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GRAPHIC MEMOIR UNCOVERS SECRETS

By Lisa Sanning

Sophia Glock’s coming of age memoir, “Passport” is a teen graphic novel complete with family secrets and a teenaged Sophia finding her own way in the world.

The teen graphic memoir “Passport,” written and illustrated by the author Sophia Glock starts out with a slightly mysterious atmosphere and vaguely unsettling illustrated details, like bars on the windows of an apartment. Eventually though, it pivots to a more traditional coming of age story, which for the author, happened during the 1990s.

At age 15, Glock had already lived in six countries and attended eight schools. Her parents are vague about many things including what they do for a living, why the family moves so often, why certain things aren’t to be talked about outside of the family, and why they’re so protective of Sophia, her sister and their three brothers.

Sophia eventually reads a letter she’s not meant to and learns a shocking secret. Discovering this secret certainly explains some things about her family and her life, but it doesn’t make adolescence any easier for her. Somewhat disillusioned to find her parents have been keeping secrets, Sophia becomes determined to start making her own decisions.

As she explains in the memoir, Sophia and her family spent her teenage years living in an unnamed Central American nation, and she’s having a hard time figuring out where she fits in and which friends she can rely on. She starts keeping secrets of her own as she pushes back against the strict rules her parents have imposed on her. Although we continue to see the impact of her parent’s secretive life on Sophia, at this point, the memoir shifts away from her curiosity about her mom and dad and begins to focus more on her own life as she starts to wrestle with who she is and who she wants to be.

Deciding which rules to break and which ones to follow leads Sophia to lie to her parents and to sneak out when she should be in bed. She hides clothes her mom wouldn’t approve of under more conservative outfits until she leaves the house. She experiments with drinking and chooses friends who make even worse decisions than she does. She starts partying and dating, and deals with friendship drama and sex.

Sophia navigates this rocky period mostly unscathed and eventually gains more of a sense of who she is and begins to set boundaries for herself against the peer pressure that had been buffeting her life. As she ventures off to college in America, she still has a feeling of not really being from anywhere, but the reader senses she has matured and will be able to navigate life in healthier ways.

Although “Passport” is mainly a coming of age memoir, complete with teen angst and drama, the unique secret at its center and the tantalizingly few details the author is able to share, makes it an engrossing read leaving the reader wanting to know more.

Lisa Sanning is the adult services librarian at Missouri River Regional Library.

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2022-01-16T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-01-16T08:00:00.0000000Z

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