My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness & My Solo Exchange Diary by Nagata Kabi

As graphic memoirs are trending, especially ones written and drawn by webcomic artists, Nagata Kabi’s My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness and her sequel, My Solo Exchange Diary, stand out as queer stories with quite a bit of frankness. Kabi does NOT hold back when discussing her bouts of anxiety, sexual frustrations, awkward and unhealthy familial bond, and of course loneliness. These books illustrate Kabi’s experience as an adult navigating life as a Japanese college dropout living at home with her parents.

Living at home as a 28 year old may not be anyone’s dream, but sometimes that’s where life drops us. After leaving college, Kabi tries to hold down part-time jobs, but her anxiety and depression get in the way. She can’t seem to get out of bed on most days or even eat, spiraling Kabi into a terrible eating disorder. She loses her sense of self, which to Kabi means having security, direction, and purpose. But most importantly, she cannot find a sense of belonging.

Without knowing who she is and where she’s supposed to be, Kabi wallows in grief, disrupting her stability and further disappointing her parents, who seem to only care about Kabi getting a full-time job. Through this, Kabi also deals with loneliness and a lack of physical intimacy. Therefore, Kabi seeks a lesbian escort agency, but when she meets with the escort, it’s not what Kabi expects. She isn’t “cured” in any way but instead plagued with more questions about the way she doesn’t communicate with people outside of her family, fostering a rather Freudian attachment to her mother.

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness not only focuses on Kabi’s sexual repression and awakening but mostly her journey toward self-awareness and self-love, digging her way out of the hole of mental illness, and gaining independence. This is also the case in My Solo Exchange Diary, in which Kabi discusses the aftermath of putting out her debut manga into the world and what’s happening during and post-publication. The reader is privy to the artist’s struggles of creating My Solo Exchange Diary, which is pretty cool and meta.

In the sequel, Kabi works toward communicating with past friends and trying to separate herself from her parents, particularly her mother, who falls ill. Kabi is still dealing with many of the same pains as she does in the first book, which may seem redundant but rings true to life. Kabi moves out, but quickly moves to another apartment, and then moves back in with her family. She recognizes this cycle as similar to the one when she couldn’t hold down a job. Soon, she realizes what responsibility, independence, and unhappiness really means for her.

Throughout this book, Kabi struggles with her relationship with her mother. She wants to be independent but is really reliant on her and wants to please both parents. Her mother even calls Kabi’s debut, My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, something to be ashamed of. At the same time, Kabi is still struggling with loneliness, being 29-years-old and having never kissed someone she likes and likes her in return. The idea of loving and being loved is the new aspect in the sequel. Kabi’s quest to find this in a friend she is reunited with, the same lesbian escort agency, and a new acquaintance is the refreshing newness the sequel needs to not be overly repetitive of the first book. Kabi begins to understand her loneliness and the need to love oneself in order to boost her self-esteem. While she still struggles with anxiety and depression, she overcomes some of her ill-fated thoughts of herself. This book is about the journey toward finding oneself in the midst of success yet impending loneliness.

Nagata Kabi has a unique way of illustrating her battles with mental health, particularly in the way she often draws the person she wants to be and a persona of her mind telling her to do whatever it takes to please her parents. There are many images of this persona literally holding back another Kabi, who is reaching for something far away. Kabi also uses black and pink strokes against a white background to illustrate the doom she feels inside her head. Kabi’s images are often literal depictions of philosophical or mental states of anxiety and dilemmas. They are coupled with big, harsh dialogue bubbles (more like large spiky things to emphasize her inner screaming) that describe her thoughts. She isn’t afraid to overuse ALL CAPS AND EXCLAMATION POINTS!!! when illustrating these thoughts, which makes the comic authentic to Kabi’s actual mental state. While the constant usage of these techniques and her setbacks are redundant, this rings true to the side effects of depression and anxiety. Sometimes it feels like one is in a constant state of doom or in a cycle one cannot escape. This book makes the reader experience that nature, which becomes somewhat frustrating, thus perhaps eye-opening to these mental health problems.

Both of Kabi’s books are self-reflective in nature, including narrative commentary from the present Kabi about her past thoughts and emotions. She often says things like, “Later I would learn…” or “Now I know…” The reader is engaging with the musings of the creator, which is not unique to graphic memoirs but gives the reader the idea that one is always learning. And now that this is a series with another book set to be published in 2019, the reader is left wondering how Kabi is doing now and what has developed in her outlook on life and the progress she is making for herself.

Find My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness and My Solo Exchange Diary here.

Speak: the graphic novel by Laurie Halse Anderson and Emily Carroll

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is a personal inspiration of mine, let alone a widely acknowledged canonical novel of modern times. And now, with the artistry of Emily Carroll, it has become a graphic novel. Carroll’s black-and-white drawings bring a rough and edgy atmosphere to the text, emphasizing the interiority during the scenes in which Melinda vividly recalls what happened to her the night of party. Carroll takes these moments and gracefully yet devastatingly depicts the horror in a way that is frightening but may not be as triggering for some readers as they would think, though anxiety still rattles the bones.

As a whole, Speak: the graphic novel reads much like how a movie adaption would be seen. The main character is much more melodramatic, but somehow we still lose much of Melinda’s interiority about the incident that shakes her to her core. The graphic novel seems to revolve so much around other subplots and Melinda’s external relationships that the main plot of the assault is buried. If I hadn’t read the original Speak, I may have forgotten the main point of the novel. First, there’s the new girl Heather, losing Melinda’s old friends, art class and drawing trees, Melinda’s poor grades, family dysfunction, in-school suspension, rules of the school and bullying, etc. There’s so much that distracts the reader from Melinda and her journey of recovery that is more focused in the original novel that is missed in the graphic novel.

My guess, as a reader and a part of the industry, is that the goal of Speak: the graphic novel is to grasp onto the gaining popularity of graphic novels at the current moment, capture the new generation of readers, and gear them toward reading the original Speak. I’m not against this method. I think this is a great way of repackaging a modern classic, but lovers of the original novel shouldn’t expect grand changes but enjoy the wonderful artwork by Emily Carroll.

This novel is still relevant today. Teachings of consent is still needed today. If you haven’t already gotten your hands on one of them, I highly recommend one or both of these books.

Find Speak: the graphic novel here.

Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele

Meg-John Barker’s Queer: A Graphic History is very properly named. With comic illustrations by Julia Scheele, Barker provides an overview of the history of queerness, citing many players involved in queer activism and queer theory. This book is best used as a reference book or a springboard to delve into the many, many avenues queerness has taken over the years. I especially think it’s a good book, in an academic sense, for an introduction to queer theory, or queerness, or gender/sexuality studies. Readers and students can learn a lot from specific pages and then launch into their own research from there. In addition, Barker provides a Resources section of her research as well as other resources that may be helpful. As for a cover-to-cover read, well, there’s a lot to take in.

First, Barker defines the word queer and its use as different parts of speech, including a noun, verb, and adjective. What’s important here is how scholars and people queer an idea, or turn an idea around, twisting it into something different or strange or something one hasn’t thought of before, which can bring about change and positive thinking.

Barker then breaks down the differences between identity politics and queer theory; gender, sex, and sexuality; nature and nurture; and sex and gender. Most important here is the shift in the notion that the meaning of sexuality went from one of behavior to one of identity based on attractions and sexual preferences. To cover these topics, Barker along with Scheele provide a detailed yet concise overview of queer theory and activism (the gay rights movements similarities to black feminism and the struggles of multi-marginalized peoples) as well as key figures and thinkers in conversation with one another.

To make these ideas more accessible to the reader, Barker and Scheele put these ideas in cartoons and pop culture references. Barker claims queer theory is known to be hard for most people to understand and is full of multiple binaries to diffuse the idea of binaries, thus making itself contradictory and making it inaccessible to the common person, which is why it has not been as widely recognized as other fields of study. Barker concludes with the hope that this book makes the introduction to queer theory and queerness a bit easier to grasp, which it can when taken in small doses, like a reference book. Whether or not this book is successful is in how the reader uses the book and their explorations from there.

Find Queer: A Graphic History here.

Lumberjanes: To The Max Edition Volume 1

With Maarta Laiho’s bold palette of colors, Lumberjanes is a punchy, quirky, and punny comic book series that focuses on five Lumberjanes (basically, the Girl Scouts but with Boy Scout woodland activities), who can’t seem to ever follow camp rules. There is always something more interesting to pursue than staying in the Roanoke cabin, like fighting holy kittens, were-bears, and a river monster.

Using the qualities that make up a true Lumberjane, as stated in the pedantic field manual, Jo, April, Molly, Mal, and Ripley try to beat the mysterious creatures before their cabin leader, Jen, can find out they’re gone. This is a true case of drama finding them. Pretty soon, even Jen is roped into the mayhem when one of the Lumberjanes turns out to be a mythological character bent on beating her brother to obtain ultimate power over the world. Now the girls of the Roanoke cabin have to save all of humanity from a couple of greedy gods.

In the first volume of The Max Edition, young and older readers will laugh out loud at the characters’ antics and will flip through the pages to find out what havoc is on the next spread. With a twist on gender stereotypes and a subtle romance, Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, and Brooke Allen’s Lumberjanes is all about “Friendship to the max.” And, of course, earning those cool camp badges. Lovers of Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona (HarperCollins) will also enjoy this feminist, kick-butt series.

Find Lumberjanes To The Max Volume 1 here.