Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person

Miriam Engelberg

Biography

Miriam Engelberg was forty-three when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Like anyone faced with a life-altering personal trauma, she sought out a coping mechanism. While fellow patients championed the benefits of support groups and hypnotherapy, Engelberg found her greatest comfort in drawing, her lifelong passion.

Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person puts Engelberg’s life in focus the best way she knows how — with cartoons. Her graphic approach to a very serious subject follows in the tradition of Art Spiegelman’s award-winning Maus, but in her own offbeat, on-target, and darkly, devastatingly humorous style. From sex and wigs to nausea and causes — Was it overzealous cheese consumption or not enough multivitamins? — Engelberg leaves no aspect of cancer unexamined. In this remarkable “memoir in comics,” she takes a clear-eyed, deliciously sardonic look at caring friends and relatives, doctors, treatments, and support groups while never losing her guarded optimism and, most important, her sense of humor.