Searching for identity and stability during one’s rocky teen years, most kids rely primarily on friends for support. Areas in which a teen excels, such as sports, the arts, science, math, technology, language or the mysterious “likeability” of highly social youth may serve as navigational tools.
This means family and adults, especially parents and caregivers, are often relegated to secondary status, no longer necessary for basic survival. In the case of Oakland-based cartoonist and young-adult graphic novelist Briana Loewinsohn, art and a handful of close friends carried her through her fraught-filled years in the 1990s at El Cerrito High School and Richmond’s Adams Middle School before that.
Her new, semi-autobiographical YA memoir, “Raised by Ghosts,” presents a blend of realistic and surrealist artwork combined with created and archival text to tell the story of living between the two homes of her largely absent, divorced parents and her growing identity as an artist.
The 200-page softcover book’s narrative takes place in multiple East Bay teen hangouts — among them Moe’s Books, Amoeba Music, Berkeley Square and Albany Bowl — making it a nostalgic ode to the region and its history for local readers. Distinguishing itself from its predecessor, “Ephemera: A Memoir,” Loewinsohn’s award-winning debut book released in 2023, “Raised by Ghosts” features graphic renderings of actual handwritten notes she sent to and received from friends.
Included amid predominantly classic comic style paneled or full-spread art pages are notes handwritten on lined, classroom note paper. With ragged edges, the pages look as if they were torn from a journal. Because the actual notes were frequently delivered in origami-style triangles, instructions at the end of the book provide step-by-step depictions of how to make them.
Loewinsohn, 44, is today married and the mother of two children ages 13 and 10. In addition to being a graphic novelist, she teaches art at Oakland’s Bishop O’Dowd High School. To get into the right mindset for the memoir, she reread all of her saved notes, journals and emails she wrote in 1997, a time when the written word, Walkmans, landline phones and VHS videos overlapped with the Internet’s earliest days.
“When creating memoirs: I enjoy the ability to make it my own. ‘Ephemera’ doesn’t look like where I grew up. I changed the aesthetics,” she says. “For ‘Raised,’ I used hyper-realism for what I wore, what my school looked like, but I still got to tell it from my perspective,” she says.
Because her family life was chaotic, she says altering some visual elements let her tell the story more authentically.
“It was easier to tell it in this semi-dreamy state, because memories are so dreamy. It actually made it more real. I also like blurring that line; I like incongruities, breaking rules of fiction and nonfiction, (allowing) ambiguity for my readers to interpret however it works best for them.”
An early chapter in the book illustrates Loewinsohn’s mercurial father; a man who largely left her to fend for herself, but also used exclusively blue ink pens to inscribe her name — in font styles from antique to 3D to decorative — on brown paper lunch bags she took to school.
“My pops was a sweet guy but not typical. We were more like roommates. You didn’t get a lot of attention. The lunch bags felt precious. He was a poet and ran a printing press in the ’70s, so he was into it. They were ephemeral (fleeting), though. I threw every single one away at the time. As a kid, you take things for granted.”
Friendships in the book demonstrate how opposites attract. A best friend’s background, physical features and family structure were entirely different but didn’t exclude their deep similarities.
“I loved the differences because otherwise you’d be talking to yourself. Unexpected things happen, you open up to new things. For teenagers, they’re searching to find their community, the answers to ‘What is my world going to be?’ Finding people who are the same but different is the joy. There are huge differences, but you connect on a level that that’s not a problem.”
As an adult working with teenagers, she sees the strain of searching for identity and creates images that never mask but instead acknowledge that truth. Because she says she felt ignored or parented in a way she now recognizes was based on respecting her space but felt was “cold and too hands-off” at the time, she includes one journal page about her father that reads, “Some days, I wouldn’t mind being bothered. Even if it was to do my homework or turn the music down.”
Feeling lonely even when among best friends is another common adolescent experience. While reflecting on and doodling about those isolating moments, Loewinsohn found herself doing what she has always done: diving into cartoon magic mode in which characters can be or do anything.
“The surreal part of the book is me going into how I think of the world. Pen-on-paper is my escape. Page after page just came out. The lines were shards, had movement, were thick and thin, but had to keep the (narrative) continuity going. That section is my wheelhouse. There are fewer rules about perspective, rendering 3D, hyper-real settings. It’s fun, freeing.”
Loewinsohn says including and acknowledging people who may not know the impact they had in her life is particularly rewarding when writing a memoir. She says she appreciated a beyond-nervous chemistry teacher, Mr. Deipenbrock, for “trying so hard to teach chemistry to kids who didn’t want to learn it” and appreciated grandparents who felt like ghosts because she never met them or they died before she was born.
“When I draw them, it makes them real, makes them permanent. If I put them on paper, I’ll have them forever. Everything is so ephemeral. Art locks it in for that moment.”
With memories dark, light, fantastic and formidable, Loewinsohn says drawing a story that embraces the good and bad of going through “the changingness of a teen becoming an adult” was immensely valuable.
“It was helpful to think the hard parts of life make you interesting, make you who you are, make life richer. When I teach, I want my students to make art they’re interested in, make art that’s their own.”
Visit fantagraphics.com/collections/briana-loewinsohn online for more details.
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.
