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Unterzakhn

Part of Pantheon Graphic Library

Author Leela Corman
Ebook
Knopf | Schocken
On sale Apr 03, 2012 | 208 Pages | 9780805212549
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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.

“A haunting and often heartbreaking look at Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century [and] also a story about women, power, and bodies.” —Austin American-Statesman

For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York’s Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings”) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world (Esther working for a woman who runs both a burlesque theater and a whorehouse, Fanya for an obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions); and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the “golden land,” where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.
  • FINALIST | 2012
    Los Angeles Times Book Prizes
© Dena Rosenberg
LEELA CORMAN is a painter, educator, and graphic-novel creator, working in the realm of diaspora Ashkenazi culture and third-generation restorative work. Her books include Unterzakhn, which was nominated for an Eisner Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Le Prix Artémisia; won the 2015 Romics Prize for Best Anglo-American Comic; and received a 2023 MoCCA Arts Festival Award of Excellence, and the short comics collections You Are Not a Guest and We All Wish for Deadly Force. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The Believer, Nautilus, and The Nib. She is a founding instructor at Sequential Artists Workshop and an instructor at Rhode Island School of Design. View titles by Leela Corman

About

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.

“A haunting and often heartbreaking look at Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the early 20th century [and] also a story about women, power, and bodies.” —Austin American-Statesman

For six-year-old Esther and Fanya, the teeming streets of New York’s Lower East Side circa 1910 are both a fascinating playground and a place where life’s lessons are learned quickly and often cruelly. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that street life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for “Underthings”) tells the story of these sisters: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world (Esther working for a woman who runs both a burlesque theater and a whorehouse, Fanya for an obstetrician who also performs illegal abortions); and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the “golden land,” where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.

Awards

  • FINALIST | 2012
    Los Angeles Times Book Prizes

Author

© Dena Rosenberg
LEELA CORMAN is a painter, educator, and graphic-novel creator, working in the realm of diaspora Ashkenazi culture and third-generation restorative work. Her books include Unterzakhn, which was nominated for an Eisner Award, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Le Prix Artémisia; won the 2015 Romics Prize for Best Anglo-American Comic; and received a 2023 MoCCA Arts Festival Award of Excellence, and the short comics collections You Are Not a Guest and We All Wish for Deadly Force. Her work has appeared in many publications, including The Believer, Nautilus, and The Nib. She is a founding instructor at Sequential Artists Workshop and an instructor at Rhode Island School of Design. View titles by Leela Corman

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