The first book in a new series,Lissabrings anthropological research to life in comic form, combining scholarly insights and accessible, visually-rich storytelling to foster greater understanding of global politics, inequalities, and solidarity.

Publisher Marketing: ..".deftly explores diverse political, medical, and ethical themes in one accessible yet erudite package. Essential reading for the graphic medicine community." - Ian Williams, physician, cartoonist, and founder of graphicmedicine.org Brief Description : "Anna is the daughter of Americans working in Cairo. But she feels more at home with the humble family of her friend Layla, who lives in the doorman's shack adjacent to Anna's apartment building. As the women grow up, their unlikely friendship is put to the test as they each face a family health crisis. Gulfs of misunderstanding emerge as Anna deals with her family history of breast cancer and Layla makes difficult decisions about her father's kidney failure"-- Commendation Quotes : "A dizzying, gripping, and beautiful journey into the world of medicine and mortality--not just its complex emotional universe, but the political realities that structure it too." - Jack Shenker, author of The Egyptians: A Radical Story Commendation Quotes : ..".required reading for anyone interested in the Egyptian revolution, but also for anyone interested in the complexities of being human and being alive in the twenty-first century." - Ganzeer, Egyptian revolutionary, street artist/author Commendation Quotes : ..".a compelling entry into how issues of illness, mortality, and decisions around them are always shaped in the particulars of history and politics. Bravo!" - Faye Ginsburg, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History at New York University Commendation Quotes : ..".offers an intimate and powerful understanding of contemporary medicine and politics." - Emmanuel Guibert, author of The Photographer Commendation Quotes : ..".a brilliant fictional account of organ failure, genetic testing, and organ transplantation...a must-read for our alarming times." - Margaret Lock, Ph.D., author of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death Commendation Quotes : "A tangled and controversial journey through injustice and disease, infused with a healthy dose of revolutionary spirit along the way." - Mohamed and Haitham Raafat El-seht, Twins Cartoon Commendation Quotes : "A visually compelling and sensitively presented work that demonstrates how juxtaposing sequential art with narrative can render extremely complex global processes and phenomena into a gripping human story." - Benjamin Dix, Director, PositiveNegatives Commendation Quotes : " Lissa utilizes comics to the fullest, weaving the complexities of friendship, illness, and faith together in a way that bridges cultures and dispels misconceptions, while offering a narrative that engages readers to the very end." - Lina Ghaibeh, Professor of Animation and Comics, American University of Beirut Commendation Quotes : ..".deftly explores diverse political, medical, and ethical themes in one accessible yet erudite package. Essential reading for the graphic medicine community." - Ian Williams, physician, cartoonist, and founder of graphicmedicine.org Commendation Quotes : "With Lissa , the creators have set a new standard for academically oriented comics." - Matthew Noe, author at Graphic Medicine Commendation Quotes : ..".brilliant storytelling and stunning scholarship." - Anne Fausto-Sterling, Ph.D., author of Sexing the Body Commendation Quotes : ..".offers an intimate and powerful understanding of contemporary medicine and politics." - Emmanuel Guibert, author of The Photographer Commendation Quotes : ..".a brilliant fictional account of organ failure, genetic testing, and organ transplantation...a must-read for our alarming times." - Margaret Lock, Ph.D., author of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death Commendation Quotes : A dizzying, gripping, and beautiful journey into the world of medicine and mortality--not just its complex emotional universe, but the political realities that structure it too... including, most urgently, the imaginations of a younger generation still fighting for an alternative future. - Jack Shenker, author of The Egyptians: A Radical Story Commendation Quotes : I would, without hesitation, deem Lissa required reading for anyone interested in the Egyptian revolution, but also for anyone interested in the complexities of being human and being alive in the twenty-first century. - Ganzeer, Egyptian revolutionary street artist/author Commendation Quotes : ...a spectacular way to inaugurate the breakthrough ethnoGRAPHIC series. Lissa offers a compelling entry into how issues of illness, mortality, and decisions around them are always shaped in the particulars of history and politics. Bravo! - Faye Ginsburg, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History at New York University Commendation Quotes : ...brilliant storytelling and stunning scholarship. - Anne Fausto-Sterling, Ph.D., author of Sexing the Body Commendation Quotes : Filled with vivid characters who cry, bleed, and hope, Lissa offers an intimate and powerful understanding of contemporary medicine and politics. - Emmanuel Guibert, author of The Photographer Commendation Quotes : Lissa , a brilliant fictional account of organ failure, genetic testing, and organ transplantation, is portrayed in manga-like images. Human encounters, political events, and, above all, memories explode in time and space across the pages. A must-read for our alarming times. - Margaret Lock, Ph.D., author of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death Commendation Quotes : ...a tangled and controversial journey through injustice and disease, infused with a healthy dose of revolutionary spirit along the way. - Mohamed and Haitham Raafat El-seht, Twins Cartoon Commendation Quotes : A visually compelling and sensitively presented work that demonstrates how juxtaposing sequential art with narrative can render extremely complex global processes and phenomena into a gripping human story. - Benjamin Dix, SOAS, University of London, Director, PositiveNegatives (positivenegatives.org) Commendation Quotes : So accessible is the image/text language of comics that it frequently manages to cross all sorts of borders: national, cultural, and generational. Lissa utilizes the medium to the fullest, weaving the complexities of friendship, illness, and faith together in a way that bridges cultures and dispels misconceptions, while offering a narrative that engages readers to the very end. - Lina Ghaibeh, Professor of Animation and Comics, American University of Beirut Commendation Quotes : "A visually compelling and sensitively presented work that demonstrates how juxtaposing sequential art with narrative can render extremely complex global processes and phenomena into a gripping human story." - Benjamin Dix, Director, PositiveNegatives Commendation Quotes : "A dizzying, gripping, and beautiful journey into the world of medicine and mortality--not just its complex emotional universe, but the political realities that structure it too." - Jack Shenker, author of The Egyptians: A Radical Story Commendation Quotes : ..".required reading for anyone interested in the Egyptian revolution, but also for anyone interested in the complexities of being human and being alive in the twenty-first century." - Ganzeer, Egyptian revolutionary, street artist/author Commendation Quotes : ..".a compelling entry into how issues of illness, mortality, and decisions around them are always shaped in the particulars of history and politics. Bravo!" - Faye Ginsburg, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History at New York University Commendation Quotes : ..".brilliant storytelling and stunning scholarship." - Anne Fausto-Sterling, Ph.D., author of Sexing the Body Commendation Quotes : "A tangled and controversial journey through injustice and disease, infused with a healthy dose of revolutionary spirit along the way." - Mohamed and Haitham Raafat El-seht, Twins Cartoon Commendation Quotes : " Lissa utilizes comics to the fullest, weaving the complexities of friendship, illness, and faith together in a way that bridges cultures and dispels misconceptions, while offering a narrative that engages readers to the very end." - Lina Ghaibeh, Professor of Animation and Comics, American University of Beirut Commendation Quotes : "With Lissa , the creators have set a new standard for academically oriented comics." - Matthew Noe, author at Graphic Medicine Commendation Quotes : "...a compelling entry into how issues of illness, mortality, and decisions around them are always shaped in the particulars of history and politics. Bravo!" - Faye Ginsburg, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History at New York University Commendation Quotes : "...required reading for anyone interested in the Egyptian revolution, but also for anyone interested in the complexities of being human and being alive in the twenty-first century." - Ganzeer, Egyptian revolutionary, street artist/author Commendation Quotes : "...brilliant storytelling and stunning scholarship." - Anne Fausto-Sterling, Ph.D., author of Sexing the Body Commendation Quotes : "...offers an intimate and powerful understanding of contemporary medicine and politics." - Emmanuel Guibert, author of The Photographer Commendation Quotes : "...a brilliant fictional account of organ failure, genetic testing, and organ transplantation...a must-read for our alarming times." - Margaret Lock, Ph.D., author of Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death Commendation Quotes : "I assigned Lissa in my Contemporary Islam seminar that included both undergraduate and graduate students. Despite my initial apprehension about leading a class discussion on a graphic novel, the conversations we had were most exciting and energetic. ... I believe my students responded so well to Lissa because it presents a fresh and innovative take on what is possible in scholarship. I would certainly assign this book again and again and I hope it gets the wide readership it deserves." - Nur Amali Ibrahim, Indiana University Commendation Quotes : "...deftly explores diverse political, medical, and ethical themes in one accessible yet erudite package. Essential reading for the graphic medicine community." - Ian Williams, physician, cartoonist, and founder of graphicmedicine.org Table of Contents : Acknowledgments Foreword: Lissa and the Transduction of Ethnography by George E. Marcus Part I Cairo Part II Five Years Later Part III Revolution A Note About Page 235, Featuring the Art of Ganzeer Afterword: Reading Lissa by Paul Karasik Appendix I Timeline of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution Appendix II Creating Lissa : Concepts, Collaborations, and Craft Appendix III Teaching Guide Appendix IV Key References and Further Reading Biographical Note : Sherine Hamdy is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. She is currently writing a young-adult graphic novel that tells the coming-of-age story of a Muslim-American woman. Coleman Nye is Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University. She was born and raised in Virginia, but now lives in Vancouver, BC. Caroline Brewer graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2016 with a degree in Illustration and a concentration in Literary Arts + Studies. They are the author of Autodesk's science fiction anthology FOUR . Currently living in Brooklyn, NY, their work explores themes of childhood, gender, love, and the magically real. Sarula Bao graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2016 with a BFA in Illustration. Based in Brooklyn, NY, her sequential work explores the queer Chinese-American experience. Review Quotes : "Lissa intertwines academic knowledge and storytelling, Egypt and the United States, as well as the private sphere in which individuals/families make medical decisions and the public sphere in which health care systems operate, governments govern (or fail to do so), and citizens rebel against governments. The outcome, as academic and non-academic reviewers unanimously attest, is a highly informative yet readable and engrossing book." Review Quotes : "I have nothing but admiration for this book. The story is compelling--even a page turner. Moreover, it is informative, historically and culturally situated and uplifting--or, at least, it ends on a hopeful note--teaching hard truths, or glimpses of them, in an accessible and digestible way." Review Quotes : "Revolution is as intimate as family and as mammoth as regime change in this graphic novel focused on the 2011 Tahrir Square demonstrations. This is the book's greatest strength: its belief in decency, even amidst violence and trauma. Its hopeful mood is mirrored by the book's rounded, flowing visuals: Bandages flutter like hair ribbons, water sluices down Anna's surgical scars, and Layla's eyes are wide as she tends to the grievously wounded. This is a chronicle of conflict, to be sure, but it is also a tribute to persistence of friendship and the power of a people united." Review Quotes : "Whether you read Lissa to educate yourself about health issues or research methods, or you just want to find out what happens to Layla and Anna, this graphic novel shows the huge and still untapped potential of comics for use in medicine and global health." Review Quotes : "In Lissa , Hamdy, Nye, their artists Bao, Brewer, and Parenteau show us how we can collaboratively transform anthropology's ways of seeing and communicating depth and nuance in our ethnographies. As the first publication in the new ethnoGRAPHIC series from University of Toronto Press, Lissa sets a high bar and positive tone for what we can expect from this series. Like most great books, Lissa allows the reader to bring different meanings and needs to the book, engaging them in multiple conversations that explore the ways in which we are connected." Review Quotes : "The complexity of the various ethical and medical dilemmas gives the work depth and pathos without making the arguments appear didactic. It is indeed the ethnographic research--the minor characters and their voices--that give the book its special strength." Review Quotes : "With the University of Toronto's imprimatur and its ethnoGRAPHIC series, surely there are no more excuses not to expand what counts as professional, promotion-worthy ethnography. And Lissa offers a fantastic model of how to proceed. Congratulations to its visionary authors and editors." Review Quotes : "...offers slices of contrasting Egyptian and American biomedicines and uses the characters' dilemmas to pry open the contradictions within and between these medical systems." Review Quotes : Lissa is an eminently teachable text, and it was clearly designed with the classroom in mind. Review Quotes : "The storytelling in LISSA is innovative in the sense that it shows people's lives without resorting to broad stroke generalizations. The novel also nicely covers key aspects of cyber-activism, social media and texting - tools that were instrumental in communicating during the revolution." Review Quotes : "Through its story of intercultural friendship and its backstory of international and interdisciplinary collaboration, Lissa invites us to take an unusual - fictional, graphic- and highly original path to the heart of the ethnographic encounter. It is a journey I am excited to take with my students, and I look forward to seeing the next titles in the ethnographic series." Review Quotes : "As the debut of a new editorial series (ethnoGRAPHIC) that aims at promoting long-form ethnographic accounts into comic form, Lissa is without a doubt an editorial break-through that helps to bring balance to an otherwise dominantly textual field." Publisher Marketing : As young girls in Cairo, Anna and Layla strike up an unlikely friendship that crosses class, cultural, and religious divides. Years later, Anna learns that she may carry the hereditary cancer gene responsible for her mother's death. Meanwhile, Layla's family is faced with a difficult decision about kidney transplantation. Their friendship is put to the test when these medical crises reveal stark differences in their perspectives...until revolutionary unrest in Egypt changes their lives forever. The first book in a new series, Lissa brings anthropological research to life in comic form, combining scholarly insights and accessible, visually-rich storytelling to foster greater understanding of global politics, inequalities, and solidarity. Contributor Bio: Hamdy, Sherine Sherine Hamdy is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. She is currently writing a young-adult graphic novel that tells the coming-of-age story of a Muslim-American woman.

Format: Paperback | Pages: 304 | Publication Date: 2017-11-14