Reddit mentions of Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga

I was gonna say Frederik L. Schodt's: Manga! Manga! but you beat me too it. (although as all_my_fish said it might be a bit hard to find it.)

Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics and Dreamland Japan aren't too shabby in terms of information on manga (although again you will have to find them first.)

Also A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi is an autobiographic manga about the gekiga movement that took place withing manga (and talks about the history of manga to a certain extent. (It is also a pretty well done manga in and of itself)).

I wish I could help find you some better non-book sources.

Your essay seems ok so far.

Here is a couple of lines from Schodt's book that you might could use:

>The word manga (pronounced "mahngah") can mean caricature, cartoon, comic strip, comic book, or animation. Coined by the Japanese woodblock- print artist Hokusai in 1814, it uses the Chinese ideograms [I don't know how to type these sorry] man ("involuntary" or "in spite of oneself") and [another one chinese character] ga ("picture"). Hokusai was evidently trying to describe something like "whimsical sketches." But it is interesting to note that the first ideogram has a secondary meaning of "morally corrupt." The term manga did not come into popular usage until the beginning of this century. Before that, cartoons were called Toba-e or "Toba pictures," after an 11th-century artist; giga, or "playful pictures"; kyoga, or "crazy pictures"; and, in the late 19th century, ponchi-e, or "Punch pictures," after the British magizine. In addition to manga one also hears today the word gekiga or "drama pictures" to describe the more serious, realistic story-comics. Some Japanese, however, simply adopt an English word to describe their favorite reading matter: komikkusu.

(from page 18 of Manga! Manga!)

there you go a source you can use and quote and make your teacher happy (maybe).

Scott McCloud looks really interesting, especially Understanding Comic seems to be right up my alley.

By way of related literature on Amazon when looking up the Thompson book, I found a couple of interesting looking titles - thought I'd share:

• A Brief History of Manga (2014)
  
• Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives (2009)
  
• Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga - Japanese Comics for "Otaku" (1996)
  
  Looking through their tables of content, they seem solid enough.
  
  Thanks for the recommendations! :)