Graphic Medicine at the TBRC Library: Our Collection

An inspiring and surprisingly comedic tale of loss and acceptance told largely through silent sequential narrative.

Health topics: breast cancer, body image

Demonstrates how comics can address topics such as disease outbreaks, opioid addiction prevention, healthcare reform, and climate change while eliciting empathy, clarifying complexity, and broadening perspectives.

Health topics: public health, health literacy

Marguerite finally investigates the root of her discomfort: after a journey of tough conversations with her loved ones, doctors, and the internet, she discovers that she has Aspergers. Her life is profoundly changed - for the better.

Health topics: Asperger's syndrome

An honest and heartfelt look at one young woman's exploration of her sexuality, mental well-being, and growing up in our modern age.

Health topics: depression

A self-help guide of tips, tricks and tools by someone who has been through it all and come through stronger for it.

Health topics: bipolar disorder

A friendly, easy-to-understand explainer for making comic zines from comics educator Eddy Atoms! Appropriate for kids to adults, this guide shows you the basic steps for creating your very own comic, from brainstorming and character design to layouts and production.

This little red book is stuffed with information about zines. Things you may know, stuff you don't know and even stuff you didn't know you didn't know!

A zine is a handmade magazine or mini-comic about anything you can imagine: favorite bands, personal stories, subcultures, or collections. They contain diary entries, rants, interviews, and stories. This book is for anyone who wants to create their own zine. It's for learning tips and tricks from contributors who have been at the fore front of the zine movement.

“What happens when a shoe-crazy, lipstick-obsessed, wine-swilling, pasta-slurping, fashion-fanatic, about-to-get-married big-city girl cartoonist with a fabulous life finds ... a lump in her breast?” That’s the question that sets this powerful, funny, and poignant graphic memoir in motion.

Health topics: cancer

The origin story of a student with hearing loss and a hearing aid becoming a superhero. Like other great works for children, it provides the opportunity for young readers to consider how they would act or react in a similar situation, helping to build empathy and understanding through the power of story.

Health topics: disability

Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother. But when it was finally the perfect time, conceiving turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages, and her eventual successful pregnancy plagued by health issues, up to a dramatic, near-death experience during labor and delivery.

Health topics: fertility, pregnancy

A graphic memoir of eating disorders, abuse, and recovery. Like most kids, Katie was a picky eater. She'd sit at the table in silent protest, hide uneaten toast in her bedroom, listen to parental threats that she'd have to eat it for breakfast. But in any life, a set of circumstances can collide, and normal behavior can soon shade into something sinister, something deadly.

Health topics: eating disorders

Shortly before her thirtieth birthday, Forney was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Flagrantly manic and terrified that medications would cause her to lose creativity, she began a years-long struggle to find mental stability while retaining her passions and creativity.

Health topics: bipolar disorder

Each year, approximately 1.5 million people in the United States and Canada are diagnosed with cancer. This is one family's story. An honest, unflinching, and sometimes humorous look at the practical and emotional effect that serious illness can have on patients and their families, Mom's Cancer is a story of hope--uniquely told in words and illustrations.

Health topics: cancer

My Degeneration examines the current state of Parkinson’s care, including doctor/patient relations and the repercussions of a disease that, among other things, impairs movement, can rob patients of their ability to speak or write, degrades sufferers’ ability to deal with complexity, and interferes with the sense of balance. But My Degeneration is more than a Parkinson’s memoir. Dunlap-Shohl gives the person newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease the information necessary to cope with it on a day-to-day basis.

Health topics: Parkinson's disease

Stitches tells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy who awakes one day from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he has been transformed into a virtual mute--a vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot. From horror to hope, Small proceeds to graphically portray an almost unbelievable descent into adolescent hell and the difficult road to physical, emotional, and artistic recovery.

Health topics: recovery

Nurse MK Czerwiec began working at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center's HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 in the 1990s--a pivotal time in the history of AIDS. Deaths from the disease in the United States peaked in 1995 and then dropped drastically in the following years, with the release of effective drug treatments. In this graphic memoir, Czerwiec provides an insider's view of the lives of healthcare workers, patients, and loved ones from Unit 371. With humor, insight, and emotion, MK shows how the patients and staff cared for one another, how the sick faced their deaths, and how the survivors looked for hope in what seemed, at times, like a hopeless situation.

Health topics: AIDS/HIV, nursing