3 words and then some more words...

The first word that comes to mind when thinking about how I felt when reading- tense.  Another is sad.  The third is impressed, because the drawing in Darkroom is fantastic.  And the pages- the panels, while I know it is not an absolute, each page seemed to have a different layout- it wasn't linear, like many of the other works we've covered have tended to be, or lean toward.  It almost, in a way, read more like a comic book- with, for lack of a better description, action pages, context pages.  There is no "and then, and then" feel to the way in which one reads Darkroom, even though the story, with exceptions, reads chronologically.  And sound plays such a key role, in a way that seems more comic book like.  The dark scene from page 160 to 169 is particularly sound heavy, starting with an entire panel dedicated to one sound, moving to a thwack thwack thwack that crosses over two pages, then a distinct and familiar "ffffffffffffft" coming from a can of spray paint...

Darkroom was to me, another tale of lost or conveluted identity.  Weaver says it best herself when she described life in the south as being black and white, and she identifies herself as the uncommon grey shade in between.  In the black and white world she lives in, where there is little room for a grey area, she is not identified as black and therefore, she is 'booked' as white.  She attends school with the white children, and not the black.  As an impressionable youth in the segregated south, she becomes ashamed of her family because of their differences from the community she is placed in.  She becomes especially ashamed when her parents speak their native tongue in public, a signifier that they were in fact different, something she is taught is very wrong.  Different is wrong, the seemed slogan of the times.