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.
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 weekly on GROWRadio. She lives in Florida.
“[A] touching look at twins who take distinctly different roads in
life, but can't prevent their paths from intersecting . . .
Corman’s style, inspired by Russian folk art, has a crudeness that
highlights the gritty urban environment, but the fluid line-work of
her characters adds a touch of delicacy and grace to the
proceedings.”
—NPR.org
“A haunting and often heartbreaking look at Eastern European Jewish
immigrants in the early 20th century, Unterzakhn is also a story
about women, power, and bodies; entirely too much of it rings
entirely too contemporary . . . Corman blends an almost wobbly,
liquid style with a real sense of period detail and a flair for the
grotesque. She also knows what comics can do well, and one of those
things is move forward and backward in time, giving a 200-page
narrative the feel of a tightly told epic.”
—Austin American-Statesman
“Corman’s attention to period detail and the quirks of Yiddish
bring this book to vivid life . . . While she allows for a lot of
moral ambiguity in the conventional sense, there seems to be no
question which characters are the most humane. The complex route
she takes to guide the reader to arrive at these conclusions, the
level of detail she includes, and the feelings that the journey
evinces are what make this a successful work. [Unterzakhn is] a
celebration of human kindness in the face of the abyss . . .”
—The Comics Journal
“Corman’s writing and artwork make for a very energetic
combination. Her brushwork is as bold as her sharp narrative. Her
vision works well with expressing women’s issues, the Jewish
struggle, tenement life, and the dreams of her characters, whether
thwarted or painfully realized . . . [A] sumptuous graphic
novel.”
—Comics Grinder
“Here is what is magisterial about Unterzakhn: it arrives with
the force of artistic conviction, the unholy love child of Love and
Rockets and Isaac Bashevis Singer . . . It is a credit to Corman
that you will not forget the outcome of these girls’ lives—a story
simple and fabulistic, as in the best of Singer, with dark
overtones that come from faithless characters in whom we can
trust.”
—Edie Meidav, The Millions
“Subtly feminist and thoroughly fascinating.”
—Sacramento News & Review
“Corman’s comic is filled with colorful characters, each lovingly,
dramatically rendered in a loose, abstracted style of exaggerated
design that belies the complexity of the fully-realized sets and
setting they move through. These include not only the sisters,
their mother and father, the women who shaped them, and the men who
flit in and out of their lives, but even the minor players, the
people crowding the backgrounds of street scenes. Viewed as either
a story or as art, it’s an exceptional piece of work. Viewed as
story as art, it’s a tour-de-force.”
—Robot6
“Lures you in with wittiness and sensuality . . . then bites you in
the tuchus! Unterzakhn swirls with the energy of Almodóvar
and the depth of Dostoyevsky as it follows the fates of two
charmingly complicated twin sisters. I loved it.”
—Craig Thompson, author of Habibi
“An incredible book about twin sisters growing up on New York’s
Lower East Side in the early twentieth century. It’s about the
experience and struggles of women, the immigrant experience, and
it’s just brimming with life. . . . Wow.”
—ComicBookResources.com
“Unterzakhn works on multiple levels (one notable one: the art work
is fantastic, particularly when Corman infuses any of her female
characters with a snarl or a sneer, conveying a lifetime of pent-up
emotion in a single panel), and as such, it’s highly
recommended.”
—GraphicNovelReporter.com
“Corman’s caricatures are striking and distinctive, making the
exaggerated characters come alive, and she provides a great,
detailed view of the times. . . . She does an excellent job of
dropping the reader into this particular time and place. Although a
period piece, the underlying concerns, especially those related to
a woman’s control of her own body, remain particularly timely.”
—ComicsWorthReading.com
“In the footsteps of Art Spiegelman comes Leela Corman. Like
the renowned creator of Maus, she employs the graphic novel form,
but rather than address the Holocaust she is addressing the Jewish
immigrant experience on the Lower East Side in the early twentieth
century.”
—The Jewish Week (New York)
“Corman produces an exceptional portrayal, deserving of much
laudatory praise and acclaim, of immigrant and Jewish life on par
with the works of Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman.”
—SFSite.com
“Corman has an ear for dialogue and a loose, curvilinear brush-line
that makes reading her work a pleasure.”
—The Boston Phoenix
“Captivating. . . . A sweetly sad story, illustrating the
difficulty of life in the early twentieth century as seen through
the eye of a specific subculture. . . . Corman never shies away
from harshness in either her story or her illustrations, but she
handles it with grace. Unterzakhn is a quick read, but a meaningful
one.”
—Baltimore City Paper
“Historically informed and aesthetically compelling . . . Heavily
inked cartoons beautifully depict period details and the Hester
Street gossips as times evolve, and show how the two sisters’
similarities change into stark differences in appearance as they
age. The text, salted with Yiddish, and the eloquently
detailed images meld together to make this a good choice for
readers who enjoyed Eleanor Widmer’s Up from Orchard Street or
Hubert and Kerascoet’s Miss Don’t Touch Me.”
—Booklist
“Set in New York’s Lower East Side in the early twentieth century,
Unterzakhn follows the lives of two sisters, Fanya and Esther . . .
Corman gracefully traces both young women’s efforts to maintain
control of their bodies in an unpredictable and at times violent
world. She steeps her striking black-and-white artwork with period
details, particularly in the clothes and the bustling street
scenes. In a flashback scene set in Russia, especially, she
echoes the swirling evocative style of Russian folk art . . . The
story of Fanya and Esther’s struggles is beautifully drawn and hard
to forget.”
—Publishers Weekly
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