Graphic life writing – biography focus

Just wanted to point out the extra reading “Counter-Storytelling through Graphic Life Writing” by Elizabeth Marshall has some excellent resources. She details 3 picture book/children’s stories: Texts include Duncan Tonatiuh’s (2014) biography of Sylvia Mendez and her family in Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez & Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation, Ruby Bridges’s (1999) memoir Through My Eyes, and Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s (2013) coauthored auto/biography When I Was Eight. These texts are very intriguing in that they are biographical and concentrate primarily on female experiences of discrimination and racism during childhood. The stories also centre on the idea of institutionalized racism via the school system – this is very relatable for many students and these stories offer true accounts of experiences in addition to offering concrete ties of the past to the present. Marshall offers the term graphic life writing “to refer to the construction of a life story through image and text in forms such as the picturebook or comics.” I thought this could be a term used with students that may help them think of picturebooks through a new and perhaps more complex lens. Again, very inspiring ways to incorporate diverse resources into the classroom to further reflect our whole society of learners and address issues of social justice.