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Unterzakhn
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 life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings”) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world (Esther working for a woman who runs both a burlesque theater and a whorehouse, Fanya for an obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions); and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the “golden land”, where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.
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 life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings”) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world (Esther working for a woman who runs both a burlesque theater and a whorehouse, Fanya for an obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions); and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the “golden land”, where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2012
22 people are currently reading
3116 people want to read
About the author
Leela Corman
21 books76 followersLEELA 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 weekly on GROWRadio. She lives in Florida.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 308 reviews
May 20, 2024
3.5⭐️
Unterzakhn by Leela Corman is a moving story that revolves around themes of social class, inequality, generational trauma, social convention and morality, family sisterhood and survival.
The narrative follows identical twins Esther and Fanya, daughters of Jewish immigrants, as they navigate their way through life – their childhood in the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side (circa 1910), the people they meet and the choices they make that lead them in different directions and how their paths cross over the years. The narrative also features a past timeline featuring their father and the events that led to his emigrating from his homeland.
There is a lot about this novel that is praiseworthy – notably, the sense of time and place beautifully captured and presented through the author’s remarkable artwork and how the author addressed several social and feminist themes from the era (many of which remain relevant in the present day). However, what keeps me from giving this a higher rating is that I found the narrative a tad uneven and thought that much of the story was lost in the time jumps. Though Esther’s storyline is well developed, we do not get to know Fanya as well as we do Esther. I also felt that the storyline revolving around their father could have been explored further. However, the supporting characters were well thought out and the narrative did flow well despite the tad disjointed/ abrupt nature of the story. I was invested in the sisters’ respective journeys and was immersed in the story from the very first page and finished it in one sitting.
I chose to pick up this graphic novel after reading Leela Corman’s Victory Parade, which I loved. Though I did not find this novel as well-crafted or intense as Victory Parade, overall, I did find it to be an emotionally impactful read.
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Unterzakhn by Leela Corman is a moving story that revolves around themes of social class, inequality, generational trauma, social convention and morality, family sisterhood and survival.
The narrative follows identical twins Esther and Fanya, daughters of Jewish immigrants, as they navigate their way through life – their childhood in the tenements of New York’s Lower East Side (circa 1910), the people they meet and the choices they make that lead them in different directions and how their paths cross over the years. The narrative also features a past timeline featuring their father and the events that led to his emigrating from his homeland.
There is a lot about this novel that is praiseworthy – notably, the sense of time and place beautifully captured and presented through the author’s remarkable artwork and how the author addressed several social and feminist themes from the era (many of which remain relevant in the present day). However, what keeps me from giving this a higher rating is that I found the narrative a tad uneven and thought that much of the story was lost in the time jumps. Though Esther’s storyline is well developed, we do not get to know Fanya as well as we do Esther. I also felt that the storyline revolving around their father could have been explored further. However, the supporting characters were well thought out and the narrative did flow well despite the tad disjointed/ abrupt nature of the story. I was invested in the sisters’ respective journeys and was immersed in the story from the very first page and finished it in one sitting.
I chose to pick up this graphic novel after reading Leela Corman’s Victory Parade, which I loved. Though I did not find this novel as well-crafted or intense as Victory Parade, overall, I did find it to be an emotionally impactful read.
Connect with me! ✏ Instagram ✏ My Blog ✏ The StoryGraph
January 21, 2012
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. Are you defined by your sexuality? Are you defined by your virtue, by your filial piety, or by motherhood? Are you a better/happier person if you strive to educate yourself rather than being concerned with looks? Are you doomed to become your own mother? Although initially the art threw me off a little (I'd become used to the precise lines of Dan Clowes and Craig Thompson) it grew on me and and I now find it very fitting. These girls are adorable and the women they become will not leave you indifferent.
May 14, 2024
Having just read Leela Corman's 2024 Victory Parade, I took a look again at her 2012 Unterzakn, which I had initially reviewed less enthusiastically. And I do think Victory Parade is her best work yet, her most ambitious, complete, and deepest work, with all of her artistic and imaginative skills at top level, but I did like re-reading this, so revised my review accordingly.
Unterzakhn (underthings) features identical twins Esther and Fanya, daughters of an unhappily married Eastern European Jewish immigrant couple, living in New York's lower east side in the 1910s. It's fiction, wherein one sister becomes a prostitute/actress; the other is involved in carrying ou abortions, both "secret" sexual enterprises (underthings), both very different choices for them as women, but both make sense for each of them. It's a sister story, a women's world. Gaps in the narrative give it a sort of loose feel, as we jump across time and back across the pond to families facing pogroms and exile, and the art has a kind of loose feel, too, and at the same time very stylized.
It kept my attention, I liked it, a real contribution to the history of early feminism, women's issues, in a time when contraception was illegal (well, that was most of the twentieth century), when women began to theorize why marriage might not be such a good deal for all of them. Very interesting story, compelling, engaging.
Unterzakhn (underthings) features identical twins Esther and Fanya, daughters of an unhappily married Eastern European Jewish immigrant couple, living in New York's lower east side in the 1910s. It's fiction, wherein one sister becomes a prostitute/actress; the other is involved in carrying ou abortions, both "secret" sexual enterprises (underthings), both very different choices for them as women, but both make sense for each of them. It's a sister story, a women's world. Gaps in the narrative give it a sort of loose feel, as we jump across time and back across the pond to families facing pogroms and exile, and the art has a kind of loose feel, too, and at the same time very stylized.
It kept my attention, I liked it, a real contribution to the history of early feminism, women's issues, in a time when contraception was illegal (well, that was most of the twentieth century), when women began to theorize why marriage might not be such a good deal for all of them. Very interesting story, compelling, engaging.
December 26, 2014
This was a total total stunner. Spanning several decades in the lives of two sisters in 1910s Lower East Side NYC, it's got incredibly evocative dark-lined drawings and paints a really stark picture of the catch-as-catch can tenement life. It was a perfect Jugs & Capes choice, as it's just steeped in lady troubles, from pregnancy and its avoidabilities to abortion and its complexities, from prostitution to chastity to hypocrisy to many very different kinds of faith. How to use your sexuality vs. how to hone your smarts. Whom to fall in love with and how to let them love you. What it means to be a woman, to be poor, to be talented, to be desired, to be weak. Beautiful and heartbreaking through and through.
February 15, 2013
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.
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.
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.
May 17, 2024
This is an astounding work of graphic fiction that reads like a true story. The author can not only pin the characters to a time and place, but also understands that the frailty of human beings is the source of their cruelty. Most vividly, throughout all time, women always suffer the most.
Corman exposes bigotry and hypocrisy, and strips down the fallacy of immorality to its empty core. The few among us who truly treat the vulnerable with dignity and respect, tend to be the ones you'd least expect. Kindness and care, unconditional love, those are the expressions of what it means to be virtuous, to be *moral*.
Corman exposes bigotry and hypocrisy, and strips down the fallacy of immorality to its empty core. The few among us who truly treat the vulnerable with dignity and respect, tend to be the ones you'd least expect. Kindness and care, unconditional love, those are the expressions of what it means to be virtuous, to be *moral*.
January 16, 2012
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 health care for women in those pre-Roe V. Wade days effectively showcases why abortion must remain legal. Esther finds paying work for a woman who runs a burlesque theater and a whorehouse. While there, she learns about and eventually relies on her sexuality to find her place in society.
Unterzakhn (Yiddish for "Underthings") follows the twins throughout their lives, chronicling their loves, successes, failures, and losses, while exploring the roles -- sexual, intellectual, familial -- of women. Corman produces an exceptional portrayal, deserving much laudatory praise and acclaim, of immigrant and Jewish life on par with the works of Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman.
Unterzakhn (Yiddish for "Underthings") follows the twins throughout their lives, chronicling their loves, successes, failures, and losses, while exploring the roles -- sexual, intellectual, familial -- of women. Corman produces an exceptional portrayal, deserving much laudatory praise and acclaim, of immigrant and Jewish life on par with the works of Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman.
February 20, 2016
I don't know how you could give this graphic novel anything but 5 stars. It's dazzling, dramatic, and devastating. The characters are remarkable of their own merit and the plot is labyrinthine. Such a refreshing departure from the linear narratives of other books in this genre.
Immigrant life in the early years of the 20th century in New York is illustrated in a dark, heavy hand that reflects hardship that is almost casual in its ubiquitousness. The characters are perfectly flawed and set so gratifyingly in their milieu that one forgets to judge their choices and instead root for them - the good, bad, and ugly - so that they all eventually meet their well-deserved, if not entirely unfortunate fates.
Immigrant life in the early years of the 20th century in New York is illustrated in a dark, heavy hand that reflects hardship that is almost casual in its ubiquitousness. The characters are perfectly flawed and set so gratifyingly in their milieu that one forgets to judge their choices and instead root for them - the good, bad, and ugly - so that they all eventually meet their well-deserved, if not entirely unfortunate fates.
April 16, 2014
My six cents:
1. All over the place. Individual chunks of the narrative never really connected, so I never felt it ultimately culminated in much. Also cut off rather abruptly at the end.
2. Depressing and hard to swallow but that doesn't weigh negatively for me (though it may for you!).
3. Female inequalities plaguing the era in which it takes place (early part of the 20th C. USA) played a big part, such as culturally-acceptable bar from formal education (consequently illiteracy), limited opportunities, even illicit access to reproductive autonomy and associated risks. Caveat: I didn't think they were handled with laudable finesse.
4. Content excluded, I find the dedication “For New York” a bit uppity.
5. A lot of reviewers have said they don't care for the drawing style, but I found the art to be uniquely stylized, innovative, and one of the better facets of this work, even if not aesthetically palatable/ "appealing" in a conventional sense. So I'll grant it ~2.5 stars since that's a pretty important consideration for a graphic novel.
6. Countering the praiseworthy illustration STYLE, I feel like the bulk of the characters were drawn as caricatures, exaggerating features that are stereotypically lumped as "ugly" Jewish features (EVERY Jewish character, not just the twin main characters). For the record, I do not find these features ugly and it is very likely that even the author does not --BUT-- coming from an illustrator who has the quintessential attractive Millenial(ish) look down pat ---and shows us as much with her author bio page (not judging that; it's what she looks like), this aspect almost felt like a parody. I'll grant her that perhaps that wasn't the intention, but it's definitely a worthy point of discussion.
1. All over the place. Individual chunks of the narrative never really connected, so I never felt it ultimately culminated in much. Also cut off rather abruptly at the end.
2. Depressing and hard to swallow but that doesn't weigh negatively for me (though it may for you!).
3. Female inequalities plaguing the era in which it takes place (early part of the 20th C. USA) played a big part, such as culturally-acceptable bar from formal education (consequently illiteracy), limited opportunities, even illicit access to reproductive autonomy and associated risks. Caveat: I didn't think they were handled with laudable finesse.
4. Content excluded, I find the dedication “For New York” a bit uppity.
5. A lot of reviewers have said they don't care for the drawing style, but I found the art to be uniquely stylized, innovative, and one of the better facets of this work, even if not aesthetically palatable/ "appealing" in a conventional sense. So I'll grant it ~2.5 stars since that's a pretty important consideration for a graphic novel.
6. Countering the praiseworthy illustration STYLE, I feel like the bulk of the characters were drawn as caricatures, exaggerating features that are stereotypically lumped as "ugly" Jewish features (EVERY Jewish character, not just the twin main characters). For the record, I do not find these features ugly and it is very likely that even the author does not --BUT-- coming from an illustrator who has the quintessential attractive Millenial(ish) look down pat ---and shows us as much with her author bio page (not judging that; it's what she looks like), this aspect almost felt like a parody. I'll grant her that perhaps that wasn't the intention, but it's definitely a worthy point of discussion.
October 31, 2017
A stressful read that left me with a lousy feeling.
What an awful boring story.
Confusing dialogue. Most characters look the same and for some reason, everyone's just angry all the time.
What an awful boring story.
Confusing dialogue. Most characters look the same and for some reason, everyone's just angry all the time.
April 20, 2015
Identical twins Esther and Fanya, daughters of an unhappily married Eastern European Jewish immigrant couple, struggle to make sense of life on the Lower East Side in the early part of the twentieth century. The closer they get to adulthood, the more they understand about the world, and the more trapped, tangled and liberated they are by their individual ways of understanding. Clearly there is no such thing as freedom, but within the confined spaces of history and circumstance, they each make fateful choices. That said, fate itself is nothing in this book if not arbitrary and fickle.
Unterzakhn means undergarments and it's a clever, textured title as the book addresses a broad array of intimacies, from satirical to sartorial, from sisterly to sexual. Most of the sexual unions in the book are fraught, quite a few violent, and most of them comical, and yet the art in the book remains serious and has a certain sober, sharp quality. Surely this is a comedy with a Yiddish sense of irony, but it's also a tragedy with lofty ideals and a drive to set the journey of these sisters, trying to make it from childhood into adulthood in one piece, next to the travels of Odysseus himself.
The novel is fast paced. It spans many years and zips back and forth between the worlds of Fanya and Esther, worlds which grow further and further apart, and the action is confusing at times, though it is framed, compellingly, by two deaths, similar enough and different enough to bring the book full circle in the spiraling form of a small tornado. The book mainly focuses on the twins, but there is an interlude about half way through that returns to Russia and tells the story of the twins' father's journey from pogrom to exile to marriage and toward America. I appreciate this book enough to wish it were a little slower in its pacing and more grounded and even in its structure. That said, it's a worthwhile exploration of a troubling, vibrant and often romanticized time and place, with two important female characters leading the way.
p.s. I really enjoyed this review http://www.tcj.com/reviews/unterzakhn/
Unterzakhn means undergarments and it's a clever, textured title as the book addresses a broad array of intimacies, from satirical to sartorial, from sisterly to sexual. Most of the sexual unions in the book are fraught, quite a few violent, and most of them comical, and yet the art in the book remains serious and has a certain sober, sharp quality. Surely this is a comedy with a Yiddish sense of irony, but it's also a tragedy with lofty ideals and a drive to set the journey of these sisters, trying to make it from childhood into adulthood in one piece, next to the travels of Odysseus himself.
The novel is fast paced. It spans many years and zips back and forth between the worlds of Fanya and Esther, worlds which grow further and further apart, and the action is confusing at times, though it is framed, compellingly, by two deaths, similar enough and different enough to bring the book full circle in the spiraling form of a small tornado. The book mainly focuses on the twins, but there is an interlude about half way through that returns to Russia and tells the story of the twins' father's journey from pogrom to exile to marriage and toward America. I appreciate this book enough to wish it were a little slower in its pacing and more grounded and even in its structure. That said, it's a worthwhile exploration of a troubling, vibrant and often romanticized time and place, with two important female characters leading the way.
p.s. I really enjoyed this review http://www.tcj.com/reviews/unterzakhn/
September 25, 2019
Unterzakhn is a graphic novel written and illustrated by Leela Corman, which is feminist parable, concerning twin sisters who learn the brutal facts of life, set in New York in the early 1900s.
Set in New York City's Lower East Side in the early twentieth century, this book follows the lives of two sisters, Fanya and Esther. The children of Russian Jewish immigrants, the girls take wildly divergent paths.
Fanya goes to work for Bronia, a female doctor who quietly tries to dispense family planning material to her patients struggling to support the children they already have. Esther becomes a showgirl, after a stop in a brothel. Sex, then, is at the heart of both of their worlds, and gracefully traces both young women's efforts to maintain control of their bodies in an unpredictable and at times violent world.
Unterzakhn is written and constructed rather well. Corman steeps her striking black and white artwork with period details, particularly in the clothes and the bustling street scenes. The sisters and their father are compelling, although some characters remain enigmas with a plot twist about the mother is hard to reconcile with the way the character is first introduced.
All in all, Unterzakhn is a wonderful graphic novel that is both a work of social realism and a fable with a moral.
Set in New York City's Lower East Side in the early twentieth century, this book follows the lives of two sisters, Fanya and Esther. The children of Russian Jewish immigrants, the girls take wildly divergent paths.
Fanya goes to work for Bronia, a female doctor who quietly tries to dispense family planning material to her patients struggling to support the children they already have. Esther becomes a showgirl, after a stop in a brothel. Sex, then, is at the heart of both of their worlds, and gracefully traces both young women's efforts to maintain control of their bodies in an unpredictable and at times violent world.
Unterzakhn is written and constructed rather well. Corman steeps her striking black and white artwork with period details, particularly in the clothes and the bustling street scenes. The sisters and their father are compelling, although some characters remain enigmas with a plot twist about the mother is hard to reconcile with the way the character is first introduced.
All in all, Unterzakhn is a wonderful graphic novel that is both a work of social realism and a fable with a moral.
August 7, 2012
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 nevertheless looks like a child got into a liquor cabinet and decided to doodle angry, hairy fat men and what looks like the genetic equivalent of women crossbred with skinny birds. The art wouldn't be so bad if most of the cast wasn't naked for most of the book. Going back to the story, I felt it was mostly dominated by Esther and her time as a showgirl, with very little time or development given to Fanya, who I actually thought was more interesting. In her storyline, the questions of marriage, reproductive rights and gender equality get broached but never explored. In the end, Corman does an adequate job at tugging heartstrings when it comes to family relationships, love (forbidden and otherwise), and so forth, but in terms of actual substance there's very little present here.
March 16, 2014
Esther and Fanya are nearly identical twin sisters (Esther has a beauty mark to differentiate herself from her sister) growing up on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s. Yet the paths they take as they grow are both similar and vastly different. One goes to work for a madam, while the other apprentices under a midwife who also performs illegal abortions. It is surprising to see which one flourishes, and which one suffers tragedy.
I wanted to like this book so much more than I did. I loved the artwork; I know other reviewers found it messy or simple, but I felt it fit the storyline perfectly. The problem is, I wanted to know so much more about Fanya's life under Bronia. We see so much more of Esther's rise to fame, but almost nothing of Fanya, other than that she sticks up for her beliefs. I also didn't really understand why the flashback to their father's life was inserted where it was. It felt jarring to be there, and honestly I would have liked to have had that subplot fleshed out a bit more.
At any rate, I did enjoy it. It just wasn't as good as the other graphic novels I have read lately.
I wanted to like this book so much more than I did. I loved the artwork; I know other reviewers found it messy or simple, but I felt it fit the storyline perfectly. The problem is, I wanted to know so much more about Fanya's life under Bronia. We see so much more of Esther's rise to fame, but almost nothing of Fanya, other than that she sticks up for her beliefs. I also didn't really understand why the flashback to their father's life was inserted where it was. It felt jarring to be there, and honestly I would have liked to have had that subplot fleshed out a bit more.
At any rate, I did enjoy it. It just wasn't as good as the other graphic novels I have read lately.
September 22, 2019
Shtetls, shiksas, sisters, the Yiddish curses fly from Europe to New York, death, pain, heartache, and community. I love how the NY street life of the early 20th century Jewish immigrants is illustrated - along with the intimate views of women’s reproductive struggles and sex work.
April 26, 2024
Tyckte att Onämnbara var ganska rörig och tog för stort tidsspann i anspråk. Kände inte att jag fick lära känna karaktärerna och deras inbördes relationer tillräckligt för att bli riktigt berörd av deras historier. Gillade teckningsstilen, framför allt mot slutet när miljöerna och kläderna blev lite lyxigare och mer detaljerade.
January 2, 2023
мощная драма двух еврейских близняшек в жестоком патриархальном нью-йорке начала 20 века
December 11, 2016
Review also found on my blog! :)
This book was 100% not on my TBR, but like usual, seeing an attractive cover at the library is totally irresistible for me. When I read the blurb, I was drawn into wanting to read this even further: it sounded like a story of an interesting slice of history told through the eyes of strong female leads – much like another favorite graphic novel of mine, Persepolis. So, I decided to give Unterzakhn a shot. What I found was a promising story that didn't totally live up to my expectations.
Unterzakhn covers an aspect history which I frankly don't know much about: the beginnings of the Lower East Side of New York. Traditionally a place for immigrants and later the working class, the people here lived a tough life, yet created a hub of culture unlike anywhere in America. We follow twins Fanya and Esther through their lives, exploring the different paths they take and how the cultural climate around them shapes their choices. This entire concept really pulled me in, but in some ways I was left wanting more.
For instance, the focus of the plot ends up not being on what it was like living as a Jewish immigrant in New York, but on strong feminist subjects instead. Fanya ends up working for a woman who performs illegal abortions and other basic gynecological work as well. Famya quickly learns who crappy it is for women in her era, who basically get married then become "birthing cows" (the author's words) for their husbands. This was a pretty radical take on marriage in my opinion, but the fact that women had no options (not even condoms or birth control) was definitely an interesting subject to read about. Esther, on the other hand, starts working at a brothel. At first she serves drinks and food to clients, then gradually ends up being a prostitute herself. With Esther's story, themes of sexual freedom are explored during a time when extramarital sex basically made you a social outcast. While I found these themes really important and I think they should be explored more, however, I was curious to read more about life as an immigrant, rather than just reading about life as a woman at the turn of the century. The immigrant aspect of the story is definitely put on the back burner for most of the book, and comes up almost as an afterthought throughout.
The biggest issue I had with this story was the way the narrative is handled. The narrative is very nonlinear, and so choppy in some parts that I had a hard time following what is going on. Something will be happening over four sets of panels, then the next will be a completely different occurrence, then the next set would go back to the first occurrence. Some aspects of the narrative were also not explained very well, so the reader is left to kind of guess or assume what is going on. Honestly, this book is a great example of how sometimes there can be too much showing, and not enough telling. Tying things back to the subject matter, the narrative seemed to be very brief about the important issues it was addressing. In some ways, it felt really rushed – like I was being given a "taste" of these issues, and left wanting them to be explored more.
Finally, I found the ending to be rather abrupt and unimpressive. Without spoiling anything, the ending basically gives the two girls very ironic conclusions to their stories. I think perhaps it was a message about how life doesn't take the turns you expect it to? But I'm still not sure. I just didn't feel like the use of irony in this instance worked very well. Moreover, the author just simply didn't wrap up the story in a very satisfying way. I may have appreciated the irony more if the ending was a little more conclusive.
Despite what I disliked, I actually enjoyed the artwork, and thought the Corman's style worked really well with the story. The author has a really clean use of line, and utilized texture in really interesting ways. The work is purely in black and white, which works really well with some of the darker, grittier scenes. The art really reminded me of the style you see in Persepolis.
Overall this book was a fairly interesting diversion from my studying for finals. I did expect a lot more out of it – I know graphic novels aren't supposed to be super long, but this story could have definitely been more fleshed out. Would I recommend it? I think if you want a good introduction to feminist issues women dealt with at the beginning of the 20th century, do read it. If you're looking for a good peek into life as a Jewish immigrant, I would read something else. In the end, I gave this book three stars.
Final Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
This book was 100% not on my TBR, but like usual, seeing an attractive cover at the library is totally irresistible for me. When I read the blurb, I was drawn into wanting to read this even further: it sounded like a story of an interesting slice of history told through the eyes of strong female leads – much like another favorite graphic novel of mine, Persepolis. So, I decided to give Unterzakhn a shot. What I found was a promising story that didn't totally live up to my expectations.
Unterzakhn covers an aspect history which I frankly don't know much about: the beginnings of the Lower East Side of New York. Traditionally a place for immigrants and later the working class, the people here lived a tough life, yet created a hub of culture unlike anywhere in America. We follow twins Fanya and Esther through their lives, exploring the different paths they take and how the cultural climate around them shapes their choices. This entire concept really pulled me in, but in some ways I was left wanting more.
For instance, the focus of the plot ends up not being on what it was like living as a Jewish immigrant in New York, but on strong feminist subjects instead. Fanya ends up working for a woman who performs illegal abortions and other basic gynecological work as well. Famya quickly learns who crappy it is for women in her era, who basically get married then become "birthing cows" (the author's words) for their husbands. This was a pretty radical take on marriage in my opinion, but the fact that women had no options (not even condoms or birth control) was definitely an interesting subject to read about. Esther, on the other hand, starts working at a brothel. At first she serves drinks and food to clients, then gradually ends up being a prostitute herself. With Esther's story, themes of sexual freedom are explored during a time when extramarital sex basically made you a social outcast. While I found these themes really important and I think they should be explored more, however, I was curious to read more about life as an immigrant, rather than just reading about life as a woman at the turn of the century. The immigrant aspect of the story is definitely put on the back burner for most of the book, and comes up almost as an afterthought throughout.
The biggest issue I had with this story was the way the narrative is handled. The narrative is very nonlinear, and so choppy in some parts that I had a hard time following what is going on. Something will be happening over four sets of panels, then the next will be a completely different occurrence, then the next set would go back to the first occurrence. Some aspects of the narrative were also not explained very well, so the reader is left to kind of guess or assume what is going on. Honestly, this book is a great example of how sometimes there can be too much showing, and not enough telling. Tying things back to the subject matter, the narrative seemed to be very brief about the important issues it was addressing. In some ways, it felt really rushed – like I was being given a "taste" of these issues, and left wanting them to be explored more.
Finally, I found the ending to be rather abrupt and unimpressive. Without spoiling anything, the ending basically gives the two girls very ironic conclusions to their stories. I think perhaps it was a message about how life doesn't take the turns you expect it to? But I'm still not sure. I just didn't feel like the use of irony in this instance worked very well. Moreover, the author just simply didn't wrap up the story in a very satisfying way. I may have appreciated the irony more if the ending was a little more conclusive.
Despite what I disliked, I actually enjoyed the artwork, and thought the Corman's style worked really well with the story. The author has a really clean use of line, and utilized texture in really interesting ways. The work is purely in black and white, which works really well with some of the darker, grittier scenes. The art really reminded me of the style you see in Persepolis.
Overall this book was a fairly interesting diversion from my studying for finals. I did expect a lot more out of it – I know graphic novels aren't supposed to be super long, but this story could have definitely been more fleshed out. Would I recommend it? I think if you want a good introduction to feminist issues women dealt with at the beginning of the 20th century, do read it. If you're looking for a good peek into life as a Jewish immigrant, I would read something else. In the end, I gave this book three stars.
Final Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
November 26, 2022
3.5 stars.
June 11, 2017
Leela Corman's graphic Novel , Unterzakhn is almost all that. The drawings are bold, making no compromises in the name of conventional modesty or modern notions of beauty. Twin Jewish girls grow up poor in 1910 New York and live parallel but not such different lives. The story is not one of an emigrant family making good but of half educated people surviving and attempting to make sense of an arbitrary world. Depending on when this book comes into your life it will have enormous power or just seem like "another one".
The word Unterzakhn is Yiddish for underclothes. This is what the demanding and inflexible mother of twins girls Fanya and Ester makes to keep her family from complete poverty. What their soulful and unhappy father does is almost unimportant. The world of the two girls is hard. Death and cruelty are more common than joy or compassion. Only one will receive any education and the other will, because of her artistic bent will become a prostitute, dancer, and star.
Irregular use of flashback will help the reader to understand that this family has survived generations of bigotry and bare survival and that the arranged marriage of the girl's parents is not the Fiddler on the Roof variety.
There is too much about all of this that I have seen before. The story arc is too nearly predictable. If you come to this book before reading the story of failed immigrants, or the European stories of among others Isaac Bashevis Singer (his original Tevya stories are hardly all humor and happiness) then this can be a very important book. An experienced reader will believe they have felt the particular hardships by women of this class and time. This is a very good book, for me it was not 5 stars.
The word Unterzakhn is Yiddish for underclothes. This is what the demanding and inflexible mother of twins girls Fanya and Ester makes to keep her family from complete poverty. What their soulful and unhappy father does is almost unimportant. The world of the two girls is hard. Death and cruelty are more common than joy or compassion. Only one will receive any education and the other will, because of her artistic bent will become a prostitute, dancer, and star.
Irregular use of flashback will help the reader to understand that this family has survived generations of bigotry and bare survival and that the arranged marriage of the girl's parents is not the Fiddler on the Roof variety.
There is too much about all of this that I have seen before. The story arc is too nearly predictable. If you come to this book before reading the story of failed immigrants, or the European stories of among others Isaac Bashevis Singer (his original Tevya stories are hardly all humor and happiness) then this can be a very important book. An experienced reader will believe they have felt the particular hardships by women of this class and time. This is a very good book, for me it was not 5 stars.
December 18, 2014
Once upon a time there were six year old twin sisters, Esther and Fanya. The sisters lived among the hustle and bustle of New York's Lower East Side circa 1910, a place where immigrants struggled to get their piece of the "golden land".
This historical graphic novel explores the coming of age of these sisters - their interests, the choices they make, the different lives they end up living. The bold sketchy black and white art really worked for this story, and I liked the juxtaposition of their young innocence against the hard earned wisdom of their later years.
The title of the book Unterzakhn (Yiddish for "Underthings") is wonderfully apt for the lives of women. This feminist text asks the tough questions - what does it mean to be a girl/woman? Who gets to decide? What are the repercussions of not living a life that is expected /proscribed for you?
While on the surface the twins live very different lives, they are similar in that they make choices that are right for them. I grew quite fond of these sisters, and their insistence on living a life of their choosing.
This historical graphic novel explores the coming of age of these sisters - their interests, the choices they make, the different lives they end up living. The bold sketchy black and white art really worked for this story, and I liked the juxtaposition of their young innocence against the hard earned wisdom of their later years.
The title of the book Unterzakhn (Yiddish for "Underthings") is wonderfully apt for the lives of women. This feminist text asks the tough questions - what does it mean to be a girl/woman? Who gets to decide? What are the repercussions of not living a life that is expected /proscribed for you?
While on the surface the twins live very different lives, they are similar in that they make choices that are right for them. I grew quite fond of these sisters, and their insistence on living a life of their choosing.
January 5, 2013
This book narrates what I always believed in; that every family has terrible secrets. Although the theme of abortion and prostitution is present it doesn't overwhelm the story. In fact, this is more of a sisterhood, love ,and Jewish soap opera tale.
Enjoy.
Enjoy.
October 3, 2014
Perché le donne, si sa, hanno il potere di essere terribilmente cocciute.
http://www.finzionimagazine.it/extra/...
http://www.finzionimagazine.it/extra/...
October 12, 2024
wow, this was so good
April 21, 2022
brutal, cru mais très prenant ! je n’avais jamais lu une œuvre qui traitait de la communauté juive dans le New York du début de siècle dernier et j’ai vraiment aimé suivre Fanya et Esther, ces sœurs jumelles qui vont prendre des chemins de vie bien différents. on suit leur enfance, leur adolescence et leur vie de jeune adulte en ayant le droit à quelques flash back sur la vie de leur père. +j’ai aimé le fait que l’autrice utilise beaucoup de mots yiddish qui permettent d’être vraiment plongé au cœur de la communauté juive, c’était une lecture forte que je recommande !
June 15, 2021
Bursting with energy, Yiddish and Bronx and Corman. The voices are so fun to hear in your head that it flies by. Makes other written dialogue seem like the papery nonsense it is.
Doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the very recent past. The principled midwife is a eugenicist. Fanya is violently proud. Esther is dead inside. The casual pogroms of the old world.
Everyone is grotesque but their faces morph between so many different grotesque expressions you don’t mind.
Doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the very recent past. The principled midwife is a eugenicist. Fanya is violently proud. Esther is dead inside. The casual pogroms of the old world.
Everyone is grotesque but their faces morph between so many different grotesque expressions you don’t mind.
November 14, 2024
I feel like they held back all of the characterization in the name of conciseness. This could have been a hundred pages longer and it would’ve been much better.
April 29, 2012
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.
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.
May 8, 2012
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 beginnings was really gripping and well-written, but again, inserted into the flow of the main story in a manner that I found odd - it really could have been its own, stand alone novel. Also, there isn't much characterization in this novel - you never really learn much about what makes each character tick - but you definitely become fully immersed in the place and the time and how that might have shaped each protag on her respective path. Overall, Corman's storytelling is rich and wonderful, but conclusions are an integral part of storytelling, and I'm leaving one star off for handling of time/conclusions, which I found lacking.
May 29, 2012
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 opportunities arise in the most unfortunate of places.
Although this is set in 1910, it could just as easily have happened anytime. The central themes present throughout this graphic novel are timeless: the choices we make to set us on our paths in life, the influences of people around you, whether or not to take the chances the shines upon you are just some of the ideas that circulate when reading the journey of Esther and Fanya. It is poignant and reflective at times and it really made me wonder about all the "ifs" of life.
Overall I really enjoyed it and am glad that I got a chance to read it through the Goodreads Firstreads giveaway program.
Although this is set in 1910, it could just as easily have happened anytime. The central themes present throughout this graphic novel are timeless: the choices we make to set us on our paths in life, the influences of people around you, whether or not to take the chances the shines upon you are just some of the ideas that circulate when reading the journey of Esther and Fanya. It is poignant and reflective at times and it really made me wonder about all the "ifs" of life.
Overall I really enjoyed it and am glad that I got a chance to read it through the Goodreads Firstreads giveaway program.
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