Good Girls Go to Hell

by Tohar Sherman-Friedman, Tohar Sherman-Friedman (Artist)

Overview

This was the last day I prayed.

A coming-of-age graphic memoir set in the West Bank, Good Girls Go to Hell depicts the reality of growing up in a region split by religious tensions—and sometimes violent conflict.

From political protests to personal struggles with school, body image, and relationships with family and friends, Tohar Sherman-Friedman’s life is an inspiring story of conflicting convictions, rebellion, and personal growth. Tohar recounts her experience as the youngest of seven children in a conservative Jewish family, navigating a life buffeted by high expectations for school performance and religious adherence at home and tense conflict in the world outside. With utter sincerity and through detailed panel-style drawing, she relates what it’s like to be on a journey that ultimately takes her far from how she was taught to think and what she was expected to believe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781637790601
Publisher:	Graphic Mundi - PSU Press
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Pages:	136
Sales rank:	781,383
Product dimensions:	7.60(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

Tohar Sherman-Friedman is an author, illustrator, and tattoo artist with a degree from Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art. Originally from a settlement in the West Bank called Kedoumim, she currently resides in Tel Aviv with her husband, Daniel. Her work has been published in many children’s books and most recently in the magazine Nashim.

Editorial Reviews

11/06/2023

In this quirky, episodic debut graphic memoir, Sherman-Friedman recounts growing up in a West Bank settlement in a conservative Jewish family. The somewhat meandering narrative follows Sherman-Friedman—the daughter of a loving but preoccupied rabbi, and the youngest child in a family of seven children—as she struggles through a lonesome childhood into a confusing and rebellious young adulthood. In one scene depicting her religious schooling, she is barred from entering the building for wearing a skirt showing her knees; in another, the principal organizes a prayer circle to help save her as a rumored unbeliever. The expressive and detailed art surprises at every turn, as Sherman-Friedman swings dexterously from layout to layout, mapping out moments of shame, frustration, freedom, confusion, and love. Though she presents herself, the work’s cigarette-smoking, tattooed narrator, as questioning almost everything about her heritage and religion—at risk of alienation and shame—she conspicuously sidesteps explicit opinions on the history and politics encircling her in Jerusalem. While terror threats, settlement evacuations, and protests are represented as backdrop, she portrays herself as a child not fully cognizant of the adult world around her, focused on the sight of an orange ribbon caught on the breeze while oblivious to the politics it represents. Though this has the feel of a work-in-progress, it’s nevertheless a serious and sparkling coming-of-age tale. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"a serious and sparkling coming-of-age tale" - Publishers Weekly

“A charged memoir of political and religious transformation that’s just right for young readers questioning such things.” - Kirkus

From the Publisher

2023-10-04
A welcome introduction to the work of an artist and children's book illustrator well known in her native Israel.

The daughter of a rabbi (“When I was a kid, the expression ‘the Rabbi’s daughter’ made me feel uneasy and like I didn’t belong”), Sherman-Friedman grew up in a walled settlement imbued with conservative values. In an early scene, the author depicts her family taking part in a vociferous protest against Ariel Sharon’s order that the Gaza Strip be evacuated, anathema to the right wing that would take power with the Netanyahu government a decade later. Sherman-Friedman took a lesson in the power of prayer from her mother: Accidentally left alone at home, “I prayed with all my heart for someone to come and save me, and hug me tight,” only to receive a reassuring call seconds later from her mother, who promises to come home immediately. “Even now, when I hear my mother’s voice, I never feel alone,” she writes. In panels with a plain-spun style somewhat akin to the realms of Roz Chast and Marjane Satrapi, Sherman-Friedman recounts that her approaches to the supreme being were less successful, leading her to atheism: “You don’t reply,” she addresses God, “and perhaps You don’t even hear, and You’re surprised that I don’t, either.…Do you know who I am? Do I know? No, and why’s that? Because I suddenly realized that You don’t have an answer, that there isn’t an answer at all.” Sherman-Friedman’s book, originally published in French in 2021, is provocative, but it makes no overarching universal claims: This is her life, she makes clear, with her loves, her disappointments, her worries, her sorrows. Modest but self-assertive, the author touches on large issues and small ones with equal attentiveness, clearly unafraid of the consequences of speaking openly.

A charged memoir of political and religious transformation that’s just right for young readers questioning such things.

Kirkus Reviews