FANTAGRAPHICS AT 50! Reading a book as raw and candid as Kayla E.’s Precious Rubbish the reader can’t help but ask themself the question of whether this truly singular approach to graphic memoir proved to be cathartic as a process, a difficult but necessary revisitation of trauma, or a combination of both. The artist speaks of the book more in terms of exorcising the past: “If an exorcism can ever be slow and quiet, then every panel I’ve finished has felt something like an exorcism. The gutters give me space to make sense of things: to connect dots and close gaps. To remember.” Whatever the case, Precious Rubbish is a remarkable piece of autobiographical comics. It’s one that doesn’t simply use the language of comics to its fullest potential in communicating Kayla E.’s childhood experiences – it subverts and repurposes them as well.
This is a look back on a childhood in Texas that is marked by abusive parenting, bullying, Christian fanaticism and incest. The young Kayla (in some strips even referred to as “li’l Kayla” in the vernacular of a bygone comics age) is subjected to the erratic and cruel behaviour of her mother, the inappropriate jibes of her father, a vindictive stepmother, an older brother who molests her, and the added negative forces of poverty and religious fervour.
What makes this such a distinctive approach to the themes explored is that rather than being told in a traditional linear narrative Kayla E. instead opts to present her story in the form of short, retro-style comic strips resonant of another era of comics storytelling. Interspersing these are a series of mock ads, word searches, dot-to-dot puzzles, cut-out paper dolls, board games and more, that tie into the events and subject matter of the comics sections. If the aim here is to capture the often fractured recollections that trauma brings with it then it works perfectly, forcing the readers themselves to also interpret and pull together narrative strands.
The cartooning is deliberately presented with the aesthetic style of newspaper strips of yesteryear; the incongruous juxtaposition of innocence and ordeal making what we see on the page feel all the more harrowing as a result. The bleak humour works on a similar level, with punchlines and what might be termed visual gags in less sobering circumstances just re-enforcing the oppressiveness of what we are witnessing for their quietly awkward but always powerful positioning. Precious Rubbish is an outstanding and, frankly, extraordinary use of the form, one that implants lived experience in a meta embodiment of the traditions of the medium.
Kayla E. (W/A) • Fantagraphics Books, $29.99
Buy online from Gosh! Comics here
Review by Andy Oliver
Fantagraphics at 50 Month runs through August at Broken Frontier. You can see articles as they’re published in one tagged list here.
