I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

In this sprawling and timely graphic novel, author Mannie Murphy traces and untangles her own personal history with the city of Portland alongside its history of white nationalism, racism, bigotry, and exclusion. Told in the style of an illustrated diary, Murphy ties together disparate historical threads from the 19th century to the 21st, and tells the story of her own adolescence in Portland during the turbulent 1990s. A coming of age story about Murphy as much as it is a coming of age story about Portland, I Never Promised You A Rose Garden is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of Portland's insidious past and the ways that that past still haunts the present. Murphy's nonfiction graphic account offers a more complete and less romanticized picture of Portland and the state of Oregon than one tends to find in popular representations of the Rose City.