As an academic in the health sciences field, I have experienced repeated frustration with respect to typical forms of academic currency […] and the fact that they tend to reach only a very limited audience, primarily other academics. While this is important, there are many other stakeholders […] who need to be aware of the lived experience and social context within which mental health and illness is experienced. [Eyes Too Dry] is a prime example of using visual, embodied ways of sharing the very personal experience of mental health issues. Such knowledge translation is powerful and has the great potential to reach a wide variety of audiences. I strongly recommend this novel to the general public and will certainly be ‘talking it up’ in my network as a prime example of arts-based knowledge translation.” – Katherine Boydell (Professor of Mental Health, Black Dog Institute)
“This memoir is so honest and beautiful in its storytelling. Eyes Too Dry isn’t afraid to talk openly about depression, people supporting people with depression and the stigma behind it all. It has fast become one of my favourite graphic novels.” – Vlada Edirippulige (Junky Comics)
“Eyes Too Dry is comics-making as processing. It’s so live and so raw. […] it’s incredibly compelling. I read it powering through the pages. I really recommend this as a chronicle, of these two people, but also as a use of the form. As archaeology; as digging; as naming – naming stuff that is so hard to come to terms with. [The stuff that] exists and obtrudes upon your whole life. I think it’s a remarkable achievement. A remarkable undertaking.” – Bernard Caleo (comics artist, editor, performer) Review on RRR Smart Arts Radio
“As an academic who works across the fields of creative writing, comics, and graphic medicine, I was thrilled and inspired by the two unique voices in this book, which speak to each other not only in words, but in those other lines particular to the medium of comics: the curve of a hand around a cup of soup; the broken edge of a panel border; the balloon of air around speech; the inky blackness of the holes into which we sometimes sink. As a person who grew up with immediate family members suffering through depression and other mental illnesses, this book offers a portrait of tenderness, friendship, caring and love that is expressed not just with honesty and compassion, but with practical, clear and specific ways of navigating complex emotional territory. This book helped me, without telling me that’s what it was doing. I couldn’t be more admiring of the achievement of these two young artists.” – Dr Elizabeth MacFarlane (Professor, University of Melbourne; Publisher, Twelve Panels Press)
“Reading this honest, at times confronting, and intimate story of personal struggle and friendship was particularly special given one of the authors was my student. The insight into her life offered by this memoir is a privilege to witness. It’s a unique, beautiful and heartrending depiction of true love and friendship and the “heaviness of being” that we all encounter at times in our lives. Bravo!” – Associate Professor, Sally Ayoub (Director, Undergraduate Medical Education, School of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University)
“To struggle with the textures of our mental landscape can feel like the most brutalizing, lonely thing. What Chipkin and Tavassoli have gifted us is one-of-a-kind: the lens of kinship. Through their dual perspectives, we eavesdrop on a tender conversation: How can I be there for you? and How can I not push you away? While most media focuses on the so-called failures or successes of mentally ill people to regain normalcy, these artists keep their focus on relationship. We witness questions of health and the realities of illness as traversed through that most precious, private kingdom: homiedom. The depth and nuance of these pages is treasure in the palm.” – Shira Erlichman