My short story “How To Make A Man Out of Tin Foil” is online! This angsty story about boyhood and masculinity at a Jewish summer camp is now available on Bitch Magazine’s website.
I did this story for the upcoming feminist comics anthology The Big Feminist BUT, an anthology of feminist comics by both women and men. The list of contributors is, frankly, AMAZING — Hope Larson! Jeffrey Brown! Sarah Oleksyk! Jen Wang! Shaenon Garrity! Tom Neely! — and I can’t wait to read my copy. If you’re interested, please kick in a few bucks to the Big Feminist BUT’s kickstarter campaign.
Ouch. Well done.
I hate to say it, and won’t get specific, but while reading it I was reminded of my workplace.
Grace
Thanks, Ampersand.
This is a really beautiful and important comic that resonated with me strongly, and I want to make sure as many people read it as possible.
Can you guess what I did at recess instead of playing kickball?
I’ll be donating to that kickstarter. :)
—Myca
This cartoon made me feel bad.
It made me feel bad because I was the blonde kid who didn’t hassle the kid who having a hard time, but who didn’t stand up for him either.
God damn it.
I was thinking last night about how much of politics is explained by who we identify with in this comic.
But, then, I’m also in the “you’re either Jean Valjean or you’re Javert” camp, so I may be lending fiction too much explanatory power.
—Myca
Great comic (in an “ouch” kind of way).
I never had a camp experience as a child, partially because they’re not really done in Israel, and partially because by the time I was of the relevant age, my parents knew better than to assume it would be a positive experience. But I could very easily have been the kid in that comic.
Thanks for comments, everyone.
Robert, your comment about T-Bird (the blonde kid) is interesting to me, because I never even thought of looking at T-Bird’s position like that. I think of T-Bird as a fairly nice character who treats Joel well.
He liked action figures, but was embarrassed to say so because he valued his high social status. He could have helped Joel at soccer. And he knew Joel was the one taking the tinfoil and that what he really needed was a friend.
No, he wasn’t a bad guy, quite the opposite. But he could have been better. Boromir flagellates himself for not being Aragorn WAY more than Wormtongue flagellates himself for not being a decent person.
Your kickstarter made the pages of Comics Alliance! link here
As always, Amp, you knock it out of the park. The more I think about your comic, the more layers and questions come up. Excellent.
Camp experience proved more alienating than empowering, check.
Unable to make contact with any moving round object, check.
Felt safe(r) in fantasy/books than playing with other kids, check.
Stole small items and snuck around, lying and denying culpability, check.
That was me, minus the action figures.
Nicely done. You tapped into some powerful stuff here, and you did it movingly and well.
Very, very good. I never had a camp experience, but this reminds me of elementary school when I only had one friend (everyone else was a jerk) and the teachers thought it was a good idea to put us in different classes and to not let me read during recess. This only made me more antisocial, plus totally distrustful of their “authority,” and it led me to questioning if my friendship and occasionally acting like a jackass.
I know a lot of people, me included, had awful camp experiences. But I didn’t mean this as an anti-camp story.
I went to a couple of different camps. The second, better one was actually a great place I remember fondly. Did they get me all the way to the point of being able to interact socially like other boys could? No. Did they get me part of the way in the right direction? I think they did, and I’m grateful for that.
Some kids are going to have a miserable summer no matter what. Camps can, if they’re good, make the summer less miserable than they might otherwise have been. Realistically, the problems some kids have aren’t able to cured by summer camp; just a bit of mitigation is a victory.
I didn’t take the comic to be a criticism of camp, but (in part) a criticism of the kind of parenting/teaching/guidance that essentially thinks that being able to happily participate in normative social activities is a choice. The camp counciler in the comic isn’t malicious; he just thinks that the boy is being “weird” because he wants to, and that if he were just forced to overcome his reluctance and play along with everyone else he’d be quick to grow to love it. I guess that must have been the thinking behind Alyson’s teachers decisions, too.
I didn’t take it as an anti-camp story either. I was just noting that you hit all the marks of a child who didn’t fit in. I was amazed how many of those marks I and the fictional character had in common. But yes, I remember from previous posts that you do have fond memories of camp and I’m glad to be reminded it’s not all alienation and disaffection.