Talk to My Back

A celebrated masterwork shimmering with vulnerability from one of alt-manga's most important female artists.
A celebrated masterwork shimmering with vulnerability from one of alt-manga's most important female artists. 'Now that we ve woken from the dream, what are we going to do?' Chiharu thinks to herself, rubbing her husband s head affectionately. Set in an apartment complex on the outskirts of Tokyo, Yamada Murasaki's Talk To My Back (1981 84) explores the fraying of Japan's suburban middle-class dreams through a woman's relationship with her two daughters as they mature and assert their independence, and with her husband, who works late and sees his wife as little more than a domestic servant. While engaging frankly with the compromises of marriage and motherhood, Yamada remains generous with the characters who fetter her protagonist. When her husband has an affair, Chiharu feels that she, too, has broken the marital contract by straying from the template of the happy housewife. Yamada saves her harshest criticisms for society at large, particularly its false promises of eternal satisfaction within the nuclear family as fears of having been 'thrown away inside that empty vessel called the household' gnaw at Chiharu s soul. Yamada was the first cartoonist in Japan to use the expressive freedoms of alt-manga to address domesticity and womanhood in a realistic, critical, and sustained way. A watershed work of literary manga, Talk To My Back was serialized in the influential magazine Garo in the early 1980s, and is translated by Eisner nominated Ryan Holmberg.

Contributor: Ryan Holmberg (Translated by)

Translator: Ryan Holmberg

Pages: 384

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.