Drawing on family stories to illustrate a boyhood
Metro
NEW YORK
NATALIE GAVILANES
Published: September 14, 2010 1:50 a.m. Last modified: September 14, 2010 1:57 a.m.
For graphic artist and memoirist Martin Lemelman, the best editors of his new graphic memoir, “Two Cents Plain,” which recalls his Brownsville childhood as the son of Holocaust survivors, turned out to be his own family members. Lemelman started the work by writing his childhood from memory — and then went to his family to fill in the blanks.
“When you write from memory, it’s often one-sided, so after hearing the same stories told by different people, it was only [proper] to write the story using everyone’s perspective,” Lemelman says. “It’s very interesting to have that conversation of ‘what do you remember?’” Continue reading...
Q and A with Martin Lemelman
The Jewish Star
Issue of September 3, 2010/ 24 Elul 5770 In Books on September 1, 2010 at 10:12 am
Q & A with Martin Lemelman, author of “Two Cents Plain: My Brooklyn Boyhood.”
Michael Orbach: Why did you write “Two Cents Plain: My Brooklyn Boyhood”
Martin Lemelman: My first book, a graphic memoir, “Mendel’s daughter,” was the story of my mother surviving the Holocaust: how she lived in the forest in a hole where she hid with her two brothers and sisters. That was just her voice. I didn’t intend on continuing the story but after I finished it, I thought I really need to continue. Initially it was my own story — how I dealt with my parents who were survivors — but it evolved into something more: their memories and their experiences in America as immigrants. Continue reading...
Illustrator documents nabe’s transformation
The Daily News
By Elizabeth Lazarowitz, Daily News Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 24th 2010, 7:57 PM
It was a Brooklyn filled with egg creams, immigrant struggles, social change — and lots and lots of roaches.Little remains of the Brownsville that Martin Lemelman knew growing up in the 1950s and ’60s — so he set out to document his childhood in a graphic novel packed with his black-and-white drawings, family photos and collages. Continue reading...
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