Unveiling Hidden Truths: How Stephanie Stalvey’s "Everything in Color" Transforms the Love Story Genre
Stalvey shows how the teachings of her childhood led her to see herself as sinful, but she also offers the redemption of a different perspective: one that recognizes her earlier impulses as reasonable efforts at self-protection. “She wasn’t trying to hurt me,” Stalvey writes of her younger self, the version she formerly understood as evil. “All along, she was fighting to keep me safe. She was never a demon[/] just a girl who felt demonized.”
I first encountered Stalvey’s work on Instagram. The visual format of the photo-sharing app is well-suited to showing off Stalvey’s rich illustrations, most of which are hand-painted. But Stalvey’s skills as a visual storyteller extend far beyond what the app can capture in ten or twenty gridded slides. The graphic memoir allows her narrative to blossom on its own terms, filling 528 pages with a sweeping story that spans decades and yet reads almost effortlessly.
