Mamãe Está com Câncer

by Brian Fies, Laura Zúñiga (Translator)

Estamos todos expostos à mesma realidade. Muitos já vivenciaram ou tiveram contato direto com o câncer. Essa doença nos assombra, nos corrói, nos arranca quem amamos, mas, mesmo com toda essa dor, o primeiro passo para conviver melhor com o câncer é olhar ao seu redor e não sofrer em silêncio.

Situações de perda sempre nos colocam numa posição em que parece que as palavras não funcionam nem confortam. Em casos de doenças graves, como acontece com a personagem Mamãe de, Mamãe Está com Câncer, a dificuldade é outra, pois, além do confronto com a realidade, existe também a incerteza de quão grave é essa doença. E há ainda a esperança, sempre presente, de que esse momento vai ser superado.

Para enfrentar a batalha do câncer de sua mãe, Brian Fies resolveu compartilhar todos os seus questionamentos e emoções em uma história em quadrinhos. Mamãe Está com Câncer surgiu, inicialmente, no formato digital, maneira que Fies encontrou para lidar com a situação aflitiva da mãe e toda a angústia da descoberta em família. O resultado alcançado pelo desenhista, no entanto, foi mais que um desabafo pessoal.

A partir de sua proposta corajosa de colocar no quadrinho as dúvidas, os sentimentos e a verdade de um momento tão difícil, Fies conseguiu criar um ambiente que abre espaço para a empatia. É a história da Mamãe, do narrador e de suas irmãs, mas, ao mesmo tempo, a história de todos que se preocupam com alguém que amam.

Pessoas e famílias inteiras precisam lidar com essa descoberta todos os dias, em todos os cantos do mundo. Ao tocar em um ponto universal, sobre um tema de interesse tão humano, o quadrinista entrega uma obra de emoções reais.

Com um desenho muito dinâmico e versátil, Brian Fies traz a dura realidade, o pesadelo imaginado, a ternura das lembranças e a leveza que a esperança suscita por meio de seu traço. Passeando por estilos, brincando com gêneros e produzindo acertadas metáforas visuais, o artista consegue envolver o leitor com um tema que assusta tanto.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Family, Medicine

128 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2006

About the author

Brian Fies is a science writer, illustrator, and cartoonist whose widely acclaimed first graphic novel, Mom's Cancer, won the 2005 Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic (the first web comic to win the award and inaugurate this new category), the Lulu Blooker Prize for Best Comic, the Harvey Award for Best New Talent, and the German Youth Literature Prize, among other awards and recognition. He lives in northern California.

Reviews

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

How do you cope with cancer when someone you love is dying of it? Heartfelt and inspiring look at how we all have to find a way to navigate health issues when our family is affected. This book reminded me of my grandfather, so many issues came up when he was dying, it really did have an impact on the whole family in unforeseen ways.

[Nicolo · Rating 3 out of 5]

How does one deal when the only parent you have left is diagnosed with cancer? Brian Fies created a web comic to deal with the looming death of loved one.

This book is the complete collection of the strips from the orginal Eisner Award winning web comic. This is a physical copy of something that once available only in the internet, it is actually a step back from its roots in cyberspace, with the current trend of comic publisher going for digital release. But there was a price for its release a graphic novel, the original strips are no longer available online. It is a nice keepsake, something tangible by to be enjoyed by someone who enjoys paper and ink to bytes and pdf.

It is a nice story that surprises. I read it expecting death to come, thinking it inevitable. But even with a 95% mortality rate looming, there is still hope.

Since it is originally a web-only series, its translation to paper is straight forward, one strip per page Fies did not elect to make improvements and take advantage of what one can do on paper. In that way, it is limited But is still a great read.

[Elizabeth A · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was Susan Sontag who wrote: “Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.”

This little graphic memoir is the story of a family visiting and living in the kingdom of the sick. The author's mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and he created and posted these web comics anonymously about the experience. His work has been collected in this book, and won an Eisner.The art is simple and stark, but there are panels that made me hold my breath. I loved the honesty in the telling of this story - the good, the bad and the ugly. A quick read, but one that will stay with me.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Warning: this one is a tearjerker (the book, not my review). Fies recounts his mother’s battle with metastatic lung cancer and the family dynamics that took place during this time. Having gone through a (fortunately lesser) version of this myself this past year, it was both difficult and comforting to read. Ever since losing my father, I’ve felt individuals who go through certain traumatic experiences are all somehow linked to others who have gone through similar experiences. Relationships are established and a kinship is formed where none other would have been. A macabre dead/cancer parents club that outsiders can only sympathize with, but never truly understand. Fies understands, and more importantly, lets you know you aren’t alone in your own understanding.

[Jasmin Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erster Re-read nach 10 Jahren

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short graphic novel that tells the story of a mother with cancer written from her son’s point of view. Some parts of this talked about family history, history which I felt was irrelevant to the story.

[Jan Philipzig · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected this one to hit close to home, but it left me surprisingly cold. The storytelling felt strangely detached, misguided in places, not fully realized. Has its moments, but could have been so much more.

[Noah Nichols · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review to soon follow.

[jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

This started as a web comic of the story of the author's mother cancer. After 45 years of smoking, Mom developed lung cancer which moved into her brain and formed a tumor. The story starts with her initial diagnosis, and follows the author & his two sisters through the chemo, radiation, hope and anxiety of the ugly face of cancer. The drawing style is clear and accessible. The story is well-paced and doesn't get bogged in overly sentimental meandering. The grief and pain are so obvious that the author doesn't need to dramatize it, and for that I was grateful. And still, I wept while I read it.

One of the fucked-up things about cancer is the balancing of hope, optimism & bravado on one side, and the hopelessness, helplessness and terror on the other. In one scene, the author draws his mother as a tightrope walker. On one side of her balancing pole, there is a vulture. The other side of the pole has an elephant. The tightrope stretches over a pool filled with crocodiles. And then she realizes the rope is on fire. I mean, basically. Yeah. Fuck Cancer. Thank you, Brian Fies, for drawing that.

There is another moment when Mom breaks down (the 5% scene) that wrung my heart. It really drove home how fragile her strength was, and how much of your ability to fight exists in your belief that you can/should. She says, "If I'd known it was that bad, I never would have put myself through this." My heart audibly shattered into one million pieces.

Another fucked-up thing about cancer is blame. Who to blame, how much to blame them, how much blame we assign to ourselves and the resultant guilt, regret and anger. Cancer is a horrible, mysterious thing. It's scary and shapeless and seems omnipotent. Blame is one of the coping mechanisms. Without going much more into the subject, I appreciated Fies treatment of this subject.

I have to wonder if this is the kind of book you can give to someone who needs to read it. Some books aren't like that and people have to find them on their own, but I would really like to give this to my brother. As much as I struggle with all of the cancer in my family, I would hope my brother & I would be closer. But we barely discuss cancer. In fact, we barely talk at all. I guess I'm projecting my ideal world through this book. Mom's Cancer illustrates strong connections between three siblings dealing the up's and down's, including the good and bad parts of those relationships under extreme duress. I haven't made up my mind whether to send him a copy or not.

[Maya Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very sweet story, it did in fact make me extremely sad though so…3 stars

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This last year and a half of my life is as it reads in this book. This is a must read for cancer patients, for caregivers, and for doctors. While cancer treatments differ, there are many similarities in the roller coaster ride that are the treatments, scans, emotions.

This was so relatable, even down to patient advocating. A must read.

Woody swear scale- you are safe. There wasn't a single one....

[Xènia López · Rating 4 out of 5]

4'5/5
Muy interesante leer una historia sobre cancer narrada desde un familiar (en este caso el hijo) y no desde el propio paciente. Me hubiera gustado que el libro fuera mas largo y añadiera mas escenarios, pero entiendo que la narrativa no estaba originalmente pensada para ser un cómic, si no una manera que ha tenido el autor de divulgar esperanza y experiencia. De verdad muy bonito.

[Tecilli Tapia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me gustó la historia, nada de romanticismo sobre está enfermedad. Los días buenos y los malos, cuando quieres seguir y cuando no... Simplemente real...

[Adriana Amaral · Rating 4 out of 5]

História excelente, informativa e sensível sobre como lidar com o câncer.

[Seemal Zahra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book at the hospital during my break and decided why not? I've been in a reading slump and not really sure if this got me out but it was an interesting read. The panels were so beautifully done and the art was simple yet so impactful. Took you through the ups and downs of coping with something so tragic in a really honest way.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the first pages I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Sure, Fies’ work is an Eisner Award winner, a book form graphic novel born out of an anonymous, online comic strip the author wrote as a kind of self-therapy while dealing with his own mother’s cancer. That alone is quite a bit to recommend the work. But there was something about the simplicity of Fies’ lines that gave me pause. It’s a little cartoony with very little depth of image (a complex panels is the narrator sitting in a chair watching TV, drapes behind him over his shoulder), so I worried I’d be getting a Hallmark card journey through illness and health.

But there is something to Scott McCloud’s assertion made in Understanding Comics that the simpler the image the closer it approaches universality, which is to some degree an unintended point in Fies’ work. Written for himself to say all the things he couldn’t say to his family, to better understand all the things happening around him and to him, Fies’ work touched a chord all across the world. Word-of-mouth spread and increased the work’s popularity. The story, begun without intentional shape or structure, manages to jell nicely as a piece with the satisfying wholeness of a tale told without undue elaboration or dramatics.

To keep things simple, Fies limits the story almost entirely to the narrator and his two sisters, known throughout the work as Kid Sis and Nurse Sis, and the eponymous Mom. Doctors and nurses of various types float in and out through the story, as does a kind of spectral figure of the long-absent Dad. We watch in a kind of helpless fascination as Mom submits to treatment, first six weeks of radiation coupled with chemo (the radiation designed to get the metastasized node in her brain), then chemo alone to treat the cancer in her lungs. Technical aspects are not glossed over, but they are reduced to their most easily understood hearts, aided by Fies clarity of pen.

Mom’s Cancer is unsparing in its finger pointing. In one scene, in reply to Mom’s question: “Can you tell what caused it?” her doctor replies tartly: “In my experience, one of five things: smoking, smoking, smoking, smoking, or smoking.” In other places, as we watch a headshot of Mom as she undergoes treatment, losing hair and becoming more gaunt from panel to panel, we watch the stages of grief play themselves out including the confessional final shot. “But you know, I still want it,” Mom tells us here. “I’d smoke a pack now if I could.”

Unsurprisingly, the narrator’s observation after having nagged his mother to quit through the decades, “Somehow saying ‘I told you so’ turned out to be a lot less satisfying than I imagined” has the chest clenching ring of a true experience. For such a short volume with such simply drawn characters, Fies has managed to pour the essence of grief, the nub of experience into his pen and devastatingly out onto the page.

There were more than a few instances I found myself, hand to my throat as I read, blinking back tears. A panel late in the story, in the depth of her treatment, hairless, Mom turning to her daughter with a desperate panic in her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks — she’s just found out after all these months that only five percent of patients in her condition live — made me set the book down until I felt I could continue. To look at it now, two weeks after I first read it, to see the stark beauty of Fies’ art in that one look is to catch just the faintest whisper of the despair of chronic illness of any kind.

It is also to see art, pure and simple.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one hits too close to home. My mom could have been in this comic. Almost verbatim this is truly how it goes when someone is diagnosed with lung and brain cancer. This is an honest story of hope and loss. It could be a cancer manual of what to expect if you or a loved one is facing this terrible disease. Inspiring, funny and educational. A must read

[╟ ♫ Tima ♪ ╣ ♥ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was very close and personal to my life, as my Mom is currently battling two types of cancer as well. In fact, she was just over this morning so we could shave her head as chemo had begun taking its toll. This is a very loving but real (thought vague and a bit dry) cathartic read. The afterward written by the Mom and the follow up after is really what got me.

[Noran Miss Pumkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Emotional. Real! Tearful! Can help anyone facing cancer or person that loves someone dealing with it too. I read as a nurse--a real learning experience for me, though I been through it myself once all ready!

[Kurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often when someone becomes ill, their identity is supplanted by their illness. The people around them no longer see a life in progress just the diagnosis. This bothers me about this sometimes compelling, often not graphic novel. We have lost the MOM to her CANCER while she is still alive. This is even reflected in the title where the key word is CANCER and not MOM. I can’t think that this was the intention of the author, this feeling of detachment—where instead of being the earth, MOM was relegated to the moon.

This book, however, does have some strengths. It might have been titled CANCER FAMILY instead of MOM’S CANCER to better reflect what it does best. There are three adult children. Seeing how each goes through their own stages in different ways and how they come together or don’t come together over the illness is to finally be invited into the story. The siblings are rendered with an honesty that makes them feel real. I wish that had been extended to the MOM.

I have been part of a cancer family several times, including my own mom, and expected this to hit me harder than it did. I actually hoped it would hit me hard as a means of remembering and grieving. Instead, I felt like I was reading about a plane crash from the point of view of the land that was hit rather than the people on board.

[Chelsea Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this after "Can't we Talk About Something More Pleasant?" and they couldn't be more different in tone despite both being about caring for elderly parents. This was collected from a serial comic and was written as it was happening rather than in retrospect, but also differs in so many ways from the other work (only child versus one of three who is least connected to the process), background of the author (artist versus chemist/physicist/science writer/artist), relationship to the parent(s) (complicated and lopsided versus doesn't really go into it, I wanted to know so much more about the mom, especially to motivate the end of the book). I think because I read this second, I wanted so much more (and because in the front matter the author writes that they wanted to do this project to educate people... I expected more detail? But appreciated the parts about working with doctors from different types of hospitals, and the observation that when you have a disease that you don't understand, but doctors do, it can be really hard to be told to "call about anything important" and then be chastized for not knowing what's important). Still, I'd recommend it for people looking ahead to caring for parents in the future.

[Libby · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely accurate depiction of the experience of watching a parent fight (for lack of a better word) stage IV lung cancer and the medical interventions and family dynamics that involve. Almost two years on I had forgotten some of the smaller details, like the weirdness of two different doctors dealing with the head and the rest of the body - it always weirded me out how they acted like they were two completely separate entities. This book has helped me through a big grief wave by facing it head on. It was particularly interesting to read a narrative involving divorced parents and adult children, one of whom has experience in the medical field (in the book - the narrator’s sister, in my life - me) which makes them react particularly different to the others, as that is my experience.

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me a bit of searching to find this Eisner winner, but finally located it in the depths of hoopla. I thought it must have been a therapeutic experience for Brian to create this web comic of their family’s ordeal with their mother’s cancer. Often informative, if not always cozy or warm, I found it more the tale of the siblings’ battle than of the mother’s; the family dynamic and the roles assumed caught as much of the author’s attention as did his mother’s sickness. Still, you’ll catch your breath and you may relate. Worth the read, imo.

[Fellipy Silva]

Tem todos os motivos (e até mais) que justificam o merecido prêmio Eisner.
É uma história difícil de ler, mas com esperança e muitas discussões com as quais não desejamos lidar. Infelizmente para alguns é inevitável, mas cada traço e cada elemento da história traz um grande reconforto e um pingo de esperança que pode ser vital para alguém que esteja em tratamento supere todo o processo de forma vitoriosa.

[Diana Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

Medical (graphic novel) memoir about the author's mother who develops metastatic lung cancer that moves into her brain and other body parts. A relatable story giving the support team (family)'s perspective of the situation while still keeping Mom and her struggles front and center.

As pointed out by the author, the story is a tale of hope. ❤️

[Danielle Gomes · Rating 5 out of 5]

HQ muito fácil de ler porém o conteúdo é delicado. Me vi nessa família, pois minha avó passou por tratamentos e sei sobre os sentimentos sentidos ainda mais vendo minha mãe dedicando a sua vida pela mãe dela. Adorei ler o posfácio e depois o coração ficou apertado. Gostei bastante, foi corajoso do autor contar a sua história e adorei, porém é uma jornada muito difícil.

[Társis · Rating 4 out of 5]

É uma graphic novel excelente. Uma história incrível, comovente e bem feita. Brian Fies não apenas fez uma espécie de diário que funciona como uma catarse nessa HQ. Ele abriu sua intimidade familiar e apresentou passo a passo um momento delicado da vida que é o câncer, mas de um modo muito particular e com uma narrativa gráfica linda. Eu não conhecia seu trabalho, vou procurar outras HQs dele.

[Tate LaFrenier · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Cute shoes” is so pure

[Rajat Bansal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book ! For a slightly more detailed book review, please check out
my book review blog post

[River · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear and poignant illustrations with a narrative voice that conveyed the right amount of hope and bleakness (when necessary). Really liked it!