Dancing After TEN

by Vivian Chong, Georgia Webber

Overview

A graphic biography about a woman who lives a vital and fulfilling artistic life after a rare disease left her blind.

In late 2004, Vivian Chong’s life was changed forever when a rare skin disease, TEN (Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis), left her with scar tissue that would eventually blind her. As she was losing her sight, she put down as many drawings on paper as she could to document the experience. In Dancing After TEN, Chong teams up with cartoonist Georgia Webber — whose graphic autobiography, Dumb, chronicled her own disability — to trace her journey out of the darkness and into the spotlight. Chong now expresses her art through singing, stand-up, drumming, running, and dancing. This graphic novel is an inspirational tale and a powerful work of graphic medicine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683963165
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	06/02/2020
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	804,393
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 11.20(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Vivian Chong is a visual artist, dancer, singer-songwriter, graphic novelist, drummer, potter, motivational speaker, and the creator of a one-woman stand-up show. She lives in Toronto.

Georgia Webber is a comics artist, writer, and editor living in southern Ontario.

Editorial Reviews

Together Chong and Webber create a comics language that paradoxically communicates sightlessness through drawing. Across the book, images register both how Chong is seen by the external world and how she feels, translating sensation to the page: There are images that are blurry, inexact, fuzzy—and sometimes bold, clear and colorful, especially when she begins to reclaim her body through movement. The result is a unique comics document of visceral embodiment.

The New York Times Book Review - Hillary L. Chute

03/23/2020

The process behind this collaborative graphic memoir by Chong and Webber (Dumb: Living Without a Voice) is as noteworthy as its unusual illness narrative, even if the life lessons imparted by Chong don’t quite land. She is vacationing in Saint Martin with her roommate (and ex-boyfriend), Seth, and his family, when Chong has a severe reaction to a medication, leading to Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis syndrome, a coma, protracted and humiliating medical treatments, and scar tissue that causes visual and later hearing impairment. Seth abandons her as soon she is hospitalized. Her current boyfriend, Michael, who finds her after she is air-lifted to Toronto, is more responsible but still no prize. She finally confronts Seth, who oozes self-centered shame, and forgives him during a role-playing exercise in a healing workshop, an activity no doubt more satisfying for the participant than the reader. Chong finds artistic outlets, including stand-up comedy and developing this memoir, which she begins originally as a theatrical endeavor after surgery temporarily restores some of her sight. While uneven in character development, the artistic collaboration is thoughtful—Chong’s shaky and unfinished sketches alternate with Webber’s more professional renditions in firmer lines with teal shading. Webber’s own prior graphic memoir described losing her voice; the dance between their styles illustrates how artists with differing experiences and abilities can partner to make art that’s elevated by the experiment. Chong’s conclusion that “freedom is forgiveness” doesn’t resonate nearly as much as the work’s subtler implication, that freedom is resilience and teamwork. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"A beautiful volume detailing Chong's life now."

Ms. Magazine

"A stunning graphic memoir. Chong brings her story to light in a way as beautiful as it is memorable."

Bitch Media

"Together Chong and Webber create a comics language that paradoxically communicates sightlessness through drawing. ... The result is a unique comics document of visceral embodiment."

The New York Times

"A compelling, uncommon story. Readers interested in disability and/or graphic medicine will value this work."

Booklist

"In Stone Fruit, relationships are characters unto their own — tangled, evolving, alchemical. Lee Lai is a major new comics talent."

Jillian Tamaki (This One Summer)

"[Chong and Webber's] achievement underscores the message from advocates on behalf of those with disabilities — focus on what people can do, not what they can't."

Toronto Star

"In sharing the story of how she found joy, and a new self, after Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis syndrome took her vision, her hearing, and so many things she loved, Vivian Chong has given all of us who have struggled, and continue to struggle, with chronic illness a great gift."

Book Riot

"Dancing After TEN represents an extraordinary testament to Chong’s indomitable spirit."

NPR Books

06/01/2020

Chong was literally scarred for life by a rare reaction to a common medication. Her story is so horrifying that it would be easy to gawk and move on quickly. Instead, in this memoir, Chong's confident voice draws out the complicated reality of a debilitating medical condition with precision and purpose. The titular TEN is Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis, a skin condition that causes burns and scar tissue all over the body, and in Chong's case, an induced coma followed by blindness and a brush with hearing loss. Chong covers her treatment clearly, but her quest to make meaning from the mess takes center stage. Her mother lives on the other side of the world, her hired aide is unkind, her friends and former flames are unreliable, and so she seeks to make her life her own again—by learning to cook, swim, and train a guide dog, but also by creating art from her suffering. Chong's narrative conviction and artistic direction blended with Webber's wiry illustrations are all-enveloping, communicating her huge challenge without pathos. VERDICT A prime example of the graphic medicine genre, which illustrates medical conditions, often through lived experience, this work is engaging and informative but never feels teachy or preachy. [See Douglas Rednour's "Picture This," LJ 4/20.]—Emilia Packard, Tokyo, Japan

Library Journal

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