Harper Paperbacks

Part Of It : Comics and Confessions

$17.99

Shipping calculated at checkout.

Part Of It
Author(s): Ariel Schrag

Ariel Schrag, a critically-acclaimed memoirist and screenwriter, takes us on a painfully funny tour of her formative years, from her childhood in Berkeley to her mid-twenties in Brooklyn, exploring what it means to connect to others when you don’t yet know who you are—when you want to be “part of it” but the “it” changes daily. We meet hippie babysitters, mean girls, best friends, former friends, prom dates, girlfriends, sex ed students, and far too many LensCrafters sales associates.

These frank, irreverent, and honest comics revel in the uncomfortable—occasionally cringe-inducing—moments from our early years that end up wiring us as people. Part of It further cements Ariel Schrag as “one of the best pure storytellers...in any medium” (Comics Journal).

Review(s):

“Do you ever read a book and love it so much and desperately wish it had been around for you at other times in your life? Times when you felt like nobody understood what it was you were going through? Times when you just felt so alone? Well, this is one of those books…Part of It is consistently hilarious, but Schrag never shies away from uncomfortable memories, those times that are truly cringe-worthy upon reflection, and are therefore all the more important to revisit and understand. This is a perfect coming-of-age book—smart and honest and unafraid of visiting the points in our lives when we didn’t yet know who we wanted to be, or who we already were.”

—NYLON, “10 New Books to Read this November”

"The stories collected in Part of It illustrate Schrag’s facility for being hyperspecific about her own lived experience while at the same time evoking similar memories in her readers through the skillful distillation of events or moods into a single, evocative drawing. As such, Schrag’s comics function as an argument for the form as an especially potent vehicle for autobiography, wherein author and reader alike can project themselves into a past made visible on the page...The near-simultaneous publication of Part of It: Comics and Confessions and Dirty Plotte: The Complete Julie Doucet acts as a reminder of their lasting influence. It also provides an argument about their essential kinship as female comics creators who tirelessly but enthusiastically challenged conventions about what comics should be, and who should make them."

—Frederik Byrn Køhlert, Los Angeles Review of Books

"There’s a story in the middle of Ariel Schrag’s Part of It that I can’t stop thinking about...Schrag is an expert personal storyteller...The elegantly slender-lined visual style is deceptively simple, gradually revealing Schrag’s ability to command emotion with her pen in the same way she does with her words."

—Vulture, "The 8 Best Comics to Read This November"

“Ariel Schrag knows it’s the little moments—no matter how awkward or cringe-worthy—that shape us into who we are. You’ll relate so hard to Part of It, her latest emotional and endlessly entertaining graphic memoir.”

—Bustle

“A hilariously exact dissection of the randomly wrong-headed decisions and wildly ridiculous obsessions that plague all of us during adolescence and young adulthood."

—Aimee Mann

"Both heartbreaking and hilarious, I could not put Part of It down. Ariel Schrag is an inspiration, a hero, a desperately needed queer voice and one of the best storytellers I know."

—Jill Soloway

"I've always admired Ariel Schrag's fearless commitment to honesty, both in real life and in her art. For me, that's been the crucial ingredient in all her work, and Part of It is no exception."

—Adrian Tomine, author of Killing and Dying

"Ariel Schrag does it again, brilliantly depicting the small and momentous moments that make up a queer life, a coming of age, a personhood. Part of It is a bildungsroman for the young person who is full of feelings and fumbling to find the right place to put them. I wish I could go back in time and give it to my younger self. I'm so glad to have it now."

—Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me

"Ariel Schr

ISBN: 9781328972446