Unveiling Hidden Truths: How Stephanie Stalvey’s "Everything in Color" Transforms the Love Story Genre
Stalvey provides some of the clearest and most straightforward writing and visual storytelling coming out of the post-evangelical community today. The simplicity of the graphic memoir form keeps her rooted in specific scenes and examples, which she then extrapolates in the form of striking visual archetypes.
One of the most straightforward but effective tactics Stalvey uses is to render the scenes saturated by binary thinking in grayscale: a literal depiction of the black-and-white limits placed on her life. Echoing Virgie Townsend’s breathtaking short story chapbook, Because We Were Christian Girls (Black Lawrence Press; October 2022), Stalvey writes, “We were church kids raised in a world without gradients.” Stalvey is telling her own story, exploring its turning points and the moments when the rigid framework she was given wasn’t enough to contain the nuances of a life fully lived.
