A review by jdscott50
We All Wish for Deadly Force by Leela Corman

5.0

I first saw Corman's art on The Nib (https://thenib.com/leela-corman) and was completely blown away. The part about, "When you love a child you become an emissary from a bad place no one wants to know about, but hello from those of us who live here." was so powerful. It aptly described the feeling of grief and the personal tidal wave that other people may never see or understand. I had to buy whatever book she had. I finally found a copy and it has every inch of power from that Nib comic.

It's a zine-like format without a straight narrative arc. It has snippets of her losing a child, teaching belly dancing in New York and dancing in Egypt. Her experience in Egypt is very detailed as we see heavy sexual harassment and assault as well as insight in the Arab Spring protests and the result from those elections. She also talks about her family's experience in the Holocaust. She is grateful for the support of her parents for she feels if she had lived in another time or place she would be "the first against the wall".