Hybred: A Graphic Novel
PUBLICATION DATE: November 2025
6” X 9”
144 PAGES
HARDCOVER
ISBN: 9781951491437
EBOOK ISBN:
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List Price
US $20.99
What People Are Saying
“I wish it weren’t so easy to relate to this book. A deep, insightful, and dare I say, sometimes funny look at how we all deal with trauma.” —Tom Hart, author of the New York Times bestseller Rosalie Lightning
“This generous book is a complex, research-based, and layered roadmap to recovery from trauma. I can’t stop thinking about it.” —MK Czerwiec, RN, MA, author of Taking Turns
“This book illustrates the high costs that eventually come due when we deny our own needs in favor of always pushing through. It bravely asserts that sometimes the strongest thing we can do is learn how to be soft.” —Tessa Hulls, author of Feeding Ghosts
“This book is a map for those who feel lost. An intimate look into the journey of healing. The daily routines, therapy sessions, and thought processes, show us that working to recover from trauma is never easy, but absolutely worthwhile.” —Teresa Wong, author of All Our Ordinary Stories
“So many readers will find encouragement and validation from this fascinating story, as it sheds much-needed light on a difficult, misunderstood and lonely process. I loved it.”—Sacha Mardou, author of Past Tense: Facing Family Secrets and Finding Myself in Therapy
“This deeply empathetic and relatable graphic memoir breaks down the complex experience of reckoning with past sexual trauma.”—Natalie Norris, author of Dear Mini
“For anyone who is a recovering work-too-hard "badass," this engaging book draws you in and offers a fresh perspective on the complexities of trauma and therapy and on the most intimate parts of our brains.” —Shay Mirk, author of Guantanamo Voices
Synopsis
Set in a future-adjacent, alternative Los Angeles, this is a story of staggering poverty, drugs, and violence and of an artistic child who finds beauty in the ugly and sublime hope in our conflicts.
HYBRED shows us how in our most marginalized communities lies an astonishing amount of genius which goes unnoticed and is so often tragically wasted.
Nine-year-old Johnny James lives in The Casque, the poorest neighborhood in Greater Angeles, where he shares a one-room apartment with his mother, stepfather, two brothers, and an army of cockroaches. He spends his days in the sweltering heat of the neighborhood, at the movie theaters, playing tackleball, or drawing – but there’s no money for him to go to school.
As death, addiction, and violence swirl through the neighborhood, Johnny grows up with friends, adventures, and magic around him. And he discovers how to use art, beauty, and personal strength to transcend the forces destined to hold him back.
About the Author
Jamie Mustard is an artist, a futurist, and a writer with a focus on perception in the physical world. Growing up in severe poverty and illiteracy in inner city Los Angeles, Jamie overcame obstacles to graduate from the London School of Economics. He currently works as a strategic multi-media consultant, teacher, interdisciplinary art, design, and product futurist. He is the winner of The National Indie Excellence Award as well as the OWL Outstanding Works in Literature Award for his book, The Iconist. And his memoir Child X is being published in July 2025 by BenBella Books.
Francesca Filomena is an Italian artist working internationally in design and print. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leece, Italy and won first prize at the International Red Paper Kite Illustration competition in 2020. Francesca is the illustrator of the picture books Hoping for You, Aster, The Wire, and The Girl Who Was Nearly a Flower.
