Sweet, funny, and quietly poignant, Debbie Tung’s comics reveal the ups and downs of coming of age as an introvert.
There’s a fine line between being an introvert and having social anxiety, and the author of this book managed to truthfully showcase both. This illustrated gift book full of short comics will make you want to say “STOP READING MY MIND!” Debbie Tung fully managed to show me those shadowy parts of myself through her story.
Also, the title Quiet Girl in a Noisy World perfectly gets me.
I recently listened to the podcast — Quiet: The Power of Introverts with Susan Cain and it fits wonderfully with this illustrated book, especially the parts of Debbie Tung’s early childhood. The podcast, “where quiet voices are heard,” is about introverted kids and focuses on giving parents and educators the tools to empower quiet kids. Which is where the central theme of Quiet Girl in a Noisy World can be summed up by this Susan Cain quote:
“Why shouldn’t quiet be strong? And what else can quiet do that we don’t give it credit for?”
The only tiny hindrance I want to mention are the time jumps and how they made the narrative a bit rocky and unclear at times, from going to college to meeting someone new to marriage to graduate school to flashbacks from her childhood… all over the span of not that many pages. But once it got its right footing, the story worked wonders.
Speaking of which, here are the many moments that got me at my core:
I desperately wanted to push The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson into her hands whenever she got stressed over declining a social outing.
It was beyond satisfying to finally see her accept her introverted self after doing some research on the topic, instead of trying to meet the many expectations “of the extrovert ideal.”
All in all: I was very in tune with everything written in this illustrated book.
ARC kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Publication Date: November 7th, 2017
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