Even the most imperfect journey can lead to beauty. Tereza never thought she would go bald before her boyfriend did. She couldn’t imagine being unable to sweep her hair up in a ponytail or to style it in other ways. But when she lost all her hair in just a couple of months due to alopecia, her perspective on relationships and work—and above all, herself— radically changed. Navigating the particular trauma of female hair loss, Tereza comes to terms with her new reality with humor and self-reflection in this prize-winning graphic memoir featuring eye-catching art by Štěpánka Jislová.

Fat girl problems. Derided by her high-school peers for being overweight, Rachel finally found a sense of purpose and belonging in a promising career as an EMT—that is, until her body got in the way. Shrink is a work of graphic medicine that depicts the emotional and physical realities of inhabiting a large body in a world that is constantly warning about the medical and social dangers of being “too fat.” This smart and candid book challenges the idea that weight loss is the only path for a fat person and encourages the reader to question the prevailing cultural and medical discourse about fat bodies. Seamlessly weaving the most current research on the fatness debate with her own experiences of living in a fat body, Thomas lays bare society’s obsession with size and advocates for each of us to push back on body weight bias and determine what’s right for our own health and well-being, both physical and mental.

Voices from the Middle East on the fight for self-determination. Much of the present discourse about the pro-democracy Arab uprisings of 2011 paints a bleak picture of their defeat. But the truth is more complicated, and moments of struggle and inspiration still recur despite the overwhelming odds against the movements’ success. This collection of short comics documents the political and social unrest in the Middle East during the 2010s, in such places as Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, and Bahrain. A collaboration between writer and journalist Yazan Al-Saadi and a lineup of stellar cartoonists from the region—Tracy Chahwan, Ganzeer, Ghadi Ghosn, Omar Khouri, Sirène Moukheiber, Hicham Rahma, and Enas Satir—this graphic reportage serves as a witness to an era of counterrevolutionary resurgence in which entrenched powers clashed with the people’s struggle for self-determination.

A real-life mystery of books and basketball. Frankie King was a precocious student and a promising basketball player at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School in the early 1950s. Sportswriters were comparing Frankie to the greatest college and professional players of all time, and he was recruited as a starting guard at the University of North Carolina. But Frankie dropped out before playing a single game. This graphic novel follows King’s enigmatic life from its auspicious start in the limelight to his very reclusive existence in New York City, where he authored more than forty novels, including a popular series of cozy cat mysteries written under the pseudonym Lydia Adamson. Whatever Happened to Frankie King is the story of a unique and sometimes troubled life as well as a meditation on dreams realized, lost, and abandoned.

I want to share my story to understand what is happening to me. Fernando Balius was a perfectly ordinary, if misunderstood, young adult—until he started hearing voices. In Traces of Madness, Fernando describes what it feels like, both mentally and physically, to lose your grip on reality. His life spins out of control when the voices he hears inside his head, depicted in the narrative as a monster, work to destroy his self-esteem and, worse, urge him to hurt himself. Various psychiatric diagnoses and prescribed medications do more harm than good, prompting Fernando to question whether stifling his voices is truly the right path for him. Throughout his experiences, he finds that his connections with others lend him the strength to survive. Mario Pellejer’s moving illustrations bring Nando’s remarkable story to life. This raw and uniquely hopeful graphic memoir shows the power of community and understanding and encourages us all to push back in solidarity against the pervasive stigma surrounding mental illness.

Joyous musings on the meaningful and the mundane for troubled times. In her debut graphic novel, Sarah Firth ponders some of life’s deepest philosophical questions: Why are we here? How are we supposed to get along with one another? What on earth is that slug doing in my bathroom sink? From daydreams and pop culture memes to the teachings of science, philosophy, and history, Firth weaves together a mix of great and silly ideas based on her own lived experience, all tossed together with unique energy, boundless curiosity and humor, and colorful, detailed, kinetic drawings. Through eight autobiographical visual essays, Firth explores how to live better in the modern world; ways to be more compassionate toward oneself, others, and the planet; and how everything does, eventually, connect. Honest, profound, and profane, Eventually Everything Connects is a life-affirming book about the joys and pains of living in a hypercomplex and uncertain world.

From the front lines of the Syrian refugee crisis. While on assignment between 2013 and 2017, often for Doctors Without Borders, Olivier Kugler interviewed and photographed Syrian refugees and their caregivers in camps, on the road, and in provisional housing in Iraqi Kurdistan, Greece, France, Switzerland, and England. Escaping Wars and Waves is the astonishing result of that record keeping—a graphic novel that brings to life the improvised living conditions of the refugees, along with the stories of how they survived. Kugler captures the chaotic energy of the camps through movement-filled drawings that depict figures, locations, and seemingly random details that take on their own resonance. He gives precedence to the voices of the refugees by incorporating excerpts from his many interviews and portraits sketched from thousands of reference photos. What emerges is a complicated and intense narrative of loss, sadness, fear, and hope and an indelible impression of the refugees as individual humans with their own stories, rather than a faceless mass. Escaping Wars and Waves is an unnervingly close and poignant look at the lives of those affected by the Syrian war and the volunteers who tend to them.

A village in the crossfire of civil war. A family searching for safety. In the tradition of Maus, Palestine, and Persepolis, Vanni is a graphic novel documenting the human side of the conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the “Tamil Tigers.” Told from the perspective of a single family, it takes readers through the horrors and life-changing decisions individuals are forced to make when caught up in someone else’s war. Set in the northern region of Sri Lanka, which was devastated by the civil war, this graphic novel follows the Ramachandran family as they flee their home after the 2004 tsunami and move from one displacement camp to the next, seeking an ever-elusive safe haven and struggling to keep each other alive. Inspired by Benjamin Dix’s experience working in Sri Lanka for the United Nations during the war, Vanni draws on more than four years of meticulous research, official reports, and first-hand interviews with refugees. Elegantly drawn by Lindsay Pollock, it depicts heroic acts of kindness and horrific acts of violence, memorializing the experiences of the Tamil civilians against the forces that seek to erase their memory.

What does choice really mean for a woman? In I Don’t Want to Be a Mom, Irene Olmo recounts her coming-of-age transformation from assuming she will one day start a family to realizing that she just doesn’t want to be a mom. With an affecting mix of humor and introspection, she describes the subtle and not-so-subtle ways she was pressured to have children and the feelings of isolation and self-doubt that ensued. Her delightful full-color illustrations capture perfectly the maddeningly narrow-minded reactions of those around her as well as her own discomfort and frustration. A true story of liberation and self-empowerment in the face of societal prejudice, I Don’t Want to Be a Mom questions the imposition of motherhood on women as both an expectation and a path toward fulfillment. It shows us that "choice" has more than one dimension and that, ultimately, some questions in life are more complicated than they seem.