Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics

a cartoonist examines her experience with breast cancer in an irreverent and humorous graphic memoir.

Author: Miriam Engelberg
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 04/25/2006
Pages: 144
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 8.26h x 7.04w x 0.42d
ISBN: 9780060789732

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 4.1
Point Value: 2
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 107088 / Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 03/13/2006 pg. 49
Booklist 03/15/2006 pg. 37
Library Journal 05/15/2006 pg. 122

About the Author
Engelberg, Miriam: -

Miriam Engelberg was forty-three when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Like anyone faced with a life-altering personal trauma, she sought out a coping mechanism. While fellow patients championed the benefits of support groups and hypnotherapy, Engelberg found her greatest comfort in drawing, her lifelong passion.

Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person puts Engelberg's life in focus the best way she knows how -- with cartoons. Her graphic approach to a very serious subject follows in the tradition of Art Spiegelman's award-winning Maus, but in her own offbeat, on-target, and darkly, devastatingly humorous style. From sex and wigs to nausea and causes -- Was it overzealous cheese consumption or not enough multivitamins? -- Engelberg leaves no aspect of cancer unexamined. In this remarkable "memoir in comics," she takes a clear-eyed, deliciously sardonic look at caring friends and relatives, doctors, treatments, and support groups while never losing her guarded optimism and, most important, her sense of humor.