Belonging

Between the real life photos and documents that are mixed with absolutely gorgeous art, and the Krug's meticulous documentation of her quest unravel and understand her family's history, it's impossible to not feel like you were placed in the author's shoes and taken along for every single step of her journey. You will be unsettled by the same questions and worries that weigh on her, end up feeling the same thirst for answers, and feel the same grapple of emotions that beset her with every new revelation about the past. It's an experience that you should not pass up, especially considering the present. With mass dehumanization of others on a fierce and continuing rise, Krug will do the much-needed favor of making you think of what it means to have a national past shaped by dark forces.

One of the best books I've read this year.

This is an immensely important book that delves into the psyche of a German grappling with German guilt. The subsequent generations who did not live through WWII are still very much affected by it. It told the story effectively using a combination of comics, photographs, and 3D objects photographed.

Brace yourself to be consumed by this raw, deeply personal and revealing memoir. As a German, Nora Krug yearns to know the truth of her fractured family and in searching she aches to be absolved.

In this memoir, Nora Krug researches her German family to help alleviate her feelings of guilt about World War II. She includes research from government sources and family photos to help her tell her family's story. Her book has the feel of a journal with her personal feelings about her discoveries, and a scrapbook with her drawings, photos, and documents that she explains to weave the story together. It is artistically arranged, and feels personal and confessional.

This book is so powerful and emotional and eye-opening. Krug takes us with her on a journey to uncover the buried history of her homeland and her family; Krug's watercolor-esque illustrations, historical photographs, and found objects take it to another level. Everyone should read this.

Belonging is an absolutely beautiful memoir full of questions about identity, family and homeland. Nora Krug was born and raised in Germany, in the shadow of World War II. Belonging is a deeply personal memoir about her struggles with German identity, coming to terms with her family history, and exploring the German idea of Heimat, or homeland. Her journey leads her to talking to Holocaust survivors in her new homeland of Brooklyn, traveling with her mother and father to Germany, meeting many unexpected people and gaining many new insights into her family's history and how it relates to history at large. The artistic style is stunning. The font chosen for the book looks hand written, and photographs and documents are interspersed with illustrations. This is such a deeply personal story, but I related to it on many levels. The search for identity, trying to learn about people in your past who have died long ago, and figuring out where is your homeland were all things I could relate to. Belonging is a masterpiece of a book, a book that makes the best use of a graphic novel format, and a memoir that should join classics like Persepolis or Maus.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A beautifully illustrated and throughtfullly presented memoir on being German. Nora Krug grapples with her German heritage as an immigrant to the US and in light of the horrors of Nazism. Her artwork, especially the collages with photos and other momentos provides a different way of telling her story. She makes you think about the effects of the 2nd World War from a different perspective, while not downplaying what happened or anyone’s role. Well worth reading.

This graphic memoir is a really deep and poignant look at one's self. It's a really heavy topic, but I found it awesome to experience Nora's journey of self-discovery cool to be done in the graphic medium. I also loved that it wasn't a typical graphic novel. The book was drawn as if written in a notebook, and there were even real photos put into it to make it feel more real. One page might have a real photo of her grandfather in a german uniform, and the next page was a little illustration of the people in the town. It kind of hit you with the truth suddenly. I do want to post a warning though, some of the images early on were a little too much to handle. We are dealing with WWII in Nazi Germany, so there are some horrific images there. So just be mindful of that if that could be a trigger, or just something you wouldn't want to see in a book.

Nora's memoir is really fascinating to me, because it really looks at war and how it shapes a country. Does the war ever really leave a country? What the Nazis did was really truly terrible, and Nora has known that her entire life. She feels like she has been shamed so much by her country's past that to be patriotic in any shape is bad, and she doesn't really know where she belongs. I really felt for her when she mentions people would do the Hitler Salute to her in jest when they found out she was German. That was just so cruel. Since she feels this way, she decides to find out just what exactly her family did during the war. War shapes everyone it touches, even after it's been long gone. It changes a country, it changes a landscape, and in Nora's experience it feel like Germany is still dealing with what their ancestors did.

It's hard to read about what happened in Germany to both the Jews and the Germany people. Nora sets out to really find the truth about what her family did in what seems like a way to absolve her of her guilt. I don't think in the end that isn't really the point of her doing this. She just wants to have the answers to all her questions. She just wants to know what really happened. It won't make her feel better, but it will make her understand her family and herself. I think the point of her story is really the journey, and not what she ends up finding.

I feel like I can't say much more about this book without giving more of it away. I don't read a lot of non-fiction, but this one was a really in depth look at how history and culture can really affect a family for years. I'm really glad I read this one.

I'm always looking for books that are engaging or educating or hopefully both for YA students. Call this one "both."

A fascinating memoir of one woman's attempt to understand and connect with her own past, as well as the complicated past of Germany. It's well worth a read.

"I feel a sudden pain, shallow but sharp and all-consuming as a paper cut, because even inherited memory hurts."

It's been a very long time since I have felt a book so deeply and I find it difficult to adequately express that depth of emotion. Having never given much thought to the subsequent generations that are coming after the war I am blown away by how blind I have been to the lasting and wide-spread impact of such a world event. This book was presented with such beautiful innocence and honesty, and was so completely immersive that maybe just a list of all the thoughts and feelings I experienced while reading it will do to convey my gratitude at having been lucky enough to experience it.

Insightful, introspective, heart-wrenching, beautiful, moving, thoughtful, honest, intimate, painfully raw.

We all Search: for roots, meaning, answers, stories, purpose. Nora Krug’s Belonging is the author’s journey of making her way back to the German towns her parents and relatives are from and learning their stories. It’s about Searching, Finding her own way, figuring out Collective Guilt, following the bread crumbs, hoping they’ll lead her ‘home.’

This ‘graphic memoir’ engaged me from the moment I opened it. Mesmerizing, creative, dramatic. I’ve never seen anything like it. (That’s a compliment of the highest order!)

The first German thing from Krug’s notebook is Hansaplast, a bandage, the safest thing in the world. “It is the most tenacious bandage on the planet, and it hurts when you tear it off to look at your scar.” A metaphor for what’s to come. The heart opening in searching honesty.

Krug’s Questioning becomes our questioning.

We don’t talk about the war. My German immigrant grandparents came over after WWI and did not talk about it. The German host family I lived with for a year did not. Nor did my parents (too young to remember much detail.) We don’t talk about the war. I’m glad Krug searched for answers and shared them in this entrancing memoir ‘scrapbook.’ It makes me wonder how much I don’t know about my family.

Simple powerful drawings with pencil-type color fill the book. Illustrated and photographed faces haunt, making the reader/ watcher pause. Handwritten script is neat, writing is strong, yet concise. School essays, photos, letters, German documents and collages from flea market finds add to the mood of Belonging.

Krug dedicates the book: To my old family and my new family. Bonds form. Uhu glue is the final German thing Nora elaborates on. While incredibly strong, it cannot fill all the cracks.

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for granting access to an arc of this book for an honest review.

I love that the whole of this book was handwritten. The illustrations were so well srawn. I also love that it includes pictures, along with scraps of things she's found.

I've never read a memoir like this before. I really likes the format.

In "The Germans" episode of <em>Fawlty Towers</em>, Basil is told not to mention the war, but he does, frequently, until the guest break out in tears. At the time, I thought it odd that the germans would be upset about it. As Basil said, they started it.

I bring this up, because the author of this story, is one such German, who knows about the war, but it is not talked about, though her father's older brother fought and died in World War II. This memoir of how she doesn't feel that she has a home in her former homeland, and how she goes in search of what her family did in the war, and what happened to them.

There has been a sense of guilt she has felt, from her homeland, and she finds it follows her abroad.

<img class="alignnone wp-image-726 size-full" src="http://www.reyes-sinclair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Screen-Shot-2018-07-15-at-10.50.45-AM.png" alt="Belonging" />

It is an amazing book. When the Americans came and saw what had happened in the concentration camps, they forced the citizens to not only look on the dead, but to transport them and give them decent burials.
<img class="alignnone wp-image-725 size-full" src="http://www.reyes-sinclair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Screen-Shot-2018-07-15-at-10.51.07-AM.png" alt="Belonging" />

And so, with this background, and the feeling of shame, the author goes in search of the uncle that died int he war, as well as her grandfather. She wants to know if her family really was evil. Did they support Hitler, of were they sheep, just followers.

She goes and talks to relatives still living in Germany, and finds source documents, to find the story of those that came before her.

<img class="alignnone wp-image-751 size-full" src="http://www.reyes-sinclair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Screen-Shot-2018-07-16-at-4.15.03-PM.png" alt="Belonging" />

It is a long and interesting journey, and one that is part speculation.

But the depth that she goes to, in her search, is amazing. What a fanstastic, book, going into the heart and soul of the survivors.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free digital copy!

In Belonging, Nora Krug wrestles with questions about what we inherit and the ways we can (and can't) heal. Though this account was deeply rooted in Nora's family history and her questions about her grandparents during WWII, I (a Southern American) found it deeply relatable and touching. All families have fractures, and Nora's narrative did full justice to the longing to understand and to reconcile that sometimes comes when you inherit the pieces.

I loved the multimedia feel of this book, too. The use of different textures, scans, illustrations, and handwritten text made the story feel tactile, engaging, and personal in a way that would have been lost if it were just typed in plain text.

A quietly vibrant memoir that will make you ponder.

I am almost overwhelmed at the depth and intensity of this graphic memoir. My husband is a second generation German American, his father was born in Germany shortly before the end of WWII and his mother is of Jewish heritage. As a child, my husband wasn’t taught German and learned very little of his father’s family, never heard stories of the homeland. Reading this book felt like peeking behind an unspoken curtain into some inkling of my father-in-law’s thoughts. I was absolutely captivated both for Krug and myself. I will share this digital advanced copy with my husband and hope to build the courage to share a copy with my father-in-law after publication.

This is a poignant tale of a woman searching for a place to belong and connect despite the pain and hard times her native country (Germany) went through and created.
Nora wrestles with questions like, "Can I be proud to be German?" and "What impact do the choices my extended family made during WWII have on me?"

The combination of historical pictures, family heirlooms, handwritten notes, and documents make you feel as though you are traveling along with Nora. The book doesn't have a neat, tidy ending with all of the answers because that isn't real life.

I would highly recommend reading this book.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this coming of age graphic novel. I enjoyed Nora's use of pictures to illustrate the story. Thank you for the opportunity to review this book.