Book: The Good Times are Killing Me, written and illustrated by Lynda Barry

Paperback, 1998. Appropriate for young adults ("ages 14 and up") but this is a good read for adults too. If you're unfamiliar, Lynda Barry has a sardonic sense of humor--if you're into her style I've also got a Posh listing for her book Cruddy. This copy is in excellent used condition, very gently read. "Young Edna Arkins lives in a neighborhood that is rapidly changing, thanks to white flight from urban Seattle in the late 1960s. As the world changes around her, Edna is exposed to the callous racism of adults―sometimes subtle and other times blatant, but always stinging. By weaving the importance of music in adolescence with the forbidden friendship between Edna, who is white, and Bonna Willis, who is Black, Lynda Barry captures the earnest, awkward, yet always honest adolescent voice as perfectly in prose as she does in her comics." I think I bought this when I took a writing workshop with Barry. Some online descriptions call it a novella; I think of it more as a series of linked vignettes or flash fictions--except it was written before flash fiction became popular. Lynda Barry has always been ahead of the curve. 🤓