carapace of immigrant self-sufficiency begins to crack in the face of racism. Suffering the indignities of the working poor (living on “government cheese,” as the package is literally labeled) and Blanca’s furious beatings, Hawthorne becomes an anger-cloaked delinquent. Drawn with sharply canted, horror-movie angles and muted, wintry colors that explode into fiery reds, Hawthorne’s memoir is unrelenting in depicting how poverty and familial dysfunction turned Blanca monstrous and then left her an “island” filled with a “cancerous loneliness.” Despite his drifting away, feeling cursed, and becoming a “ghost relative,” Hawthorne finds surprising room for graceful consideration of Blanca’s own pain amid this harrowing rendition of his own. Hawthorne doesn’t hold anything back in this gut punch of a graphic memoir.
Starred review from July 1, 2020
Born Michael Anthony Hawthorne, his last name was swiftly pilfered from [his] father by his Puerto Rican mother to keep [him] safe in ways she never was. Yet surviving into adulthood was a near-superhuman feat: his single mother's fierce love came with horrific stipulations?her fists, her drinking, her drug sales, her withdrawal, her broken soul. Escape eventually comes through art college?and then, her death. Today, Hawthorne is a lauded Eisner- and Harvey-nominated cartoonist (Deadpool, Superior Spider-Man), and his spectacular illustrative skills are especially evident throughout. The book itself is a remarkably revealing presentation: the mostly muted brown-and-gray cover and front matter, partially interrupted with images of damaged full-color photographs, gives way to saturated colors that flood the narrative's actual page, turning subdued sepia into deep, piercing blues. That visual intensity amplifies every panel, relentlessly underscoring Hawthorne's harrowing memories. The original book he finished years ago ended 30 pages earlier than the published version here, Hawthorne notes. What he's added includes an apocryphal dinner conversation with his mother (as a possible Jesus-figure seems to turn the other cheek) and why he's still never traveled to Puerto Rico, all of which is followed by actual salvaged photos with maybe rationalizations for her abuse. Throughout, his longing to understand her never wavers: I miss her. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)