Cartoonist Maria Sweeney’s new graphic memoir, Brittle Joints, is a riot of color. Through dialogue, first-person narration, painterly art, pencil textures, and both traditional and non-traditional panel layouts, Sweeney examines her life through her relationship to chronic pain and the progression of her disability, Bruck Syndrome, which causes brittle bones and joint abnormalities.
Brittle Joints moves back and forth between Sweeney’s childhood—when she counted her broken bones—and adulthood, when she struggles with neuropathy in her hands. The non-linear timeline highlights both how her disability has changed over time and how her relationship to it has shifted. It also contributes to the liminal feeling of the book as a whole, which is broken up into small vignettes that illustrate how difficult it is to exist as a disabled woman, especially when your disability is so under-researched.
Sweeney is an ambulatory wheelchair user who uses a variety of mobility aids and pain management tools (like cannabis) to keep her body safe. Because her condition is so rare and also progressive, she frequently deals with medical gaslighting and/or doctors who claim they don’t know how to help her. She lays these moments bare in Brittle Joints alongside supportive, loving moments with her friends and partner, as well as times when her pain is so great that outside input hardly registers at all.
Following the publication of Brittle Joints in late June, I spoke with Sweeney via e-mail about the book, what she wants people to know about Bruck Syndrome, and how art and comics have impacted her life.
The Beat: What prompted you to create a graphic memoir about your disability?
Maria Sweeney: I started writing autobiographical comics and sharing my experience of living with a rare disability toward my senior year of college. I felt a need to express the grief and inaccessibility my community faces daily. So, I started by creating a few single-page comics about being disabled.
Social and economic systems often exclude disabled people, and this can lead to isolation and to silencing our stories. As a longtime comics reader myself, I found few stories that included the disabled experience, especially physical disabilities.
What were the pros and cons of telling your story in an illustrated and written medium?
Sweeney: Comics are such an expansive medium for storytelling, and the format feels natural for tackling difficult subject matter. I like using comics as a vehicle for sharing my life because it gives me the ability to conceptualize my feelings and internal thoughts into something visual and tangible. Emotions like grief, exclusion, connection—all of these can be expressed in something visual.
Comics are limitless and that’s the greatest draw (pun intended!) for me. The biggest challenge of telling my story through comics is definitely how long it takes, and it’s often difficult to decide which details to include in each story.
Each section of the book is sort of a vignette—as a disabled person who also experiences chronic pain, this feels like how I experience time during flares. I love the liminal quality of each “chapter.”
How did you decide what order to put things in and where to give readers information versus showing them snippets of your experience for them to fill in the blanks?
Sweeney: When I was making the first self-published iteration of Brittle Joints, I was reading a lot of underground Philly zines of short, digestible comics and I was also watching films by Yasujirō Ozu, a Japanese director, who used a lot of short vignettes.
Many of the experiences of disability can be painful and overwhelming. Vignettes allow me a degree of distance from difficult details that may be hard for me to process. I also feel that vignettes mimic the way my mind works—my memories often feel like a Rolodex of clips that comics helps me sort through.
How have art and comics impacted your life?
Sweeney: Art and comics have brought me community, friendship, and stability in ways I could have never predicted. My time in art college in Philadelphia was very formative for me in cultivating my sense of identity as a queer, disabled artist. Comics provided a means for me to process my life in ways that drawing alone hadn’t at that time. My life has been riddled with instability and insecurity, but art in general and comics, in particular, have been the most fulfilling part of my life as a creative person.
Aside from comics, what kinds of art do you enjoy consuming or making?
Sweeney: I enjoy working with my hands, though my hand neuropathy has shifted my relationship of touch in many ways. I loved ceramics as a child and would love to get back into it as an adult. I love cooking for my loved ones! I love watercolor painting in nature or just being in nature in general. I enjoy taking really long strolls in my power wheelchair looking for community gardens in my neighborhood and picking flowers for a little bouquet for my partner.
Did you draw inspiration for the colors, textures, or styles in Brittle Joints from anything/anyone in particular?
Sweeney: I’m deeply inspired by the natural world and the many textures and colors that nature gifts us every day. I grew up enveloped in the dense forests of the New Jersey Pinelands and I continue to find respite around trees.
I am inspired by the stories of other comic creators and how they interpret the world into a visual narrative. For the cover of Brittle Joints, I took inspiration from different painters like Frida Kahlo and Rachel Ruysch. And I’m always inspired by my own disabled community and artist friends!
What do you wish people knew about Bruck Syndrome?
Sweeney: While Bruck Syndrome is an extremely rare and often painful disability, it does not prevent people from doing pretty much anything! But Bruck Syndrome manifests differently for each person and can be a complex amalgam of symptoms.
Thinking about accessibility through a broad communal lens benefits everyone and certainly those with Bruck Syndrome. Are your events wheelchair-accessible? Is virtual programming an option? Even just letting your friend know you checked ahead that a place is accessible is incredibly impactful.
What do you hope readers take away from the book?
Sweeney: I hope the book’s themes of interdependence and inclusivity resonate with readers. Accessibility is a universal issue. With over one-fourth of Americans having a diagnosed disability, it touches everyone’s lives. I also hope readers feel welcomed into my appreciation of nature and friendship as it relates to being disabled and the nuances that come with that.
Brittle Joints is a call to everyone to reflect on how disability inclusivity can be practiced in your own lives.
How has the reception been since its release? Has anything surprised you?
Sweeney: The supportive reception since the release of Brittle Joints has been overwhelming, in a good way! But I have also felt especially raw seeing my life revealed for my loved ones to see. It is odd because of course, I consciously chose to write a book about my life but ultimately, I did it for me.
Sharing and marketing your own autobiographical work with the world can feel like an exposed nerve. But it is rewarding to hear my loved ones say they see themselves in the book or to hear my disabled friends say it resonates with them in some way.
Can you tell us what you’re working on now?
Sweeney: My first illustrated children’s book called The Scooter Twins was released earlier this summer and I will be working on its sequel next month. The book centers around two children navigating the world with their mobility scooters. It was incredibly fulfilling to work on a project that featured disability in a positive and encouraging way for all kids! I also continue to share my life and creative process on my Patreon.
Is there anything you’d like to add?
Sweeney: Thank you so much for taking time to feature my work and my disabled experience! This project has been a decade in the making, and seeing it come to fruition has been so exciting. Witnessing the book in people’s hands and on their bookshelves is such a surreal experience!
I would like to encourage folks to think about how they can support disabled creators and activists, whether by sharing their work, practicing community care through masking, or helping organize accessible events. There are a myriad of ways to support the disabled community in impactful ways.
Brittle Joints is available everywhere books are sold.
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