Tahneer Oksman's “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs offers an important contribution to the study of contemporary graphic novels by focusing specifically on women's memoirs. Although scholarly work on graphic novels has increased dramatically in recent years, there is still a dearth of scholarship focused on women's voices, and nothing else in the field that looks, as Oksman does, at the nexus of Jewish, American, and female identities. Her book is broken down into four chapters that move between being author specific and thematic. The first chapter focuses on Aline Kominsky-Crumb, one of the grande dames of contemporary graphic novels and the most widely known figure profiled in the book. Chapter 2, a hybrid chapter that is partly author centered, partly thematic, focuses on Vanessa Davis, but also expertly develops a framework for discussing the specific medium of the graphic memoir and the tendency to read a graphic memoir as a work of self-conscious revelation on the part of the author. Chapters 3 and 4 each focus on multiple authors and are organized around a central theme. Chapter 3 looks at works that have adolescence and girlhood at their core, specifically the memoirs of Miss Lasko-Gross and Lauren Weinstein. Chapter 4 is centered on national or locative identity, especially as concerns the American Jewish relationship to Israel. Oksman uses recent works by Sarah Glidden and Miriam Libicki to investigate the way young American Jews are thinking and writing about Israel. Oksman concludes with a short epilogue that considers some of the themes in Liana Finck's 2015 graphic novel A Bintel Brief (Ecco, 2015).

The biggest strength of Oksman's book is that it offers scholars of graphic novels a sharp, compelling, and incredibly well-researched reference for future scholarship not only about these particular women, but also more generally about graphic memoirs, women's writing, American Jewish identity, and the list goes on. The applicability of Oksman's work goes far beyond the specific context of her topic—although the need for a volume on this specific context was great. Her chapter on Davis's graphic memoirs contains some particularly keen insights into what makes graphic memoirs so different from both other memoirs and other graphic novels. She calls Davis's work “a narrative of continual self-creation and revision, or a testimonial to the present, rather than a narrative hinging on a relatively static and unyielding past” (67). Similarly, her move in chapter 4 to separate discussion of Jewish identity from the older concept of Diaspora or exile creates a framework for looking at Jewish American identity as firmly rooted in place, which allows these works to “interrogate not only the centrality of a specific locale or nationality in the establishment of a Jewish sense of self but also the very possibility of mapping out any and all spaces as home or not home” (170).

Where the book does not succeed as well is in its applicability in the classroom. A growing number of colleges and universities are offering coursework on graphic novels, and specifically on Jewish graphic novels. As there is a general lack of critical scholarship on the subject, any new volume is seen immediately as a potential classroom reference. Oksman's book would be difficult to use pedagogically, however. The chapters are very long, ranging in length from forty-three pages to fifty-three pages; in chapters 1 and 2 especially, the format makes them difficult to excerpt into smaller sections. The way Oksman uses multiple authors to illustrate the central themes of chapters 3 and 4 means that while you could break them up to focus on one author, you would sacrifice her strong central vision to do so. Additionally, chapters 1 and 2 are quite dense, illustrating Oksman's encyclopedic knowledge of these women and their work, which while impressive and invaluable to the scholar, could make the text challenging for the student visiting this subject for the first time.

A final small criticism is that Oksman handles some controversial material, but spends little time on the controversies themselves. These controversies were by no means her topic, so perhaps she was right to exclude them, but it would have been potentially enriching to the reader to understand how she approaches the criticisms of some art and artists in the context of her study. Kominsky-Crumb, in particular, has been a very divisive figure, having been both labeled a “self-loathing Jew” (mainly by Kominsky-Crumb herself, and this is a term Oksman is right to reject) and criticized for aiding her husband in what some feel is appropriative and misogynistic work. Because she is a Jewish woman who approves, the critique goes, Crumb feels he can get away with potentially antisemitic or antiwoman drawings. Again, perhaps Oksman is right not to explore this topic, as Crumb isn't her focus, but the lack of context for those critiques in the larger picture she paints of Kominsky-Crumb leaves a gap.

Overall Oksman has produced a valuable and long overdue volume that will add immeasurably to the field of contemporary Jewish cultural studies. As mentioned above, the applicability of this book's vast information is so much broader than the women she covers. This book will be of use to anyone who seeks to write or think about Jewish American identity in the twenty-first century, as Oksman has done such yeoman's work in compiling and synthesizing the theoretical contributions to that conversation. And her forward-looking assessment of where contemporary graphic memoirs are now will prove generative for scholars for years to come. It is difficult to imagine any future scholarship on graphic memoirs or Jewish graphic novels that wouldn't cite this book.