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Unterzakhn

3.72 of 5 stars 3.72 · rating details · 402 ratings · 98 reviews

A mesmerizing, heartbreaking graphic novel of immigrant life on New York's Lower East Side at the turn of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths.

For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where...more

Hardcover, 208 pages

Published April 3rd 2012 by Schocken (first published March 20th 2012)

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Feb 15, 2013 Mariel rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: the streets

Recommended to Mariel by: amazons in short skirts

It was the best time of their lives. Identical twin sisters Fanya and Esther were little girls in the Lower East Side of New York City in 1910. This must mean do this, help in the shop, go fetch the lady-doctor to help this hemorrhaging pregnant woman on the sidewalk. Too late, what's an abortion, what's a lady doctor, who is going to take care of her children. Be pretty, be stupid and be married off one day out from under my feet. Under my thumb, be this, stay poor. An old woman who must have h...more It was the best time of their lives. Identical twin sisters Fanya and Esther were little girls in the Lower East Side of New York City in 1910. This must mean do this, help in the shop, go fetch the lady-doctor to help this hemorrhaging pregnant woman on the sidewalk. Too late, what's an abortion, what's a lady doctor, who is going to take care of her children. Be pretty, be stupid and be married off one day out from under my feet. Under my thumb, be this, stay poor. An old woman who must have had no teeth (or underpants under her dirty clothing) calls her goat-child and everyone is pulling everywhere those little arms. Her breath smells like the pickles she sells. Everyone is selling. Can you run fast enough. I missed their old days. In the end, when I'm not sure if Fanya even made it, I see the little twin girls on the roof tops laughing and dropping buckets of water on the people beneath them, happy together. I was reminded of that film from Swedish filmmaker Lukas Moodysson Lilja 4-ever. Russian teenager Lilja is going to jump off the bridge onto the cars below to escape sex slavery. Lilja is also playing basketball on the rooftops with her gone guardian angel best friend Volodya. She is already dead and it is those kind of good times again. The kind when you're living it in your head because you can't live without it. Esther answers the door to her sister's married lover with their baby in her arms. "Fanya doesn't live here anymore." I had the feeling that she didn't. I don't know for sure. But when it is the past again in the last panel I had the feeling that she didn't make it.

The men are covered with hair. They could have crawled out of somewhere. They sit in beds with sheets or stand in the middle of rooms, asking for something. I saw a lot of hair and skin. The young girls grow into women with an aura of Jewishness. The kind you always feel naked in front of someone else and they are pointing out that you are naked. They will always be reminded that they are Jewish and the only thing it means is different, to be pointed. They say "Jewess". Everyone says it and I never felt it meant anything to them other than something to be called. They sit on top of men in beds with exotic black hair hanging over their faces like a curtain. Sex is a position, too. Don't look at me, slanted eyes, all twisted up in making your bed and lying in it. The kind you feel you are wearing your underwear in a hospital and it is bed side manner that is not desire.

Fanya works for the lady-doctor, Bronia. Bronia went to their mother and guilted her to allow her smart daughter the chance to read and write. She indoctrinates her in pamphlets for womankind everywhere. The deserving ones, of course. How can you tell who those are when everyone is immigrant, a Jew, your mama was a whore. People die on sidewalks or rumors are made to kill you on the street. I can't tell which is which. Esther leaves her mama's dress shop to clean up puke in a whore house. I only wonder it took so long for them to find out. I kind of figure they always knew where little Esther was going. The little girls ran into their futures on the streets. They would have run into it in their mama's hand, I suppose. Their little sister dies and I'm not sure how it happened. She cried a lot with arms outstretched and a white nightgown. Esther runs into her future into the hand of a brutal john. You may as well start earning. You may as well start dancing. The other girls don't like the Jewess and the menfolk fancy a piece. How does she live for them this way, how does she feel indebted to the big woman with the big pockets to sink little Esther in them. The little girls used to tell stories in the tub. Fanya stops talking about Persephone (sidenote about the art- the black and white drawings didn't work for the pomegranate. The seeds had no luster). What did she run into other than black and white fist markings from the reading material possessed by the doctor? Beliefs run in the street and where did it go when they were running?

Fanya kicks her sister down the stairs. We don't want a whore in our family, pretty much. I feel like Corman lost something in drawing the circumstances of the day. I get that she wanted to write about what it was like for women when sex and bodies were so much a prison. But people are not only circumstances of the day. Why did Fanya want something more for these other women, and for herself, and could not take care of her sister who needed her? When did it happen that she led her bleed her baby out of her body alone in a bed where men shed hair and skin and I'll take the Jewess from the spotlight when the lights are off. Whispers of I'd marry you. No one means it. She didn't want them to mean it. She could be a little girl again and not understanding what it is anyone means when they say it'll be her turn one day. People still live in the middle of standing or not standing for whatever the hell is happening to them.

Fanya's lover, her childhood friend, beseeches her to marry him after he has announced his betrothal to the little girl they used to mock on the stoops. "We don't believe in marriage," she says. He says it is because she is Jewish. Since when? Esther became a prostitute because she took a job fetching for a lady who had nice things. Fanya stretches against Bronia's only-for-the-married rules. But all of these women are dying and we could help them! Oh, but it made me so sad when she kicks her sister down the stairs. Why did she forget her because of who she had sex with? I thought it was pretty brilliant when, after Fanya is unemployed and pregnant out of marriage, the two sisters cuddle in bed out of one's need and the other's need to be with her sister. Esther does not forget the little girl who would take home to her what she had learned. I didn't want to forget it either. It hurt that Fanya did and I don't understand it. I loved it when Esther tells her that their mother used to be a prostitute herself when they are in that grown up bed together. She had never told Fanya who had been away with her chance to raise her mind above theirs. Of course she passed this secret onto the daughter she kept to her side as a punishment when she grudgingly gave over the other. I can see this turn of the face of their hard mother. When did Fanya start to look like that? That they would whisper this like the most important thing was what their mother thought when the best they had all along was each other said a lot. Only one of them knows it.

Fanya wanted to have her lover. She says don't speak to me about your children. He is supposed to not want to get married, to step in with the days. I'll only love you. When they were kids it must have been exciting for him to run with this girl who was so fast in all of that shit that was going down. Yeah, well, I don't care that she couldn't make her choice. He's hairs in bed and she's hairs in bed and they have sex. I don't care about all of the reading material about safe sex in the world. When did it happen that the important thing was everyone lived up to these rules that Fanya had for how everything had to be?

There's a flashback sequence of their father in his Russian homeland. (I read a review on librarything that said they were Polish immigrants. This reviewer was not paying attention. He buys a copy of Ulyssess in Polish because his sister can read it. It will be all that he has left of her when his family is burned in a hate attack against Jews.) Isaac meets a blonde farmgirl he loves. He has persuaded her to leave her father and run away with him. More like she discovers her father's plan to marry her off to some creep. The girl was loyal but loyalty is only so much when it comes to being married off to an imbecile.

Our first task, when we came down to the sea and reached our ship, was to turn her into the good salt water and put the mast and sails on board. We then picked up the sheep we found there, and stowed them on the vessel. After which we ourselves embarked and a melancholy crew we were. There was not a dry cheek in the company. However Circe of the lovely tresses, human though she was in speech, proved her powers as a goddess by sending us the friendly escort of a favorable breeze, which sprang up from astern and filled the sail of our blue-prowed ship."
"Why do you like this story about a homeless sailor so much?"
"You don't like it?"

He sleeps and her eyes are opened, turned away from him. When he wakes she is gone. I thought this was great to show his ceaseless void to send another away.

According to the back of the book the author illustrated a book on the history of the skirt. I have no trouble believing this is her interest. I also can see her as a belly dancer (it also says that). There's something bodily about her art.

At the risk of coming off as a pale shut-in who has seen way, way too much television I will say that I was reminded of a 1990s English series The House of Eliott about two sisters who escape the iron fistings of a cold father to live in the whirly bird world of flapper dresses and high fashions when they start their own fashion house. At first I thought it was going to be the best thing ever. They find out they have no money left to them at all. So they go eat ice cream and watch cinema. "This is the best show ever!" I said (it was a good few years ago so take this with a few grains of Morton's salt). It wasn't, really, because the story is lost to the ins and outs of the problems of the day. The pretty and younger sister falls in love with a married man and it will never work. It doesn't work until I got bored and stopped watching it. If it just wasn't done back then that still didn't make me care about it. If I felt why this was important to her it would have been different. If you could love because you couldn't stop yourself. Or you loved because you didn't want to stop yourself. The fashion stuff was interesting from a history stand-point. I guess I'm trying to say I don't like it when the background takes over and the people I'm interested in are there for any other reason than picking their bones like xylophones and drum solos. If what they lost was when they had each other (and it is what they lost) then why did Fanya cling to that stupid guy and throw her sister away? Nothing they ever did was because it was easy. My guess is people thought they were still going to have time and then they are laying around in beds and hair keeps growing after you are dead.
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May 15, 2012 Robert Boyd rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: art-comics, comics

This story of two sisters in the New York Jewish immigrant community of the early 20th century is also a story of early grassroots feminism (there is a character who is an abortionist and dispenser of contraceptives--both highly illegal, who trains one of the sisters). One sister drifts into prostitution (which was intimately intertwines with entertainment--the whores gave a singing/dancing floor show in addition to servicing the johns). The other into working with Bronia the "cuziernerka" (a wo...more

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Apr 29, 2012 Wandering Librarians rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: family, fiction, graphic-novel, great-graphic-novels-for-girls, historical-fiction, serious-issues, ya

Fanya and Esther are twins, Jewish, and growing up in the early 1900s. Their mother believes that they will take over her dress shop, but both girls are pulled by very different interests in very different direction. Fanya begins assisting a woman who performs illegal abortions and helps birth babies, and Esther begins assisting at a brothel. As the girls grow older, they fall further in to these chosen professions, and their decisions pull them apart.

I read this in one sitting because I didn't...more Fanya and Esther are twins, Jewish, and growing up in the early 1900s. Their mother believes that they will take over her dress shop, but both girls are pulled by very different interests in very different direction. Fanya begins assisting a woman who performs illegal abortions and helps birth babies, and Esther begins assisting at a brothel. As the girls grow older, they fall further in to these chosen professions, and their decisions pull them apart.

I read this in one sitting because I didn't want to stop. I needed to know what happened. It was a story about family and a story about how the choices we make affect us, and it was a story about how little the perceptions of society have changed.

There were so many parallels between what the girls were doing, even if it didn't seem that way at first. After Esther begins taking clients at the brothel, her mother and sister find out and she's cast out from the family. Esther is now dead to them because of her decision. Both girls are participating in activities that are illegal and that are shunned by society. Yet Esther is the one who gets cut off from her family. Being a professional "whore" is the worst possible thing.

Fanya works with Bronia, a woman who is strongly against marriage, seeing is as slavery for women. However, she will only help married women. She turns away unmarried women and the women of the brothel, saying they do not deserve her help. Bronia believes that women should abstain from sexual relationships all together. Fanya does not want to get married, but she also struggles with Bronia's decisions not to help unmarried women, or to try and encourage women to use condoms. She begins to feel that Bronia is a hypocrite.

Esther has come a long way, in the meantime, having been plucked out of the brothel by a wealthy business man and now is working in the theater. She is the one who seeks out her sister and cares for her when she needs it, despite Fanya's assistance that she doesn't need help.

After I was done reading the book, I sat and thought about choices. Who made the better choices? Could things have turned out differently? Was there really a sister who made better choices? Not really. Esther worked in a brothel, that didn't seem like a very good choice, but she ended up in a better place. Fanya learned how to bring babies and perform abortions. She helped many people. But she had a lot of choices to make as well, and things didn't turn out as well for her.

I thought this was incredibly well done. Aside from the main stories, we also got to see a lot of Russian Jewish culture, and how Fanya and Esther's father ended up in America married to their mother.

The art, which is also done by the author, is pen and ink black and white drawings. No one is very beautiful in the drawings. Almost every character looks harsh. Despite this, you could see Esther changing as she got older. Her style evolves and she becomes much more elegant. But despite her fancy clothes and stylish haircut, she's still very much the Jewish girl from the lower East side she always was and there's no way to hide it.(less)

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Jan 21, 2012 Sofia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics-and-graphic-novels, n-america

This short and stupendous graphic novel made me realize that I've been reading too many books written by men. This may sound like a cliche, but there was no one you could ever imagine this author was not a woman. It doesn't mean it a graphic novel for women, it's just that this is a book about being a woman and even though it's set in early 1900's Lower East Side, a lot of of the decisions these two sisters have to make aren't very different from the choices that are presented to women nowadays....more

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Jan 16, 2012 Rick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics

Corman's absorbing book follows the lives of twin sisters Esther and Fanya, the children of Russian Jews, on the teeming streets of New York's Lower East Side. Beginning in 1909 when the six-year-old girls work alongside their seamstress mother, the tale follows each of their divergent lives. The young Fanya attracts the attention of the "lady-doctor" Bronia, who performs illegal abortions. Bronia teaches her how to read and mentors Fanya in the medical arts. Corman's evocative portrayal of heal...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Scott Patrick rated it 2 of 5 stars

Corman tells a short and moving story about two working-class twin Jewish girls growing up in early 20th century New York. The smart one, Fanya, becomes an apprentice to an underground family planning provider while the pretty one, Esther, joins the seedy entertainment underworld. As a man, I am somewhat reticent to judge too harshly a story that deals mostly with women and their issues, so I'll start with the art. It's distractingly bad. It's better than I can draw, admittedly, but it neverthel...more

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Nov 29, 2012 Raina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult, feminist, graphicnovel, historical

This is a story about twin sisters. They live in New York's lower east side in the 1910s. As we follow their lives, one goes to work for a brothel and ends up having an illustrious career as an entertainment object. The other goes to work for a doctor, who provides illegal birth control to women. This is basically a feminist compare & contrast.

It could be dry, but it isn't. I'd seen Corman's work before (in Sexy Chix), and she has a unique quality. Her drawings are old-fashioned, in a way; s...more

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Jul 02, 2012 AK rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels-comics, read-2012

Esther and Fanya are twins growing up in the Lower East Side around 1910. They've got a bossy mom who hasn't taught them how to read ("they don't need goyish schooling") and a gentle dad who tells them dreamy tales of his mother country. Fanya ends up working for "lady doctor" (we all know what that euphemism means) Bronya, and grows up to be political and feminist. Esther finds employment in a burlesque house that doubles as bordello, and grows up glamourous and risque. Their wildly disparate p...more

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May 28, 2012 Pauline rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels, first-reads, own

Unterzakhn chronicles the tale of two sisters as they grow up in 1910 New York. It shows us the paths that they each take in order to gain some of the famed "golden land of opportunity". I enjoyed the storytelling of this particular graphic novel, as it reminded me of Maus at times. It was not as depressing since the topic material is nowhere near as heavy, but it does a fine job of showing the idiosyncrasies in life. Things never turn out the way that you think they are going to and sometimes o...more

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Jun 07, 2012 Elise rated it 3 of 5 stars

"Unterzakhn" is a great recent addition to the limited selection of comic books and graphic novels featuring female protagonists. It's a coming-of-age tale, focused on twin sisters growing up on the Lower East Side in the first decades of the twentieth century, and not only is the story about two girls, but it's also largely focused on women-centric issues - not in the least of which is both literal and metaphorical "unterzakhn," Yiddish for "underthings."

There was so much for me to love about...more

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Dec 21, 2012 David Schaafsma rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-literature

Early twentieth century lower east side Jewish historical fiction, focused on women: two twin sisters, one who becomes a prostitute/actress; women raising kids; women gynecological "doctors," prostitutes, moms, etc, but it's a women's world. Gaps in the narrative give it a sort of loose feel, as we jump across time... and the art has a kind of loose feel, too. (One other review used this word, Loose, I think, and I like that description). Kept my attention, liked it, didn't love it, but it is a...more

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May 08, 2012 Rosa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Loved the art, the stories, and of course, the Yiddish, one of my favorite languages of all. But the end felt incredibly abrupt - I don't mean because of what happens, but because we don't follow anybody after what happens (apologies for sounding like a crazy- trying to avoid spoilers...). And sometimes I didn't understand the flashbacks, why they were inserted where they are in the story, and why they end where they do before we jump back to the present. The extended backstory of the father's b...more

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Nov 22, 2012 Gene Kannenberg Jr rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: comics, fiction, from-the-library, reviewed

Esther and Fanya are twin sisters and first-generation Jewish Americans growing up on the Lower East Side of New York City in the early 20th Century in Leela Corman's graphic novel Unterzakhn ("underthings"). We follow the girls from around age six well into adulthood, tracing their very different but intertwined life paths: Fanya takes a job with a female doctor who specializes in women's health, while Esther works in a burlesque house / bordello before establishing herself in New York's arts s...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Molly rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. It reminded alot of The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which I read earlier this year -- so much so that when I started reading Unterzakhn I thought the author/illustrators were one and the same. It's a graphic novel that doesn't pull any punches. There's tons of gritty-ness and adult subject matter. When I got to the end, I wanted to start over at the beginning and re-read it. Whenever I read a book like this, it makes me sad, in a way, because I think about...more

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Oct 11, 2012 jainabee rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who love great stories

Recommended to jainabee by: Esther and Fanya

Shelves: favorites, grown-up-comix, read-more-than-twice-through, required-reading, time-to-read-it-again

I haven't been so magnetically drawn into any book in ages as I was by this one.

Though I usually wait for books to come out in softcover, the fact that I couldn't put this book down—and was standing in the middle of the bookstore reading and laughing and gasping, and forcing my sweetie to look at bits while he was trying to do his own perusing—was a clue that I had to bring this home with me. Right now!

As soon as I was done, I went right back to the beginning and started it again. The closer I l...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Sonya Welter rated it 2 of 5 stars

"Unterzakhn" is a graphic novel that follows the lives of twin girls growing up in New York in the early 20th century. The story is basically one traumatic event after another, and without some pleasure to balance out the pain it was hard for me to feel empathy or an emotional connection to the characters. Nobody here is likable, and tragedy befalls everyone regardless of their lifestyle choices or other circumstances. The narrative is hard to follow and sometimes jumps from one storyline to ano...more

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Apr 17, 2012 Crystal rated it 4 of 5 stars

Incredibly bold art, perfect for a story so wrought with the emotional extremes of the hard-lived life. I also loved the Greek-chorus-like vicious whispers that haunted the pages, in the background but unignorable. However, most impressive is how precise it all is. Leela Corman tells and shows exactly what you need to see to get the most from the story. Nothing is gratuitous. You can tell that every panel was painstakingly thought out and deliberately included. This is what lends the so much ump...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Oana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read this in about an hour, got sucked into the story almost immediately. The story is about two Russian Jewish girls in the 1910s-1920s and the shifting world of women's sexuality at that time. All the characters have major flaws and that's why many of them are likeable and real.

Having grown up with stories about the rotten luck traditional cultures foisted on their women, a comic like this is a good thing for young women who see no need for feminism. I especially recommend this book for teen...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Laurel rated it 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to LOVE this book, but I only liked it. The subject -- working class girls' and womens' experiences-- is one that interests me deeply. And the setting turn of the century Lower East Side NYC was boldly depicted in Corman's drawings. But in spite of the deep themes and topics -- prostitution, abortion and midwifery, family secrets--the book had an overall feeling of thinness and was ultimately unsatisfying. Worth a look, but not fabulous. Also, it's pretty intense in its themes--I wouldn...more

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Oct 26, 2012 Kristenyque rated it 2 of 5 stars

Well, I have to admit I couldn't put it down and I finished it in one sitting. I really wanted to know what would happen to the characters. I found the book overall though too dark, there were a couple of scenes that made me sick to my stomach. I also wondered if the creator meant for the two sisters to be examples of feminists. I did not get that feel at all from either character. I felt like they were thrown into certain situations and there their lives fell. Both sisters were easily used and...more

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Apr 17, 2012 Hol added it

I impulsively stopped by my local bookstore when the author was doing a presentation and ended up buying the book because at five of the hour, there were only three of us in the audience--at ten past, a crowd of the author’s friends from art school streamed in, but I don’t think they bought books. Anyway, my niece will be getting this lovely large-scale pictorial book about pogroms and prostitution and so on for her birthday. The art is great but to me the story was less rewarding, though if I w...more

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May 19, 2012 Elizabeth Desole rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked it, but definitely didn't love it. It's basically a historical fiction graphic novel. Unfortunately it didn't feel very historically accurate. I think it's a tough feat for a graphic novel in the first place, but the real issue is that the characters seemed too much like modern women. It also seemed to give the message that women of that time (turn of the century lower east side) had no real choice but to be women of "loose morals". So maybe it's actually closer to two stars, but I enjoy...more

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Jun 19, 2012 Dorian rated it 3 of 5 stars

I don't know what I think of this book. It's not very nice, with lots of unsympathetic characters and situations, so that's rather interesting. And it uses Yiddish without being cutesy. (Oy!) But it's attitude to the past, especially the Shtetl Europe from which its characters have recently come, seems a bit mannered (a la Safran Foer). For a better comics version of that landscape, read James Sturm's MARKET DAY. I dunno, even as I write this, I wonder if I'm selling Corman short. Somethign does...more

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Sep 23, 2012 Allie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: america, gender-and-sexuality, comics-and-graphic-novels

It had been a while since I read a true graphic novel, as most of the graphic stuff I read (at least in 2012) is non-fiction. This book is about two Jewish twin sisters living in New York in the early 20th century, and the different paths they take. Life was pretty rough and tumble in those days, and there aren't very many sentimental frames in this book. It was a time of great possibility, but also of some very sharp and harsh differences in class and culture along those ethnic lines.

Corman rea...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Jessica rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novel

Another dark graphic novel. I devoured the book, but it left me feeling less than fulfilled. There are gaps in the storyline - Is there a development disability with the youngest sister, Feigl? What happened to Kasia? Who are the two kids on the roof at the end?

Also, the drawing was a bit disconcerting. Especially the men. I found myself very distracted by their ears. You have to see them. I kept thinking they had hearing aids.

My search continues for an uplifting graphic novel...

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Apr 24, 2012 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the art and subject matter for the most part, but for me the story was somehow both predictable and hard to follow. I saw all the major plot points coming after the first few pages, and yet the storytelling was at times so disjointed that I was confused about what was going on from frame to frame. For example, I'm still not certain if the midwife sister had one lover or two. One was really hairy, but weren't they both named Sal? Overall good effort and concept, but not flawlessly execu...more

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May 29, 2013 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars

A tale of two sisters. One who wants to dance and works in a brothel and becomes a star. One who meets the local lady doctor and starts working against unwanted pregnancies. It's at a time when using contraception is a clandestine affair, and though women are having sex and becoming pregnant against their will, they don't have good options. The sisters have to face the complexities and hypocrisy of themselves, their mother, and what the women around them endure.

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Jun 02, 2013 Nick Klagge rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: graphic-novels

Since I'm not doing wedding planning anymore, I've taken the time to read a few graphic novels from our shelves that I've been somewhat interested in but never picked up. This was the first one. Although I think it's pretty good it never really grabbed me or spoke to me personally. I both appreciated and disliked the drawing style: it tends to highlight ugliness, which is totally appropriate to the story of the book, but I can't say I enjoyed it! After all, one of the pleasures of a graphic nove...more

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Nov 05, 2012 CLA_MA rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, family, graphic-novel, historical-fiction, tough-issues, ya

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May 06, 2013 Bryce Holt rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was mildly surprised by how good the writing and story were of two sisters whose life path diverges early on (and the ramifications of their early-life choices), but I'm obviously not the target audience. Leela Corman does a great job with the material, the characters, the flavor of the city. That said, the purpose of this story didn't slap me in the face the way other female graphic novelists have (Alison Bechdel's "The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For" or Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis" are e...more

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About Leela Corman

LEELA CORMAN has illustrated books on subjects ranging from urban gardening to the history of the skirt, and her work has also appeared in The New York Times, on WNET/Thirteen, and in The Boston Phoenix, Lilith, Bust, and Tikkun. She studied painting, printmaking, and illustration at Massachusetts College of Art. Leela is also a professional belly dancer. Her radio show, "Ecstacy to Frenzy" airs w...more

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12918119-unterzakhn?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1326121292l/12918119.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12918119-unterzakhn?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Unterzakhn by Leela Corman[/url]

Unterzakhn

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