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Also by Miriam Engelberg:

Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, May 2006
Hardcover

Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person
Miriam Engelberg

A Memoir in Comics - a cartoonist examines her experience with breast cancer in an irreverent and humorous graphic memoir.

HarperCollins
May 2006
144 pages
ISBN: 0060789735
Hardcover
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Graphic Novel

I think in cartoon panels. When I was younger I tried writing a novel and got mired in detail: too many words, too much description, too much work! When I found comic book writing, it was the perfect medium for me, pithy and to the point.

When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer at age 43, I began writing comics about those experiences, just trying to document what was happening in my life for my own sanity. I would come back from doctors' appointments with little notes jotted down that said things like '3-armed gown' and 'living with statistics.' Often I'd be telling a friend something upsetting about the latest twist and turn in my cancer saga, but as the words came out of my mouth they would turn into something absurd and we'd both end up laughing.

Have I really become a shallower person since cancer? Some of my friends beg to differ and state unequivocally that I was already shallow before cancer.

But I promise that even though you didn't know me before, I am definitely shallower now—and proud of it.

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