The Story of My Tits by Jennifer Hayden

Um, we all know what it means when a middle-aged creator does a book-length story about a body part, right? OK, maybe it could be some thing thrillingly obscure, like body integrity identity disorder, but 99 times out of a hundred, it means The Big C.

Jennifer Hayden had The Big C. She lived to tell the tale. And that tale is The Story of My Tits.

But Hayden doesn't just want to talk about the Big C, which is gratifying -- we all know that story, and anyone's individual version of it isn't going to be that different in the general outlines. (Is the story told by the person? Then she survived. Is it told by a close family member? Prepare for an even sadder version.) Instead, The Story of My Tits is a general autobiography in comics form, with chapter titles that all reference her tits.

I like this book, because it gives me an opportunity to use the word "tits" repeatedly.

Well, I like it for other reasons, too -- Hayden is engaging and honest and has an infectious enthusiasm for life as well as a quirky art style that looks a little bit like R.O. Blechman -- but the tits thing is a nice bonus.

Hayden is from New Jersey, like I am -- another reason to like her! -- though I think she's a bit older than I am. (A gentleman doesn't dig too much into the age of a lady.) And she's had a lot of life, like all of us. But she's got an interesting through-line here to organize it: the tits thing really means that Story is about self and connection -- how she feels about herself and what people she's close to. After an initial chapter about her childhood, where she was a late and small developer, Story gets deeply into her college love life, and then (once she connected with the man who became her husband) the connections were with his parents and their partners.

From there, it's a lot of incidents and experiences -- she's lived a full life, and is good at looking back at it to pull out moments and sequences -- of her personal and professional life over the next couple of decades. Her parents, and her husband's parents, get older, and that's not always pleasant. The Big C shows up more than once for other people before (Spoiler Alert!) it hits Hayden herself.

Hayden tells all of this in a chatty comics style somewhat influenced by Lynda Barry -- wordy but conversational, focused on people and relationships, the story of a person that's also the story of the communities she's part of. It's a long book -- about 350 pages -- and denser than it looks. But, then, Hayden is telling the story of her whole life, and she's done plenty of things. And, just as  importantly, she's known a lot of people and thought about a lot of things -- The Story of My Tits is the story of all of those things, of the people Hayden has known and the communities she's been part of and the lives she's lived.

And of her tits, too, of course. Can't forget those.