Jennifer's Journal: The Life of a SubUrban Girl

by Jennifer Crute

Overview

By turns funny, poignant, melancholic, and life-affirming, Jennifer’s Journal: The Life of a SubUrban Girl is a graphic memoir that chronicles the life of a quirky, petite, freckled-faced African American illustrator and artist. The journal depicts Jennifer’s struggles with work, depression, sex and sexuality, and religion while poking fun at the stereotypes she encounters along the way. Featuring a host of colorful characters—from grumpy family members to gossipy schoolmates to New York City archetypes like the nosy neighbor or the guy selling raw oxtails at the Laundromat—it is an entertaining and humorous look at life with awkward insights from Jennifer’s close friends as well as from her imaginary companions: the meditative Miss Buddha Bear, her nemesis Mean Mama, and the rest of her tyrannical friends. Each of these characters shape Jennifer’s ability to maintain peace of mind while battling the insane stereotypes around race, class, and gender contained in mainstream and popular culture. It’s a story that will resonate with anyone who grew up feeling like an outsider.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780990319160
Publisher:	Rosarium Publishing
Publication date:	05/01/2015
Series:	Jennifer's Journal Series , #1
Pages:	62
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 10.70(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Jennifer Crute is a comic book author and illustrator whose work has been featured in BITCH magazine as well as at the Limner Gallery, the Medialia Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, and the Ocean Hill Arts Sanctuary. She is featured in a Current TV segment about women in comics called “KAPOW! The New Comic Book Heroines” and was nominated for a Glyph Comic Award for Best Rising Star. She has lectured at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, Miami University, and Skidmore College. She lives in Brooklyn.

Editorial Reviews

05/04/2015
In this first volume of her comic memoir, Cruté catalogues the hilarities, absurdities, and day-to-day trials of an African-American girl growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey in the 1980s. The coloring-book vibe and looseness suits some, but not all, of her tales, which range widely: humorous family anecdotes, her grandma’s number-one home remedy (Vaseline), encounters with casual public racism, her father’s numerous infidelities, and her struggles to find the right spiritual path. Crute’s anecdotes are intriguing, but much of the time they feel more like scattered incidents in her life, rather than full-blown stories. Her style of cute character drawings also struggles to pair appropriately with the content at times. While some stories (such as her finding and eating cake out of a trash can) are perfect, others (such as her parents’ fierce arguments or her mother’s physical abuse) seem diminished by the seemingly carefree drawing style. Here’s hoping the tone will smooth out in future volumes. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"A solid choice for older teens and new adults." —Martha Cornog, libraryjournal.com

From the Publisher