By Ben Boruff

In May of 2016, I participated in Chicagoland's This Is My Brave event. Actors, essayists, and storytellers of all types shared memories about mental illness with a live audience. This Is My Brave, Inc. is a national organization that strives to "end the stigma surrounding mental health issues by sharing personal stories."Several months later, I gathered a binder's worth of materials to defend the teaching of an award-winning graphic novel in a high school classroom. I argued that many comics and graphic novels offer a unique reading experience in which symbolically rich visuals fuel the potency of multifaceted narratives. One page in my binder included a quote often attributed to French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard: "Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form."