Engelberg, Miriam 1958-2006

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Engelberg, Miriam 1958-2006

PERSONAL:

Born 1958; died of cancer, October 17, 2006, in Lexington, KY.

CAREER:

Writer, cartoonist, and educator. Compass-Point Nonprofit Services, instructor.

WRITINGS:

(Illustrator) Sue Bennett, The Accidental Techie: Supporting, Managing, and Maximizing Your Nonprofit's Technology, Fieldstone Alliance (St. Paul, MN), 2005.

Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics, Harper (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer and cartoonist Miriam Engelberg recounted her battle with breast cancer in the graphic novel Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics. Though her topic was life-and-death serious, Engelberg approached her story with deep humor and thorough irreverence. "Despite the potentially gloomy subject matter, the book is actually quite funny," Engelberg remarked to Paul Dale Roberts in an interview for Jazma Online. "It's my way of dealing with the absurdity of it all."

"Any joke about cancer is by definition dark humor," observed Jennifer Huget in the Washington Post. "But Engelberg's irreverent alternative to the Chicken Soupfor the Soul approach is insightful, unflinching and painfully, painfully funny." Using an art style that a Publishers Weekly reviewer called "naive," Engelberg recounted the early diagnosis, the effect the disease had on her life, how it altered her interactions with others, and how she found ways to cope through humor, hope, and a total disregard for the serenity that is supposed to come from facing one's mortality. She described how in her interactions with others, even routine encounters with people such as cashiers, her first thought would often be of how that other person did not have cancer. She told about her experiences in support groups, how she dealt with the inevitable loss of hair and interest in sex, how she struggled with getting straight answers from her doctors, and how she decided to document her difficulties in comics form. The inevitable worries are there, and she pondered what she might or might not have done to contribute to her condition. Rather than feeling ennobled by her disease, Engelberg described how she was more interested in turning her attention within, focusing on a crossword puzzle or a television show. Shallowness, or what she described as shallowness, became a primary coping mechanism as she dealt with the "utter incomprehensibility of not knowing if you're documenting your own slow death," observed the Publishers Weekly contributor.

Ray Olson, writing in Booklist, observed that "Engelberg's daft sense of humor, never mean, gross, or flippant, serves readers, perhaps especially fellow cancer patients, as well as, maybe better than, it does her." The Publishers Weekly reviewer called Engelberg's work "extremely honest and extraordinarily powerful." Library Journal reviewer Bette-Lee Fox named the book "always witty and thought-provoking."

Engelberg died on October 17, 2006.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person: A Memoir in Comics, Harper (New York, NY), 2006.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2006, Ray Olson, review of Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, p. 37.

Library Journal, May 15, 2006, Bette-Lee Fox, review of Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, p. 122.

Publishers Weekly, March 13, 2006, review of Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, p. 49.

Washington Post, May 23, 2006, Jennifer Huget, "Humor, Rhymes with Tumor," review of Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, p. HE01.

Yomiuri Shimbun/Daily Yomiuri, September 16, 2006, Tom Baker, "'We Call It Chemo for Short': Diverse Memoirs Address Cancer with Art and Humor," review of Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person.