The Mental Load

August 27, 2018
This spirited graphic treatise, growing from a viral web cartoon, aims to provide a friendly introduction to contemporary feminist issues. Emma’s smiling cartoon avatar discusses the division of work and home labor, the problems of navigating a hostile workplace, sexual objectification, the blowback women face for getting angry or aggressive, and the location of the clitoris. A few chapters digress into other progressive issues in the cartoonist’s home country of France, including workers’ rights and discrimination against Muslim immigrants. The art is limited to sparse, squiggly drawings, mostly talking heads, slotted between blocks of cursive font text. Although Emma covers an impressive range of topics, her treatment is heavy on anecdote and opinion, light on in-depth analysis or factual information. The strongest section is the final chapter, “The Holidays,” a personal piece on childbirth and adapting to the stress of life with an infant; it manages to blend the personal and the political with precise, honest insights. Most of the book, however, feels underdeveloped, typical perhaps of a web-posted piece but not as well adapted to a larger print volume. That said, the timeliness of the book and its easy reading poise it to be a likely gift buy to mark feminist friendships.

November 15, 2018
?With the kind of insight one only gains through a lifetime of first-hand experience, French blogger, artist, and writer Emma asks the reader to question the ways Western culture undervalues women yet expects them to disproportionately shoulder the mental load of invisible and unpaid labor: the endless daily responsibilities, decisions, and organization that ensure things run smoothly at home and work. Vignettes focusing on microaggressions, sexual harassment and objectification, and the professional and personal costs of motherhood are conveyed through a combination of drawings and dialogue, longer text passages, and personal narratives. The somewhat flat illustrations are simply drawn figures set against extensive white space, yet they convey a remarkable amount of information through body language and facial expressions. The intensity and universality of the issues can feel overwhelming, but the gravity is tempered somewhat by pointed humor. What is so clearly evident throughout is the physical and emotional toll extracted from women and people of color by societies that continue to value white men above all others. Timely and necessary.?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)