My Favorite Thing is Monsters: The Socially Engaged Graphic Novel as a Platform for Intersectional Feminism

Abstract

This chapter places Emil Ferris’s graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters (2017) in a longer tradition of graphic novels that reflect on and intervene in ongoing social, cultural, and political debates. It argues that the work builds specifically on three foundational works that have been particularly influential in the graphic novel’s relatively short history as a literary genre: Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. The chapter’s analysis of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters places it within a tradition of socially engaged graphic novels, showing how readers’ engagement with its narrative’s two main historical periods both builds intertextually on its literary forebears and at the same time revises our understanding of them by reading them through the prism of current social and political debates. Both aspects underline the importance of intersectional feminism as a way of thinking, writing, and engaging with history.