In Limbo by deb jj lee

notes only – made while unwell (see next post)

A beautifully drawn piece of writing about immigrant experience that pulls every possible punch, resulting in a very familiar, 1990s-feeling book that explores a highly middle class life and fails to address the only real narrative point that separates this from numerous pre-existing memoirs about middle class immigrant life in the United States of America: the very real and very serious physical and psychological abuse perpetuated against the protagonist by her mother, who is BPD-coded, unremitting in cruelty and potential for violence, yet patronisingly and self-destructively given the benefit of the doubt by the narrative as, essentially “trying her best”.

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Engaging and interesting topics around loss of language, around Westernised ideals of beauty and plastic surgery are included and discussed, but alongside far less original and important topics like teenage friendship and “portrait of the artist as a young man” type “giving up the violin for art classes” stuff…

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Again, though, it’s fucking beautifully drawn, with clarity of vision – be it scene setting landscape, close quarter portraits and characterisation, domestic scenes etc – throughout…

The visual art here is flawless, and this has to be one of the best looking graphic novels I’ve read in a while.

Unfortunately, though, as a narrative, it feels trapped by politeness and restraint into never really getting to where it needs to be…

The mother is fucking awful, but also very clearly not fucking well… Acknowledging one shouldn’t mean denying the other, but instead we get… Err… Kinda silence?

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the other or whatever b

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serious but not quite serious enough about itself???

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way too middle class for me???

more info here