Cancer Made Me A Shallower Person: A Memoir In Comics

(Paperback)

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Description

Miriam Engelberg is a successful cartoonist who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 43. Like many who face trauma, tragedy and illness, she was unable tell her story in traditional written and visual forms. Instead, she has written a distinctly unique cartoon memoir. Following in the Art Spiegelman tradition of graphic novels, Engelberg walks us through every emotional and physical stage of the disease, from diagnosis to a return to "normal" life and everything in between: waiting for the biopsy results by pretending to be doing everything but that, awkwardly breaking the diagnostic news to horrified acquaintances, shopping for wigs while fighting nausea and disorientation from her cancer drugs, feeling like an outsider in support groups, and speculating about what caused the cancer in the first place - overzealous cheese consumption or apathy about multi-vitamins "Cancer Made Me A Shallower Person" is an offbeat and darkly humorous account of one very funny woman's battle with an uncertain and often fatal illness.

Reviews

Very funny....in the finest tradition of black humor. Engelberg's narrative is riveting...extremely honest and extraordinarily powerful. -- Publishers Weekly

"So funny, so sad, so daring, so honest, and so utterly human that I couldn't put it down." -- Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., author of The Dance of Anger

"The most important thing to know about Shallower is that it's funny." -- SF Weekly

"...a triumph of imagination and spirit." -- Los Angeles Times

"...a spirited perspective..." -- Daily Telegraph (London)

Author Bio

Miriam Engelberg is a professional cartoonist and the author of Planet 501c3: Tales from the Nonprofit Galaxy and Tantrum Comics.