How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

by Sarah Glidden

Overview

The award-winning graphic memoir about Israel that offers more questions than answers about identity and politics

Sarah Glidden is a progressive Jewish American twentysomething who is both vocal about and critical of Israeli politics in the Holy Land. When a debate with her mother prods her to sign up for a Birthright Israel tour, Glidden expects to find objective facts to support her strong opinions. During her two weeks in Israel, Glidden takes advantage of the opportunity to ask the people she meets about the fraught and complex issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but their answers only lead her to question her own take on the conflict.

Simple linework and gorgeous watercolors spotlight Israel's countryside, urban landscapes, and religious landmarks. With straightforward sincerity, lovingly observed anecdotes, and a generous dose of self-deprecating humor, How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less is accessible while retaining Glidden's distinctive perspective. Over the course of this touching memoir, Glidden comes to terms with the idea that there are no easy answers to the world's problems, and that is okay.

This debut book landed on several best-of-the-year lists, including Entertainment Weekly's; earned a YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens distinction; and won an Ignatz Award. Her second book, Rolling Blackouts, which documents her experience shadowing journalists in Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, will also come out this fall from Drawn & Quarterly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770462533
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	08/30/2016
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Sarah Glidden is a graduate of Boston University and lives in Seattle. Her comics have appeared in The Guardian, the Nib, Haaretz, and the Jewish Quarterly. In 2010, Glidden shadowed journalists from The Seattle Globalist as they reported from Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Their interviews with refugees and internally displaced people form her second book, Rolling Blackouts.

Editorial Reviews

"A memoir of a trip this left-leaning Jew takes to Israel, determined to have her ideas about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict confirmed. Of course, things turn out more complicated than Glidden had imagined. So do her deceptively simple line drawings… and the thinking that informs the vivid dialogue in a graphic nonfiction novel of subtlety and understated wit." -Entertainment Weekly

"Glidden the storyteller exudes intimacy and warmth—both in her tube watercolors and her sometimes confessional persona...Glidden the knowledge-seeker thinks in much the same way as she paints: forever toward the light."—The Washington Post

"[A] masterful new book of graphic nonfiction."— VICE

"A primer for those who aren't aware of the complexity of issues and emotions underlying this seemingly interminable strife."— Kirkus Review

"A surprisingly disarming book—easy to read, and rewarding to contemplate."— AV Club

"Another enduring take-away is that not only is Israel beautiful but here is an artist who has managed to create something beautiful from something painful and fractured and messy and complicated. Which is a mighty achievement."— Bookmunch

From the Publisher

…Glidden addresses the nuances and complexities of Israel's past and present through humor and history lessons in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and beyond. She manages to make a familiar journey fresh in this graphic format…Balancing seriousness with sarcasm, she captures the idiosyncrasies of Israeli culture and ponders the difficult questions of how Israel might pursue a peaceful and secure future.
—The Washington Post

Lisa Bonos

Glidden, a progressive American Jew who is sharply critical of Israeli policies vis-à-vis the Occupied Territories, went on an all-expense-paid "birthright" trip to Israel in an attempt to discover some grand truths at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This graphic memoir tells the touching and often funny story of her utter failure to do so. As the tour group moves from the Golan Heights to Tel Aviv, Glidden's struggles with propaganda and perspective lead only to a morass of deepening questions and self-doubt. Her neurotic need for objective truths and struggle to reconcile historical perspectives is hugely gratifying for the reader. This is especially true when the group visits Masada, the site of an epic confrontation between a sect of Jewish rebels and a Roman siege army that culminated in mass suicide. Gruesome fanaticism or a stirring clarion call for the burgeoning Zionism movement? You be the judge. As befits a travelogue, Glidden's drawings have the look of something jotted down on the fly; if it weren't for a haircut here or a pair of glasses there, many of the characters would be indistinguishable. Yet the simplicity of the drawing is offset by bright, delicate watercolors that belie our heroine's unresolved struggle with history and heritage. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

In the Israel-Palestinian conflict, who is right? Glidden thought she knew her mind. Of Jewish heritage but not religious, she held Palestinian sympathies. But after six weeks of reading and ten days on a "Birthright Israel" tour for young Jews, she wasn't so sure. And after 200 pages sweating out emotional and intellectual dissonances with her, perhaps neither are we. Taking a diary approach, Glidden pulls together maps, facts, figures, and ghosts of dead relatives and dignitaries who figure into Middle Eastern politics and the stories she heard during the tour. This part memoir, part political travelog spins out the history of Jewish attraction toward the area that is now Israel and the resulting hostilities involving Arab locals, interwoven with Glidden's personal intellectual journey. VERDICT This graphic novel has a Persepolis feel because of the way it depicts a hot spot through memoir, but it provides more about multiple sides of the issues. The pleasant watercolor conjures semirealism, contrasting ironically with the centuries of bloodshed staining that expanse of land. Strongly recommended for high school and adult collections in company with Joe Sacco's Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza and Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds.—M.C.

Library Journal

Gr 10 Up—After years of questioning her heritage, arguing with her mother about what it means to be Jewish, and dating a "goy," Glidden succumbed to the lure of an all-expense-paid trip to Israel through Birthright, a program that offers Jewish young adults first-time trips to the country. At the onset, she declared, "I'm ready to go there and discover the truth behind this whole mess once and for all. It will be crystal clear by the time I come back." An experienced traveler and a skeptic, she details her two-month excursion through cities and deserts. Readers witness her personal conflict as she seeks to view Israel with an objective eye. One effective literary device is the use of illustrated flashbacks from both Glidden's and Israel's past. The ghosts of David Ben Gurion and Sarah's deceased younger brother accompany her for several panels during her journey. She encounters the worldview of non-Eastern European Jews, Israeli soldiers, and her traveling companions, and begins to realize her limited perspective as she wonders "how many other people on the trip I've completely misjudged." The author's inner voices as she struggles with her conflicting emotions are brilliantly portrayed during brief trials in "the court of birthright vs. brainwash," where she serves as the prosecutor, defense, and judge. The tongue-in-cheek title hints at both the subtle humor and the complex subject matter. Glidden's soft, watercolor palette and realistic art complement without overshadowing this thoughtful exploration of the role that cultural heritage plays in the search for personal identity.—Barbara M. Moon, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY

School Library Journal

This graphic memoir, the author's book-length debut, relates her eye-opening visit to Israel.

Before embarking on her "birthright" tour of Israel, Glidden explained to her non-Jewish boyfriend that "I'm ready to go there and discover the truth behind this whole mess once and for all. It'll all be crystal clear by the time I come back!" The narrative sustains that spirit of self-deprecating innocence throughout, making Glidden an effective guide through the trouble spots of the Middle East, though inevitably she returns home with more questions than answers, more ambivalence than assurance. Anticipating propaganda that would attempt to counter what she terms her "left-wing and progressive," pro-Palestinian sympathies, she met Israelis who shared some of her reservations and discovered that people whom she liked could have conflicting opinions on complex issues. "We ask only one thing of you and that is not to be pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, but to be pro-peace," she heard at a speakers' panel of Jews and Muslims who had both lost loved ones to the conflict. By the end of her two-month tour, she realizes that peace in the Middle East is the ultimate goal, but that achieving it will be a very challenging process. She attempts some inventive narrative techniques, but the author would have to show more insight or more of an edge to give readers more than they already know.

A primer for those who aren't aware of the complexity of issues and emotions underlying this seemingly interminable strife.

Kirkus Reviews