The cartoons in Menopause: A Comic Treatment depict what is generally considered an unbecoming, if not humiliating, life event. This collection, edited by M.K. Czerwiec, joins the Graphic Medicine Series (Escaping Wars and Waves) in treating a complex topic with candor and creativity. Twenty-five comics represent diverse women and their experiences, in drawing styles as distinctive as the artists.
"Comic Nurse" Czerwiec asked cartoonists "who are going through menopause, or who have already been through it, to make comics about their experiences and how they coped." In "Menopositive," the acclaimed Lynda Barry's wildly lined drawings show her in childhood listening, unnoticed, as her mother and aunt talk about "the change." Barry addresses the invisibility that often cloaks older women, saying, "The change for me is some kind of shift of focus, that capacity I had to just be somewhere when I was a kid.... It has come back." Sexuality is, unsurprisingly, the subject of many of the comics. "Climactic Calamity" by Rachael House is a wry anecdote of a doctor visit where "two words you never want to hear your doctor say--vaginal atrophy" is remembered in bold, primarily red drawings.
Czerwiec selects stories that encourage women to "find our voices rather than remain silent, to invite us into strength rather than push us further into shame." This book reveals a community of women reacting to aging with insight and humor. This will be the perfect gift for women approaching, or in, the stage of life called menopause. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.