Bread & Wine is Samuel R. Delany's autobiographical graphic novel about how he met a homeless man, Dennis, who became his partner.
Written by black, gay science-fiction writer, professor, and theorist Samuel R. Delany, and drawn by multi-media artist and cartoonist Mia Wolff, Bread & Wine is a graphic autobiography that flashes back to the unlikely story of how Delany befriended Dennis, and how they became an enduring couple—Delany, a professor at Philadelphia’s Temple University, Dennis, an intelligent man living on the streets. For casual readers and fans, Bread & Wine is a moving, sexually charged love story, with visuals informed by Wolff’s sensitive portrayal of the couple’s physicality. Her black-and-white, pen-and-ink work not only expressionistically represents the characters’ “body language” and the bustling New York setting but is also filled with impish art references and visual puns. The scholarly potential for the book, based on the poem “Bread and Wine” by the German lyric poet Friedrich Holderlin, not only encompasses queer, African American, and graphic novel studies, but also exploration in the literary and paraliterary academic fields.
This updated edition includes a new foreword by the novelist Junot Diaz, the earlier edition’s introduction by Alan Moore, commentary by the book’s protagonists, Delany and Dennis, and a new interview with Delany and Wolff.
