"Creation" would be a great read for individuals who enjoy graphic novels and have an interest in gentrification and urban renewal. The author, Sylvia Nickerson, provides a personal account of her experience as an artist mother navigating a rundown area of Hamilton, a Rust Belt city. Through watercolor illustrations, Nickerson takes the reader on a tour of the city, highlighting the interconnected issues of motherhood, pollution, poverty, violence, and gentrification. The book leaves questions open-ended regarding personal and political intersecting and encourages readers to reflect on the impact of revitalization on existing communities.

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New life and opportunities arise from the wreckage of a North American city—urban renewal at what cost?A new mother takes us on a tour of Hamilton, a Rust Belt city born of the Industrial Revolution and dying a slow death due to globalization. This mother represents the city’s next wave of inhabitants—the artists and young parents who swarm a run-down area for its affordability, inevitably reshaping the neighborhoods they take over. Creation looks at gentrification from the inside out—an artist mother making a home and neighborhood for her family, struggling to find her place amid the existing and emerging communities.While pushing her child’s stroller around Hamilton, Sylvia Nickerson shows us the warehouse filled with open barrels of toxic sludge, the parking lot where the city’s homeless population sleeps, and the refurbished Victorian house (complete with elegant chandeliers) that is now a state-of-the-art yoga studio. Creation presents the city as a living thing—a place where many small lives intersect and where death, motherhood, pollution, poverty, and violence are all interconnected.Drawn in evocative watercolor, Creation is unafraid to leave questions open-ended as Nickerson wanders the city and ponders just where the personal and political intersect, and where they ought to intersect.

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