Sophie Yanow

Sophie Yanow is an artist and writer and the author of What Is a Glacier? and War of Streets and Houses. Her comics have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Fusion, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Nib. She has also translated Dominique Goblet’s Pretending Is Lying from French. In TheContradictions (Drawn and Quarterly) we meet Sophie. She is young and queer and into feminist theory. She decides to study abroad, choosing Paris for no firm reason beyond liking French comics. Feeling a bit lonely and out of place, she’s desperate for community and a sense of belonging. She stumbles into what/who she’s looking for when she meets Zena, an anarchist student-activist committed to veganism and shoplifting. Enamored—of Zena, of the idea of living more righteously—Sophie is swept up in a whirlwind that blows her even further from her rural California roots as they embark on a disastrous hitchhiking trip to Amsterdam and Berlin, full of couch surfing, drug tripping, and radical book fairs. The Contradictions is Yanow’s fictionalized coming-of-age story. Sophie’s attempts at ideological purity are challenged time and again, putting into question the plausibility of a life of dogma in a world filled with contradictions. Rachel Cooke, writing for The Guardian, noted that “This funny and very knowing graphic novel will still strike an exceedingly loud chord with anyone who is, or has ever been, a fresher, far from home and all at sea.”