White, Tracy. How I Made It to Eighteen: A Mostly True Story. New York: Roaring Bk P, 2010. 151p.
Audience: Young Adult, 15+
Genre: Graphic Novel
Topics of Focus: Eating Disorders, Mental Health, Sexualized Abuse, Depression, Self-Mutilation, Co-dependent Relationships
Using a tight, formulaic structure throughout her graphic novel, Tracy White depicts a minimalist approach to her 24-week, in-patient internment in a psychiatric hospital at age 18.
This structure combines the perspectives of four young adult friends with very strong personalities and “issues” of their own, minimal hospital staff notes, reflection narratives, and white-on-black time-stamp pages to record the point of reflection in her hospitalization history. Her drawings are simplistic to present just the outline of the time, setting, and event participants, while focusing more on the powerful memories and stark graphic representations of experience with abuse, depression, self-mutilation, drug abuse, and disordered eating. The narrator’s inability to open up in group and individual therapy is mirrored by the brevity of each memory section. As she opens up more to her health professionals and friends, those memory portions of the story take on more depth and length. Young readers will appreciate the stark images and shading to represent present and past voice. The novel format eases the tension between expected truth of a memoir and the more flexible story-telling techniques of the graphic style. The author supports this flexibility even further through disclaimers about truth percentages in the text. Told with concise, biting sarcasm, White presents a tory that many angsty young adults will appreciate.
This structure combines the perspectives of four young adult friends with very strong personalities and “issues” of their own, minimal hospital staff notes, reflection narratives, and white-on-black time-stamp pages to record the point of reflection in her hospitalization history. Her drawings are simplistic to present just the outline of the time, setting, and event participants, while focusing more on the powerful memories and stark graphic representations of experience with abuse, depression, self-mutilation, drug abuse, and disordered eating. The narrator’s inability to open up in group and individual therapy is mirrored by the brevity of each memory section. As she opens up more to her health professionals and friends, those memory portions of the story take on more depth and length. Young readers will appreciate the stark images and shading to represent present and past voice. The novel format eases the tension between expected truth of a memoir and the more flexible story-telling techniques of the graphic style. The author supports this flexibility even further through disclaimers about truth percentages in the text. Told with concise, biting sarcasm, White presents a tory that many angsty young adults will appreciate.
This is an effective text to show flexible design layout and meaningful typography of a visual narrative. It is a useful portrayal to understand shifting narrative voice. It is also an effective tool for school social work staff working with teens who endure similar personal, mental health issues and are having trouble vocalizing in talk therapy.
Annotation by Denise Aulik
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