When it was published in 2017, Emil Ferris' first graphic novel, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters was celebrated as an instant classic. Art Spiegelman called Ferris "one of the most important comics artists of our time," and the book won dozens of prizes. The long-awaited second half of the book, just published this May, continues the story of 10-year-old Karen Reyes as she investigates the death of her neighbor, Holocaust survivor Anka Silverberg, falls in love for the first time, and thinks a whole lot about the Biblical character Judith. Ferris takes inspiration from 1950s horror and science fiction comics and gruesome paintings, and the book's images are often painful and distressing, if also unforgettable. In this book club meeting, we'll gather to discuss Ferris' books, with particular attention to how and why she centers the history of the Holocaust in telling the story of a queer, non-Jewish pre-teen in 1968 Chicago--and what we love about monsters. 

This will be part of an ongoing series in which literary scholar Josh Lambert will lead discussions of recent and classic works of Jewish (and Jewish-ish) literature.

Josh Lambert is the Sophia Moses Robison Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and English, and the director of the Jewish Studies Program, at Wellesley College. Previously, he spent ten years as the academic director of the Yiddish Book Center, and he has taught as a visiting professor at NYU, UMass Amherst, Princeton, and Harvard. His books include The Literary Mafia (2022), Unclean Lips (2014), and the anthology How Yiddish Changed America, and How America Changed Yiddish (2020). His reviews and essays appear regularly in newspapers and magazines, including the Atlantic, the New York Times Book Review, Jewish Currents, and Lilith.