4 comics by feminist authors that will brighten your holidays

The weather is beautiful, summer has arrived and honestly, between two demonstrations to defend the right to abortion in the world, we would change our minds a bit.

Soft, crazy or introspective: from graphic novels to comics, from hiking to hair dye, here it is 4 stories illustrated and written by girls that will help you escape this summer.

Crossed loves by Laura Nsafou and Camélia Blandeau

After several youth albums and a novel Young adult, the French afrofeminist author Laura Nsafou continues to water our libraries. This time, with a graphic novel: Crossed lovesillustrated by Camélia Blandeau.

In Paris, Yari meets Hide. They like each other, they look for each other, but … Hide is polyamorous and Yari doesn’t know how to fit in, and doesn’t even want to. As their story progresses, portraits of their loved ones are also drawn: friends more or less lost than them in their search for love, more or less understanding families …

Published by Marabulles, Crossed loves tells a love story like in real life, in 2021. The richness and complexity of the characters created by Laura Nsafou brings a breath of fresh air to the romance genre, which tends to confine itself to the staging of characters as standardized as the relationships they encounter. None of this Crossed loves where the ways of being and loving are many, and it is so beautiful! The Camélia Blandeau line softly enlarges the Parisian characters and decorations. What a great way to start the summer.

I’m not Starfire, by Mariko Tamaki and Yoshi Yoshitani

Starfire, does it mean anything to you? In this DC comic, The Solar Redhead of Young Titans she became the mother of a teenager named Mandy. But Mandy, who differs from her mother in all respects, has not inherited the powers of her parents.

How does she feel the ordinary daughter of an extraordinary woman, we follow Mandy as she navigates her high school kitchens and her crush on her English classmate. In I’m not StarfireMariko Tamaki brilliantly mixes the codes of comics and those of the story of transition to adulthood, but also addresses the question of generational transmission, a fortiori when you are the child of immigrants, from Earth or elsewhere. A story to read and reread when you no longer know where to put yourself in this strange world.

Ébouriffants.es, by Adeline Rapon and Emilie Gleason

As the world looks more and more like a dystopia, let’s enjoy a comic that offers us the opposite. In Make your hair stand on endedited by Nouvel Attila, Adeline Rapon and Emilie Gleason invite us to imagine a future in which body hair (and in particular that of people perceived as women) would no longer be traced, clipped or shaved, but rather loved and sublimated!

We follow three hairdressers who dye, cut and shape fleece on legs, pubis or armpits every day in their salon. During some crazy sketches, we discover haircuts illustrated by Emilie Gleason, but also photographed IRL by Adeline Rapon. A comic that reminds us that hair hatred is an arbitrary social construction, and that makes us dream of something else while making us laugh! And ever since, we’ve been looking forward to someone bringing the living room to life. Fake hair in real life, to do shin twists and look like a mermaid.

Leaving, by Lili Sohn

When Lili Sohn’s editor suggests that she make the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela alone, leaving her spouse, child and smartphone at home, she is not immediately enthusiastic. Finally, she lets herself be tempted by the adventure to draw a magnificent graphic novel: Startpublished by Casterman.

After putting the essentials in a small backpack, Lili Sohn leaves on foot for 45 days on the road to Compostela. The opportunity for her to analyze her relationship with her smartphone and her social networks, and much more: in the midst of magnificent landscapes mapped especially for us, the author also tells how you occupy the space as lonely woman on this much borrowed path, her relationship with her body she is testing after surviving cancer and all the things that fuel her inner monologue during this month and a half of walking.

It is beautiful, it is subtle, and you close it by dreaming of solitude and wide spaces. A special holiday crush!