If you were Sarah Glidden a few years ago, you weren’t Israel’s biggest fan. You thought the country was a political bully and provocateur. You swore when you went there that you wouldn’t get emotional about this so-called religious “connection.” A few years ago, you didn’t know which of the two levers to push when you flushed Israeli toilets. And you certainly didn’t know the difference between a mentally challenged camel and an average one.
Years later, in her debut, 206-page autobiographical graphic novel, How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, Sarah Glidden becomes a changed woman – and we lucky critters get to witness every step of it.
Originally launched as a self-published mini-comic series at the 2007 Small Press Expo (SPX), comic book giant Vertigo (DC Comics’ “edgy” graphic novel publishing leg) got their lucky publishing mitts on the 30-year-old, Newton, Massachusetts-bred artist’s work after only three chapters to then produce the full graphic novel. Touted as a glimpse at a young woman’s life-changing experiences on a ten-day Taglit-Birthright Israel tour, How to Understand Israel isn’t about the search for Glidden’s Jewish identity (you can relax now, skeptical goyim!), but as a manifest of a cultural pilgrimage – specifically, to a place of which she believed to be an expert, but learns she really doesn’t know much about.
