Juliet Takes a Breath

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the art is gorgeous and the character representation brought into these pages is pretty accurate to rivera's book.

While Juliet experiences instances of a marginalized community excluding other marginalized groups through gatekeeping (primarily with Phen, who was projecting many of his own insecurities), she also experiences a marginalized community welcoming a not-as-marginalized community into their doors. Juliet is a Latinx lesbian who has gotten the chance of her life, to intern with her role model for the summer, leaving the Bronx to Portland. My biggest problem with this book was that, if I was a young girl reading about feminism for the first time in this novel, or a young lesbian girl reading about it for the first time, I would have a VERY swayed idea on what I was supposed to be thinking.The most surprising thing about this book is that Harlowe herself isn't written as this "exclusionary" bad white feminist that everyone is meant to hate; I mean 98% of her dialogue is ridiculous but she's written as this weird but well-meaning hippie woman that Juliet admires, and who tries but makes mistakes.

I could not stand Harlowe Brisbane or her damn book so I almost DNF’d this after chapter 2, but I am glad my sister pushed me to keep going because I really loved it.The pacing: The Graphic Novel is an abridged version of the main book, so this moved from plot point to plot point and felt a little bit too rushed. It was also hard for me to believe that Juliet’s only resource on feminist literature was Raging Flower - even in Harlowe’s book she says to read books and resources from a wide range of people, so I couldn't believe that Juliet hadn’t taken that advice to heart.