week seven: gender and sexuality

This week, I reread My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi, which is an autobiographical manga that details her sexuality and also her experiences with mental health. I was first recommended this manga about a year ago by an LGBT friend on tumblr, who was living in Japan at the time as a University student. I read it in one sitting that day, stunned by the sort of blunt honesty and contrast between the sweet drawings and the rough life the author had.

It's a pretty intense read, but I really enjoyed it. Japan isn't that great when it comes to LGBT issues, even though it's definitely a part of the developed world. Asia has a big problem with moving forward from traditional societal views. This was a very intimate, genuine autobiographical story and I was particularly impacted by how the author depicts having anxious thoughts, depression, and guilt over her own "inadequacies."

She actually published a sequel last year, and the first volume was translated. She talks a lot about her parents and there's this one part that she realizes that her mom was a victim by her own mother-in-law and also husband, and that Nagata never thought about it because she only thought about herself (selfish thinking, she calls it). There's also a panel about realizing that this whole time of "hating her mom", she was actually wanting her mom to be happy and not knowing how to say it. And yet, once Nagata's mom learns about her successfully published story, her mom texts her these awful, passive-aggressive things about shaming her family. Her dad also tells her constantly that what she's doing is pointless and doesn't have any confidence in her. And then she realizes that there was no love at all between any members of  her family.

(This is a scene where after her mom reads her book.)

It takes her almost 30 years to realize how alone she felt with her family and how badly they treat her. Which is a great examination of events that also occurred in the first book. Nagata has a great way of unpacking her complicated relationship to people by simplifying universal emotions, like wanting love from her family, wanting friends, and not wanting to be lonely. It's amazing.