16 women reclaim their position in the world, one graphic story at a time

The Elephant in the Room may just be one of the most beautiful reads to order right now. An assembly of graphic stories in which women draw their world, this book is a collectible.

It is not every day that one sees a drawing of a temple as a vagina, or where a bitch (dog) reclaims the slur. But that is just what you will find in the colourful and intriguing pages of the book titled The Elephant in the Room.

The book may just be one of the most beautiful reads to order right now. An assembly of graphic stories in which women draw their world, this book is a collectible.

For the book, 16 talented women artists from India and Germany travelled to Nrityagram in Karnataka to get together and draw what they thought of their bodies, relationships, families, sex, and societal roles thrust upon women.

The result? A visual feast. Published by Zubaan and Spring Collective, the book consists of 220 pages of unabashed honesty, fierceness, and even a few laughs even.

Zubaan books also published Drawing the Line in 2012, another graphic novel where Indian women fight back.

In the lacunae of Indian women graphic storytellers, where most have only heard of Amruta Patil, these graphic novels empower women of all ages, because we are the elephant in the room, as are our emotions and trials through life.

From Kaveri Gopalakrishnan’s story My Secret Crop, about a woman accepting her body hair, to Katrin Stangl’s Some Questions, which asks if it useful to have a husband, each of the artists draw her own small stories. Be it Germany or India, they are all extremely relatable.

The one that stuck out the most for me was Priya Kuriyan’s Ebony and Ivory, which retraces her grandparents and their personalities. As a child, she would consider her grandfather, who she has never seen, a mysterious dashing man. As an adult, she discovered it was her quiet grandmother whose life was far more interesting, and at the same time filled with abuse, harsh decisions, and an indomitable strength. This is not an alien story for most women in India, or in the world.

If your introduction to the world of graphic novels was the famous Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, you definitely need to follow up with these 16 illustrators. It takes a lot for women to be noticed, and The Elephant in the Room does not, even for a single frame, disappoint.