Emmy Waldman, "Filial Lines: Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, and Comics Form" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

*Filial Lines: Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel and Comics Form* examines how specific formal tropes—boxes, spirals, tic-tac-toe, mirrors, and webs—shape autobiographical narratives and parent-child relationships. These formal elements function as psychoanalytic tools, allowing authors to process trauma and inheritance beyond the limitations of verbal exposition. The "box" motif in *Maus* bridges Talmudic page structures with the construction of traumatic history, while mirroring and spiderwebs in Alison Bechdel’s work model complex, embodied subjectivities. This formal methodology extends to contemporary works like Tessa Hulls’ *Feeding Ghosts*, illustrating a lineage of graphic memoirists who utilize the medium to navigate multi-generational trauma. By treating comics as a relational form, the analysis reveals how these authors center their parents’ histories to define their own identities, ultimately demonstrating that graphic memoirists often remain secondary characters within their own life stories.