For all the hand wringing about young people not liking to read or even reading proficiently, there sure is a lot of gatekeeping by adults around what is and what is not appropriate for young people to read. Bracketing and suspending for a moment current book banning efforts in the United States, there are adults who sometimes look down on teen’s reading habits because they’re not reading the “right” books (not “literary” enough-be sure to say “literary” in the snootiest accent you can muster), or reading them the right way, if they are listening to audiobooks.

This attitude will often extend to graphic novels, of course. The old canards resurface: they’re bad influences, it’s not real reading, it’s all pictures and no text, they have no literary value, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. As a librarian and a literacy advocate, I am here to say that those folks are wrong. Every time I read a kidlit graphic novel, I am blown away by the artistry, storytelling, humor, and pathos I find in their pages.

Published by Drawn & Quarterly in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Indonesien (an outpost of Germany’s worldwide cultural institute to promote the study of the German language), Movements and Moments is a standout graphic novel, nonfiction text, and primer on indigenous feminisms from the Global South. With stories from the Philippines, Ecuador, Nepal, Bolivia, Vietnam, Chile, Peru, and India, it features the work of over ten writers and artists from the above countries, often from their own perspective as participants in the very movements they depict. It is rightly included in the 2023 shortlist for the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated Young Adult Book Prize.

I learned so much from this book. I now know about environmental movements in the Philippines and Chile, workers’ rights movements in Bolivia, and the preservation of minority cultural rites in Vietnam, all led by women. This book would appeal to teenagers interested in activism and social movements, and would fit right in a social studies unit, or in a university seminar dedicated to global feminisms. I was happy to see that my local library has Movements and Moments in its collection (that’s where I got my review copy!), and other public libraries, as well as school and university libraries, would do well to include this text in their collections.

Because this is a book dedicated to indigenous feminist movements fighting against the interests of big business, repressive governments, and environmental degradation, there are depictions of retaliatory violence visited upon indigenous women and their communities, including sexual assault. If you live long enough to be a a 45 year old woman as I am, you will know that entrenched power will always lash out and seek to silence and destroy. Teenagers are not insensate of this; in the United States, for example, they see how police violence harms many of their communities. A book like Movements and Moments can show them that there are people who care, who strive and struggle against powers that seem so overwhelming.

Title: Movements and Moments

Edited by Sonja Eismann, coordinated by Ingo W. Schöningh and Maya.

Written by various authors.

Illustrated by various authors.

Portions translated from Spanish from by Renata Duque and Felipe Pachón, with grant support from Goethe-Institut. Other portions written in English.

Drawn & Quarterly, 2022

Originally published by Goethe-Institut Indonesien, Jakarta

Awards: 2023 Booklist, Young Adult Nonfiction, Rise: A Feminist Book Project for Ages 0-18; Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated Young Adult Book Prize Shortlist, 2023; Excellence in Graphic Literature Mosaic Award Finalist, 2023.

ISBN: 9781770465619

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Reviews: Publishers Weekly, Montreal Review of Books, Kirkus, School Library Journal

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Klem-Marí Cajigas has been with Nashville Public Library since 2012, after more than a decade of academic training in Religious Studies and Ministry. As the Family Literacy Coordinator for Bringing Books to Life!, Nashville Public Library’s award-winning early literacy outreach program, she delivers family literacy workshops to a diverse range of local communities. In recognition of her work, she was named a 2021 Library Journal “Mover and Shaker.” Born in Puerto Rico, Klem-Marí is bilingual, bicultural, and proudly Boricua.