by Arielle LeJarde

Thinking about the class’ theme of monstrosity in young adulthood while recreating some event in my life through a graphic was difficult because I didn’t know how personal I wanted to get. In Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, Jin is desperate to fit in and thinks the only way he will get attention from his love interest is by conforming to some idea of “whiteness” he had. To do this, he changed the way he looked and got a perm. This was completely different than any other idea of manhood that we’ve seen in the other novels because beauty wasn’t a subject too talked about since all of the protagonists were male.

In my graphic, I chose the panels to be three, small, completely equal squares due to the character’s almost obsession with being perfect. The boxes are small, almost confined so that you can only see what the character wants you to see. In the first panel, it’s just a close up of a refrigerator, which is completely normal and almost random until we get to the second panel. The character is hunched over a toilet. This is where the character gains control – escaping from the boxes. Food is the reason why the character isn’t comfortable. The calories are her enemy – making her feel the need to control what is being put in and what is coming out of her body. In the toilet bowl, you see flowers because to the character, there is nothing wrong with what she is doing. She’s taking any measure to become beautiful, therefore the act itself is beautiful. You don’t see the character’s face until after the climax and she is asleep peacefully in bed.

My writing and art aesthetic is very simple and straight to the point – I don’t really like to fluff it up because it gets in the way of the message. Like the character, the black and white and simple drawings create the aura that you see only what we choose for people to see – and that’s usually perfection, and happiness. But you can never really escape until you’re alone and vulnerable.