On Wednesday, April 10, at 2:00pm, award-winning graphic novelist and painter Leela Corman and renowned songwriter and recording artist Thalia Zedek will present a collaborative performance based upon Corman's new graphic novel Victory Parade (Schocken/Pantheon, 2024) as well as other works by Corman.
This performance will take place in the Flintridge Room at the University Student Union. It is co-sponsored by the CSUN Jewish Studies Program, Departments of Art, History, and English, and College of Humanities. Read on for details!
The performance features Zedek playing guitar and loops, and singing, while Corman reads aloud from her comics as they are projected on a large screen. In particular, Corman will read from Victory Parade, a just-released novel set during World War II in Brooklyn, New York, and in the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. Together Corman’s text and images and Zedek's compositions and improvisations will create a haunting, immersive atmosphere.
Victory Parade tells the story of Rose Arensberg, who has fallen in love with a disabled veteran while awaiting the return of her husband, Sam, a soldier in the US army serving in Europe. Rose has taken in a German Jewish refugee, Ruth, who is haunted by memories of growing up in Nazi Germany, while Sam, who has helped to liberate Buchenwald, is afflicted with terrifying flashbacks of his experience. This tale of resilience and ruin, of survival and enduring trauma, spans from the shipyards of Brooklyn, where together women work and bond in spite of misogyny and antisemitism, to the astral plane over Buchenwald, where the hovering spirits of the dead observe the dismantling of the nightmarish camp. At once horrific and humane, Victory Parade has been hailed as "revelatory" (Publishers Weekly), "stunning" (The Jewish Book Council), "savage and soulful" (Kirkus), and "a deeply affecting portrait of how individuals and civilizations process mass trauma" (Gay League).
Leela Corman, artist and educator, is the creator of many autobiographical and fictional comics, including You Are Not A Guest (Fieldmouse Press, 2023), We All Wish For Deadly Force (Retrofit/Big Planet, 2016), and the graphic novel Unterzakhn (Schocken/Pantheon, 2012). She is an instructor and mentor for the Sequential Artists Workshop and has published comics widely in such venues as Tablet, Nautilus, and The Nib.
Thalia Zedek, a singer, guitarist, and composer active since the 1980s, is a legendary figure in experimental and alternative rock, having performed with bands such as Come, Live Skull, and Uzi, as well as her own bands E and the Thalia Zedek Band. She has released many solo and band projects since 2001, most recently 2021's Perfect Vision. For more information on Zedek's work, see her profile at Bandcamp.
During their campus visit, Corman and Zedek will also be visiting classes including English 333 (Comics and Graphic Novels) and History 357 (History of the Holocaust). For further information, please contact Dr. Melissa Weininger of CSUN's Jewish Studies Program.