Brazen by Pénélope Bagieu

Brazen

by Pénélope Bagieu

Spoiler alert: No spoilers this time, it's just a really enjoyable reading,
full of characters that you probably never heard of before or
knew their stories but not their names.

Hello everyone, here there is another review.

Today I'm going to talk about the graphic novel Brazen (originally called in French Les Culottées), written by the French illustrator and comic designer Pénélope Bagieu. I've came across this book because a friend of mine brought me one of the tomes in French when she went back to Paris for holidays and since then I wanted to pay the full version of it, which you can find in different languages such as English, French, Spanish, Italian and so on.

The graphic novel goes across history and the whole globe to describe to us indomitable women, who fought for their rights and to give a better life to their selves and the other generations. These are the stories of women that fought against adversity by raising their voices to be heard and change the course of history.

With her drawings, Bagieu shows the lives of these female role models, some more famous as the Witch of Oz and some less known as Agnodice, the first female gynecologist. These stories are meant to inspire the next generations of brazen and couragous women.

---

I mean, what else can I say except the fact that I loved it? It's really enjoyable, because it's made as a comic, so easier to read, even though in some parts approaches some important and cruel topics. My favourite stories are the one about: Agnodice, the first gynecologist in Ancient Greece; Josephine Baker, who was mostly known as a French dancer but was also a French Resistance fighter and a matriarch; and Jesselyn Radack, a lawyer who fought for the rights of whistle-blowers.