Genre | Graphic Novel Memoir
Page #s | 128
Publishing Date | February 2021
Nagata Kabi, the award-winning creator of My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, embarks on a search for romance in this brand-new diary comic!
Nagata Kabi’s groundbreaking autobiographical work has captivated audiences around the globe, starting with the viral online comic about identity that would become the graphic novel My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness. Readers from all backgrounds have been moved by the author’s ability to capture complex emotions through her art and text, giving insight into feelings they may have struggled to articulate themselves. Nagata Kabi’s memoirs, including the Eisner-nominated My Solo Exchange Diary and new release My Alcoholic Escape From Reality, have explored themes of physical and mental illness, sex and sexuality, family, and independence. Follow the newest installment of this trailblazing series with My Wandering Warrior Existence, Nagata Kabi’s exploration of longing for love and marriage.
Goodreads
My Wandering Warrior Existence is an uncomfortably relatable book for anyone who struggles with identity and intimacy while watching the majority of other people happily and easily love each other. Kabi’s self-reflections are honest, poignant, and in medias res – i.e., there are no real answers here.
Although Kabi’s story begins in her earlier manga memoirs, this particular story begins when a friend’s wedding inspires her to book a wedding dress photo shoot, believing this will fulfill some nebulous core need. Instead, it leaves her feeling worse than ever before and opens up a whole new series of doubts and questions. It isn’t the trappings of a wedding that she craves, but the intimacy and relationship that it represents.
Unfortunately, like many of us, knowing what she wants doesn’t make it any easier for Kabi to obtain it. As a perpetually single person until I was 30, I related SO HARD to her general bafflement about how people coupled up and why she couldn’t seem to get on the same level. Although there is a general vibe of self-hatred (or more generously, self-discomfort) that sometimes felt uncomfortable to me, I really appreciated the way Kabi is able to dissect her experiences in pictorial form, especially her realization about all of the hurdles that stand between her and a romantic relationship.
Queerness positively drips from the pages, as Kabi questions her sexual identity, gender identity, and experience of the world in general. This is not a book about labels so much as an embracing of the questions of queerness, and I think that’s a very valuable offering of the queer experience.
Who Do I Recommend This Book To?
If you are, or have been, a person who felt outside of traditional relationship structures, you’re likely to find something to relate to in My Wandering Warrior Existence.
Check out our Queer Lil Library for more book recommendations and reviews!
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