Good.
From the Amazon Jungle to Suburbia and Back
A man reconciles his father’s American culture with his mother’s Yanomami roots in the graphic memoir Good.
David Good has a dual lineage: his parents are an American-born anthropologist and a member of the Yanomami people of the Amazon rainforest. They met and married in the 1970s while his father studied the tribe. David, raised in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, adapted by hiding his Amazon heritage. When he was six years old, his lonely, depressed mother returned to the rainforest for good. The abandonment traumatized David. As a teenager, he turned to alcohol. Years later, with the help of his girlfriend Mary, he forgave his mother and went to the Amazon to reunite.
David and his parents are sympathetic, even when they fail to realize the full impacts of their choices, as demonstrated by David’s embarrassment over an image of his mother in a museum exhibit and a photograph of himself with the tribe in a classroom news periodical. The detailed art is attuned to human emotions, as shown in the garish expressions of David’s classmates and in David’s mother’s subtle smile. David’s life in the US is rendered in shades of black and white; images of the Yanomami tribe appear in full color, the contrast proffering insights into David’s and his mother’s feelings.
In the inspirational graphic novel Good., a boy torn between two cultures finds inner peace.
Reviewed by
Peter Dabbene
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
