Twin studies

GENRE: Graphic novel

Twin studies

Leela Corman’s debut graphic novel, Unterzakhn (Schocken Books, $24.95)—Yiddish for “underwear”—tells the story of two sisters in early 20th-century New York. The children of immigrants from the Russian shtetl, twins Esther and Fanya observe their community on the Lower East Side as children, grow into it as young women, and find disparate—if equally subversive—paths as adults. Subtly feminist and thoroughly fascinating, Corman’s story is captured in her detailed black-and-white drawings, revealing the complexity of life among working-class women and the harsh realities of attempting to make it in the “land of opportunity.”