Two Cents Plain

My Brooklyn Boyhood

By Martin Lemelman

Family legacy and social upheaval collide in a graphic memoir set in the aisles of a neighborhood candy store.

Martin Lemelman's elegiac and bittersweet graphic memoir Two Cents Plain collects the memories and artifacts of the author's childhood in Brooklyn. The son of Holocaust survivors, Lemelman grew up in the back of his family's candy store in Brownsville during the 1950s and '60s, as the neighborhood, and much of the city, moved into a period of deep decline. In Two Cents Plain, Lemelman pieces together the fragments of his past in an effort to come to terms with a childhood that was marked by struggle both in and outside of the home. But his was not a childhood wholly without its pleasures. Lemelman's Brooklyn is also the nostalgic place of egg creams and comic books, malteds and novelty toys, where the voices of Brownsville's denizens-the deli man, the fish man, and the fruit man-all come to vivid life. Between the lingering strains of the Holocaust and the increasing violence on the city's streets, Two Cents Plain reaches its dramatic climax in 1968, as Lemelman's worlds explode, forcing him and his family to re-create their lives. Through his stirring narrative and richly rendered black-and-white drawings, family photographs, and found objects, Lemelman creates a lush, layered view of a long-lost time and place, the chronicle of a family and a city in crisis. Two Cents Plain is a wholly unique memoir and a reading experience not soon forgotten.

Reviews of Two Cents Plain:

“Lemelman’s viewpoint is affectionate but not gauzy…The book tracks the transformation of the neighborhood from a kind of shtetl to one of uneasy racial mix. This is literary territory familiar to fans of Mordecai Richler and Saul Bellow; what Lemelman brings to it is artistry featuring a fine eye for detail, penmanship nuanced but never watery, and a stylistic fearlessness that can stuff pop art tropes, photography, and naturalism onto the same page.”—Boston Globe. Read full review.

“In this rich sketch and scrap book of sorts – a compelling compendium of expressively-rendered anecdotes and black-and-white drawings, documents, photos, and artifacts — Lemelman begins Two Cents Plain with those grim days of wartime and war torn Europe to chronicle the struggles of his and his brother Bernard’s parents to get to the United States, and their ultimate dilemmas and decisions that went into opening the candy, comic books, and novelties store – kid tested, mom ultimately approved.”—Gordon Hauptfleisch, Blogcritics.org. Read full review. Seattle Post Intelligencer picked up the piece.

“Lemelman captures the challenges, tastes, and smells of a particularly nostalgic time and place for many immigrants through his compelling illustrations. Two Cents Plain offers a firsthand account of the first generation American's experience as the structure of the 1950s evolved into the freeform 1960s.”s—Miami New Time. Read full review.

The book's No. 43 on Comic Book Resources’ list of the top 100 comics of the year. “Amazing…Author Martin Lemelman mixes nostalgia and realism, bringing in period touches such as drawings of vintage toys and candy but never shying away from the grittier details such as his parents' anger, their poverty and the rats that swarmed through their apartment.”—Comic Book Resource.

“Through Lemelman’s strong narrative voice and spare images, TWO CENTS PLAIN is a haunting and unforgettable black and white encounter with the past.”—Jewish Book World

A very nice interview with Martin Lemelman on WritersCast

And Martin’s latest post on Brooklyn the Borough

Martin Lemelman’s Two Cents Plain, first post as “Reader in Residence” at Brooklyn the Borough

“Like a two-cent seltzer water, this graphic memoir is an unassuming treat, whether sipped a story at a time, or quaffed in one satisfying sitting.”.—AV Club’s “Comics Panel”. Read review.

“TWO CENTS PLAIN takes the cutting edge form of a graphic novel, but it’s a classic coming of age story set in Brooklyn in the 1950s and ’60s. Lemelman’s detailed pencil drawings, sprinkled with Yiddish sayings and dialogue capturing the colorful, broken English of his immigrant parents, tell the story of his hard-working parents fleeing the Holocaust after WWII and setting up shop in Teddy’s Candy Store, selling ice cream, cigarettes, sodas, egg creams, newspapers, and toys.”—San Francisco Book Review

A nice Q&A with Martin Lemelman in The Jewish Star

“Life is the biggest bargain. You get it for free,” reads one of the Yiddish sayings that introduce the chapters, in a book that is both a celebration and an affirmation of life."—Kirkus, starred review

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Two Cents Plain

My Brooklyn Boyhood