Spit and Passion

Punk writer and illustrator Cristy Road creates her first graphic novel as a variant of her own charming and angst-ridden coming-of-age story. Cuban-American and raised in a traditional Catholic family, the preteen Road has a number of identity issues: she does not fit into her cultural mold, she finds salvation in punk rock, and she has a conflicted gender identity. Embracing her tomboy nature, Road begins to come to terms with herself as a queer woman, building a closet for her secret that becomes her refuge. As always, her expression feels genuine and relatable and her recollections of pop culture (embraced and rejected) will strike nostalgic chords in readers of that generation. Images are populated by strange and imperfect-looking characters, well-suited to her story, even if she never quite cleanly resolves her identity issues.