Unterzakhn
A mesmerizing, heartbreaking graphic novel of immigrant life on New York's Lower East Side at the turn of the 20th-century, as seen through the eyes of twin sisters whose lives take radically and tragically different paths. In drawings that capture both the tumult and the telling details of that life, Unterzakhn (Yiddish for 'Underthings') tells the story of sisters Esther and Fanya: as wide-eyed little girls absorbing the sights and sounds of a neighborhood of struggling immigrants; as teenagers taking their own tentative steps into the wider world; and, finally, as adults battling for their own piece of the 'golden land,' where the difference between just barely surviving and triumphantly succeeding involves, for each of them, painful decisions that will have unavoidably tragic repercussions.
