“Raised by Ghosts” by Briana Loewinsohn (Graphic Novel, Ages 14 and up) Fantagraphics Press, 224 pages
At the start of the pandemic, Bishop O’Dowd teachers and great friends Briana Loewinsohn and Thien Pham decided they would each write a graphic novel, one frame at a time. The result — Pham’s Eisner award winning“Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam” and Loewinsohn’s gorgeously illustrated “Ephemera”.If you haven’t read them, buy them immediately.
Fast forward to 2025 and Loewinsohn’’s second semi-autobiographical graphic novel “Raised by Ghosts”.It would take a paragraph to list all the awards won by this one but they include ALA’s Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table Outstanding Young Adult Comic 2025 and New York Public Library Best Comics for Adults 2025. In “Raised by Ghosts” Loewinsohn — inspired by boxes of notes from friends she had saved from middle school and high school — explores not only her teenage awkwardness and alienation but also the intensity and overarching importance of teenage friendships. School is hard and her homelife is fraught (divorced parents, each with their own challenges) and her loneliness and uncertainty are palpable. You can just see the brilliant artist emerging from all of this. There is a universality to her feelings about this time of life to which we can all relate. The book is set in the East Bay and readers will enjoy the local references and mixtape nostalgia.
Pham has also illustrated a new YA graphic novel released this September, “Mind v. Machine” by Steve Sheinkin and Maurice Ashley which chronicles the famous chess match between Kasparov and Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer. Noted author and cartoonist Gene Luan Yang (hat tip to “Hoop Dreams”, just one of his many books) also taught at O’Dowd. I don’t know what they’re putting in the water over there but we all should be drinking it!
Edna Lewis is a Piedmont resident and former longtime reference librarian at the UC Berkeley Law Library
