This Woman’s Work is a call: to seeing, writing, illustrating, and reading—to witnessing all kinds of women’s stories.
Women's Review of Books...
A PROFOUND AND PERSONAL EXPLORATION OF THE INTERSECTIONS OF WOMANHOOD, FEMININITY, AND CREATIVITY
This Woman’s Work is a powerfully raw autobiographical work that asks vital questions about femininity and the assumptions we make about gender. Julie Delporte examines cultural artifacts and sometimes traumatic memories through the lens of the woman she is today—a feminist who understands the reality of the women around her, how experiencing rape culture and sexual abuse is almost synonymous with being a woman, and the struggle of reconciling one’s feminist beliefs with the desire to be loved. She sometimes resents being a woman and would rather be anything but.
Told through beautifully evocative colored pencil drawings and sparse but compelling prose, This Woman’s Work documents Delporte’s memories and cultural consumption through journal-like entries that represent her struggles with femininity and womanhood. She structures these moments in a nonlinear fashion, presenting each one as a snapshot of a place and time—trips abroad, the moment you realize a relationship is over, and a traumatizing childhood event of sexual abuse that haunts her to this day. While This Woman’s Work is deeply personal, it is also a reflection of the conversations that women have with themselves when trying to carve out their feminist identity. Delporte’s search for answers in the turmoil created by gender assumptions is profoundly resonant in the era of #MeToo.
Translated from the French by Helge Dascher and Aleshia Jensen.
Praise for This Woman's Work
Julie Delporte’s work is raw, and she is still impeccable at laying out an unmappable thought process that feels like a profound journey into the unknown... You’re not going to find a more sublime, more perceptive, or more honest guide to those ideas in comics form than Delporte.
The Beat
Womanhood is an education in grace under pressure in this melancholy meditation on art, femininity, and longing.
Publishers Weekly
This Woman’s Work is a smart, meditative, and gorgeously illustrated feminist essay... This book will captivate and move you.
Lit Hub
Julie Delporte’s This Woman’s Work is a magical, majestic, masterful work. She executed, articulated, & expressed the inexpressible. An important and gorgeous book I’ll return to for life.
Chloe Caldwell, author of Women and I'll Tell You In Person...
Through Julie Delporte’s meditative exploration of her own life as well as other women’s lives—whether it be family members or artist role models—the more I read this book, the more I felt my own history pulsing through me as well. This book is alive.
Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I'm Someone Else...
In cursive writing and coloured pencil drawings, This Woman's Work is a personal and contemplative inquiry into feminity and feminism in the #MeToo era.
CBC Books