One Hundred Demons collects a series of memoiristic strips that appeared in Salon’s popular “Mothers Who Think” section. Here are 20 stories told in Lynda Barry’s distinctive cartoon-narrative style that delve into the funk and sweetness of love, family, adolescence, race and the 'hood, identity — all the forces that made her the "wreck" she is today. Barry distinguishes these stories with her pitch-perfect sense of the way young people talk and think and her ability to casually render childhood’s cruelties in luminous, unsparing detail. From her nattering and intolerant/loving Filipina grandmother to the ex-boyfriend from hell who had lice, One Hundred Demons paints a memorable picture of a gifted girl whose life is intersected by a cast of crazies. Hailed for its shimmering watercolor images and called by Time magazine “a work of art as well as literature,” this collection makes an important addition to the genre Barry has sardonically christened “autobiofictionalography.”
