When I wrote my first book, The Nightingales, I knew I wanted it to feel different from the graphic novels I’d encountered, both in how it was written and how it looked. It’s based on a true story: in 1985, my father invited a dying coworker and his two dogs to move into our home. The experience brought out both the best and worst in my family, teaching us that kindness can be as complicated as it is transformative.
Unlike most cartoonists, I didn’t grow up reading comics. In fact, until a few years ago—well into my fifties—I don’t think I’d ever picked one up. I assumed graphic novels were mostly about superheroes, first crushes, and adolescent angst. Instead, I discovered books that tackled grief, family, history, identity, illness, and memory with astonishing originality.
Every book on this list expanded my sense of what a graphic memoir could be. They aren’t just beautifully written; they each invent a visual language uniquely suited to the story they’re telling. Reading them inspired me to take risks with my own writing, artwork, and even the way the book itself was constructed. Coincidentally, many of them are also their authors’ first full-length books.
Belonging by Nora Krug
In this book, Krug investigates her family’s relationship to Nazi Germany. What stunned me was that the book didn’t resemble a traditional graphic novel at all. In fact, I’d be hard-pressed to think of another book to compare it to. It was the first book I had encountered that made me feel that way. When I finished it, I had this epiphany that all I needed to create my graphic novel was a great story and my own imagination and vision. I didn’t need to follow any traditional format with boxes or balloons or anything else. I could do whatever I damn well pleased.
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
After decades as a cartoonist at The New Yorker, Roz Chast turned her attention to a book about caring for her aging parents. It was the first graphic book I had read that captured the absurdity, frustration, love, and grief of that experience with such honesty. I was going through something similar with my own parents at the time. Seeing that experience translated into hilarious cartoons somehow made it feel more manageable and human.
And Now I Spill the Family Secrets by Margaret Kimball
Kimball explores generations of mental illness and family dysfunction through architecture, objects, documents, diagrams, and relatively few depictions of people. The result is strangely intimate: empty rooms and floor plans begin carrying as much emotional weight as faces. My own book is presented as an artist’s sketchbook, partly because that format played to my strengths. I can draw people well enough, but keeping them perfectly consistent from page to page isn’t my strongest suit. Sketchbook drawings invite a little looseness. Kimball’s book reminded me that I could enhance my skill set by finding a way to sidestep the things I didn’t do well.
I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib
Whenever students tell me they aren’t good at drawing, I think of this book. Gharib’s simple, charming style perfectly complements her debut memoir about growing up between Filipino and Egyptian cultures. Before long, you stop noticing the simplicity of the drawings because they feel so completely right for the story. She’s also an excellent writer who never loses sight of what’s most important: telling an honest, engaging story. Everything else—including the drawings—is in service of that goal. That’s a lesson every aspiring cartoonist should hear.
We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin
Katin recounts her childhood escape from Nazi-occupied Hungary with extraordinary emotional restraint. Because so much of the story is filtered through the perceptions of a small child, the horrors of war often register indirectly, making them even more devastating. But what inspires me just as much is Katin herself. After decades working in animation and raising a family, she published her first graphic novel at sixty-three. Whenever I worry that I discovered cartooning too late in life, I think of Miriam Katin.
Good Talk by Mira Jacob
Built almost entirely from one-on-one conversations, Good Talk explores race, family, identity, and parenting with remarkable honesty. The artwork often repeats the same panels again and again, which sounds like it should be monotonous. Instead, it has the opposite effect: it focuses your attention entirely on what people are saying. The dialogue feels spontaneous rather than scripted, full of interruptions, misunderstandings, and the circular logic that often accompanies difficult conversations. It’s a wonderful reminder that a compelling graphic memoir doesn’t need a traditional plot. Sometimes simply changing up the form is enough to make a book feel completely new.
Pretending Is Lying by Dominique Goblet
Goblet pieces together her relationships with her parents, daughter, and partner through a series of fragmented memories that blur the line between truth and recollection. Memory is unreliable, and Goblet embraces that uncertainty. Her debut memoir shifts constantly in style, texture, and perspective, allowing the artwork itself to mirror the way memories change over time. It’s raw, emotionally fearless, and unlike anything else I’ve read. The artwork is often smudged, murky, and blurred, as though the memories haven’t quite settled into place. I keep it near my desk to remind myself of one thing: be loose, don’t be precious, don’t over-engineer (or over-write), and trust my instincts.
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Like many readers, Maus was one of the first graphic memoirs I encountered. It permanently changed the way people thought about comics, proving they could tackle the same serious themes as any literary novel. I generally gravitate toward books that push against traditional comics formats. Maus doesn’t do that. Instead, it demonstrates something equally valuable: sometimes mastering the form you’re working in is revolutionary enough. When someone recently asked what comic I’d most like to read again for the first time, I surprised myself by answering Maus.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Emil Wilson is an award-winning art director, illustrator, and cartoonist whose creative work has appeared in magazines and newspapers, as well as on NPR, the Oscars, and the Super Bowl. He lives in San Francisco. The Nightingales is his first graphic novel.