Spit and Passion

October 1, 2012
Veteran punk writer and illustrator Road weaves text and art together in a charming and angst-ridden coming-of-age story. Cuban-American and raised in a traditional Catholic family, the preteen Road has a number of identity issues: she does not fit into her cultural mold, she finds salvation in punk rock, and she has a conflicted gender identity. Embracing her tomboy nature, Road begins to come to terms with herself as a gay woman, building a closet for her secret that becomes her refuge. Road’s identification with her teenage self feels genuine, and her recollections of pop culture (both embraced and rejected) of the 1990s will strike nostalgic chords in readers of that generation. Road balances long sections of prose with pages dominated by art; her pencil and marker style, with images populated by strange and imperfect-looking characters, is well suited to her story, even if the ending doesn’t entirely solve her identity issues. Grotesque images of dangling eyeballs and gushing brains reflect the alternative scene the young Road has discovered. Readers who enjoyed Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home will probably empathize with Road’s story of sexual exploration and punk rock.

January 1, 2013

At age ten, Cristina is drawn to daring songs and to women dancing. Recognizing her emerging gay self, she says she "tried to pretend everyone on earth was gay," but kept it to herself within her warm Cuban Catholic family. Over the next two years, she develops a rich inner life, drawing support from the punk-rock music of Green Day and gay-positive celebrities such as Roseanne Barr and Ellen DeGeneres. She feels safe in her closet for the time being, as "sometimes the doorways felt like pillars, the clothing on the racks like tropical foliage, and the ground like the ocean." The book is more prose-illustration hybrid than comics, since Road's long and fascinating monologues of intellectual post-processing about sexual identity intercut the art. VERDICT The queer Latina experience is underdocumented in general and especially in comics. Freelance illustrator Road excels with portraiture of the transgressive fringe. Her quirky, evocative drawings, black and white with tan wash, seem almost like brain-captures depicting memories of people and feelings. Good for teen collections where gay-identity material is acceptable for this age group. Road includes F-bombs and mention of masturbation but nothing explicit.--M.C.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
As a 12-year-old in Florida, Road felt a constant call to hone her identity: gay, Cuban American, gender queer (although the term wasn't then in her vocabulary), member of a loving and female-dominated household, miserable middle-schooler, and Green Day devotee. Her smarts and imagination allowed her to balance all those things by playing them off of each other through fantasies, fan letters to Billie Joe Armstrong, and the discovery that the school counselor could help her feel better about herself. In this passionate account of self-revelation, Road flashes her talents as a cartoonist and symbolist to portray herself slouching down the school hallway in gender-neutral punk clothing and tearing her eyeballs out and strangling them when overwhelmed. The tight narrative is depicted in loose yet detailed black-and-white art, which evokes a child who is not so much confused as provoked by others' confusion. A brave crossover book for fans of Ariel Schrag or Alison Bechdel, as well as for readers of queer literature who haven't yet experienced a serious graphic novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)