Josephine gn - Softcover

If ever there was a time that needed a book like Josephine, that time is now. With this heartbreaking yet uplifting new saga, Kevin Sacco has outdone his previous superb graphic novel, The Plane Story. The level of observation and cultural detail in this book is staggering. In its specificity, Sacco's re-creation of a bygone (yet strangely contemporary and vitally pertinent) era yields an appeal that is utterly universal. If you are not deeply moved by the tenderness and humanity of this brilliantly told (autobiographical?) tale, I pity you, for you have a heart of the coldest stone. At last, a powerful adult graphic novel that is truly adult. Josephine gets my vote for Graphic Novel of the Year. --William Stout

"In Kevin Sacco's evocative book, a ramble through the 'new' Upper West Side, with its national chain stores and endless banks, dissolves into a protracted memory of an earlier era. Wordlessly, but with perfect clarity, the story takes the reader into Civil Rights-era New York, with all the racial complexity of the time. Sacco's protagonist, a 7-year-old boy, in the course of just a couple of days and against the backdrop of a complicated family, encounters bullies, pimps, veterans, children, and his family maid, and in the process, perhaps, develops a world view as full of blacks, whites, and greys as the story's art." ---Karen Green Curator of Comics and Cartoons, Columbia University Libraries.