NEWS: Bridge Books Announces Aug. 23, 2024 Release Date for Darya Foroohar’s “My Eyes, Your Gaze,” Updates to Hardcover Design
Darya Foroohar. Image courtesy the artist.
NEWS
Bridge Books Announces Aug. 23, 2024 Release Date for Darya Foroohar’s “My Eyes, Your Gaze,” Updates to Hardcover Design
MY EYES, YOUR GAZE WILL BE RELEASED AUG 23, 224 WITH EVENTS TO BE ANNOUNCED
Bridge Books, publisher of the Bridge Journal, a division of Bridge Art Nfp, the registered Illinois 501 (c) 3 not for profit organization that also publishes the weekly online Bridge magazine at bridge-chicago.org, today announces publication of its first graphic novella title. Every Thursday throughout our Fall 2023 (Sept - Dec) and Spring 2024 seasons, Bridge serialized Darya Foroohar’s "My Eyes, Your Gaze" through our social media sites and in an online flip-book, which now culminates in publication of the full graphic novel this summer. Acquired for the press by Bridge Journal Fiction Section Editor Meghan Lamb, the story collection will be released by Bridge Books Aug. 23, 2024. In addition, after several proof-of-concept tweaks in our design phase, “My Eyes, Your Gaze,” will now be produced exclusively as a hard cover title. All preorders will automatically be upgraded to hardcover at no additional cost.
From the theories of urbanist Georg Simmel to the bars of rapper Megan Thee Stallion, there has been no dearth of work exploring how cultural expectations of physical presentation have shaped people’s relationships to both their bodies and those around them. My Eyes, Your Gaze is a graphic essay on the cultural perception and conception of the body, especially as it relates to gender and sexuality. Using her own experiences as a thread tying the piece together, Foroohar engages with both queer, anticolonial, and feminist theory in addition to modern pop culture to explore the ways in which the concept of the physical body is intertwined with the legacies of colonialism, misogyny, and queerphobia. The work started out as a personal project but grew more academic as I began to connect the readings in my UChicago classes to the issues of self-perception and presentation I was thinking about privately. It became the final project for my global queer and feminist aesthetics class, which pushed me to investigate non-western perspectives on the body and its cultural conception, turning the work from a pet project into something much bigger than myself. Ultimately, My Eyes, Your Gaze is an exploration not only of the societal constraints on the body, but on the in which people have taken back possession of their bodies and their sense of self.
“I wish so deeply for an alternate universe youth wherein Darya Foroohar’s My Eyes, Your Gaze would have been available to me, a companion as I approached this lifelong labyrinth of “The aesthetics and perception of [my your their] the body,” says Bridge Journal and Books Fiction Acquisitions Editor Meghan Lamb. “Foroohar deftly moves through passages of gender and anti-colonial theory, body horror, and contemporary cultural analysis, through a mise en abyme of projected and refracted identities. In addition to navigating the works of Fanon, Baldwin, Russell, and Butler (to name but a few), Foroohar boldly confronts the mirror, investigating the complexities of her own bodily engagement with these texts. The reader/viewer bears witness as Foroohar dons different costumes and roles, from a “tits out” dress (for a public talk on her graphic novel) to a “tits down” boy-shaped binder (for a night at the club). Inspired and invigorated by Foroohar’s gaze, I emerged from this labyrinth (as much as one ever emerges) with a map of my own internal complexities, of the my, the your, and the their that I map onto the body.”
“It has long been a goal for Bridge Books to publish graphic novels, comics and other sequential art, all very much in-line with our spirit as a publisher of artist’s books,” explains Bridge Books publisher Michael Workman. “Darya’s graphic novella is a singular inaugural title for the press, and an important work of anti-colonialist self-exploration through the literate histories of their critiques. The result is an intellectual, delightfully drawn self-portrait in a tradition that redefines the role of identity, often avoided in the work of previous generation’s thinkers – Susan Sontag comes to mind – while still embracing her desire for an informed freedom from external definitions. This mighty little volume is poised to help generations of readers navigate these complex new pathways more capable than ever.”
About Darya Foroohar
Darya is a fourth-year student at the University of Chicago studying creative writing and urban studies. She has self-published two graphic novels, Somewhere Far From Here (2022) and I Wish I Didn't Think About This (2021). She is the recipient of the 2022 Seidel Scholars Grant, which funded her self-directed adaptation of the Persian myth the Shahnameh into a graphic novel. In addition to working on this, she is working on her creative writing thesis this year, as well as personal comic projects and commissions. Outside of writing, Darya likes to make music, do the NYT crossword, and take long, long walks.
View the full press release here.
