Comics and Catharsis
Exploring Graphic Narratives of Trauma and Healing

Jordan Tronsgard (Edited by)

9781496858931

Hardback, published 15 September 2025

254 pages, 52 b&w illustrations
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.666 kg

"Comics and Catharsis is a timely book that adds to writings on health-related trauma, largely work in mental health and sexual violence, and the horrors of war. With a global focus that moves beyond the typical comics canon, this book encourages a broader reading of trauma and the potential for healing across generational, national, and communal traumas." - Matthew Noe, lead collection and knowledge management librarian at Harvard Medical School

Contributions by Kelly Baron, Angie Chau, Jennifer Nagtegaal, Lee Okan, Diana Pifano, Russell Samolsky, Kay Sohini, Anastasia Ulanowicz, and Aanchal Vij

Comics and Catharsis: Exploring Graphic Narratives of Trauma and Healing explores the idea that trauma and healing hold an imbalance in many forms of literature—but especially in the world of comics. Whether it be war-based, national, physical, or sexual trauma, this volume looks at a wide variety of trauma and the psychological pain and devastation that arise during and—crucially for the question of trauma narratives—following the events as the psychological (and often physical) wounds are processed.

Essayists in the collection engage with questions of how comics process trauma through depictions and receptions. Viewing trauma through the lens of comics such as Maus, Persepolis, and Fun Home, as well as works by comics writers who are little-known or unknown outside their communities, contributors analyze how trauma is used in artistic style, writing, and overall storytelling. Together, the essays in Comics and Catharsis show how people who have suffered trauma often flock to these works to find a way to acknowledge and process their own suffering.

Acknowledgments
I. Introduction
Jordan Tronsgard
II. Drawing Apart: Physical and Generational Separation and Belonging
Chapter 1. From Confinement to Catharsis: Reading the Comics Aesthetic in Manuel H. Martín’s Documentary 30 años de oscuridad/30 Years of Darkness
Jennifer Nagtegaal
Chapter 2. Graphic Representations of Violence in La herencia del coronel by Carlos Trillo and Lucas Varela
Diana Pifano
Chapter 3. On the Threshold of Being and Belonging: Refiguring History in Autobiographical Comics
Kay Sohini
III. Drawing Together: Nation and Narrative
Chapter 4. The Burden of Translating History in Li Kunwu’s A Chinese Life
Angie Chau
Chapter 5. "American God" to a Soviet Superman: Exploring the Cathartic Function of Counterfactual Narratives
Aanchal Vij
Chapter 6. Re-Framing (Post-)Soviet Ukrainian History: Walter Duranty, Igort’s The Ukrainian Notebooks, and the Ethics of Graphic Reportage
Anastasia Ulanowicz
IV. Drawing Close: Individual, Intimate, and Traumatic
Chapter 7. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and the Impossibility of Testimony
Kelly Baron
Chapter 8. Graphic Novels and Sexual Trauma: Processing Sexual Trauma Through Creative Expression
Lee Okan
Chapter 9. The Good Empty: Trauma, Displacement, and Catharsis in Sabrina
Russell Samolsky
V. Conclusion
Jordan Tronsgard
List of Contributors
Index