Several times before I could finish it, I had to put Kayla E.’s “Precious Rubbish” aside. Published this year by Fantagraphics Books, the new graphic novel memoir about a childhood of neglect and abuse is just that intense and powerful. The withering blurb, or rather the no-holds-barred guilt trip, on the back of the book from Kayla’s mother should have been a pretty good indication of what might be inside. But don’t judge a book by what the author’s mother has to say, right?
Before you think I’m being too coy or flippant about something so heavy and real, let me tell you that the book is also funny—albeit in the driest, darkest, laughing-so-as-not-to-cry way. As Little Kayla moves back and forth between several households, we are shown short one- or two-page scenes that flash, then blink out like memories of nightmares.
Young Kayla lives with an emotional minefield of a mother, an abusive and predatory brother, a cruel and hateful stepmother, and all manner of domestic and financial instability, filth, and danger lurking on nearly every panel and page. The word harrowing, of course, comes to mind, but it feels like a flimsy adjective to use compared to the stunningly clear and blisteringly smart writing in “Precious Rubbish.” If reading it affected and moved me this much, I cannot imagine writing it.
“I hate making this work. It’s literally traumatizing,” Kayla tells me. “It gives me panic attacks, PTSD flareups, nightmares, the whole shebang because of the subject matter. I think in retrospect, it’s this beautiful thing that happens to me, but it feels terrible when it’s happening to me.”
She’s probably glad when it’s over, I tell her. “I’m thrilled,” she says. “It feels so good to be on the other side. It’s very liberating.”
In one way, “Precious Rubbish” feels so modern in its sparse dialog and bravery—not much is hinted at or shied away from. And this stark quality finds a counterpoint in the quotes and ideas Kayla pulls from throughout the book. She weaves words from poets and thinkers like E.E. Cummings, the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, and the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, famous for his concept of the “good enough” parent, among others. But the art style, the arrangement of the panels—some formatted like newspaper comics—and the inclusion of fake product advertisements, board games, and paper dolls pulls the book straight into the WASPy American culture of the 1950s. The contrast between the writing and the artwork creates an unsettling feeling, and it seems to foreground the trauma in a particular way.
“I always read newspaper comics when I was a kid,” Kayla says. “And I think what attracted me to these comics, specifically these mid-century comics, were the depictions of [a] clean, structured, beautiful world where the difference between right and wrong is so explicit and so immediately identifiable. There are good guys and bad guys and best friends, and all the girls are so beautiful, and they have little waists and fashionable clothes, at least Veronica. Betty, she wasn’t as rich as Veronica, but her clothes were still pretty cute in my opinion.”
Veronica and Betty are characters from Archie Comics, which were among Kayla’s favorite growing up because they were cheap and available in the grocery store checkout line. “That [world] was just such a dramatic contrast to the world that I was living in,” she says. “Opening up my little comic books and then looking around me and in the mirror, it was a shocking thing for my child brain to contend with.”
Regarding the decision to include paper dolls and fake ads, they were just tools to investigate her childhood, she says. “Now that the work is collected, I’ve been able to step back and sort of learn from it, and I see now what I was doing there. I was a collector of paper dolls and ephemera. I would cut out little puzzles from the newspaper. I would get crossword puzzles from the dollar store. I would tear things out. I would have little boxes full of paper [and] interactive fun bits. And so, [they are] directly related to my childhood experience of navigating the world and making meaning and making sense of things.”
As for the fake ads, she’s been drawing those for a long time. In one of the issues of “Nat. Brut,” a literary and arts magazine where she served as editor-in-chief, she featured a collection of fake ads drawn by her and other artists such as Chris Ware and Michael Kupperman, two cartoonists whose style and humor she finds inspiring.
She adds that the games, puzzles and paper dolls bring in “this active participation with the reader that I think is fascinating. It creates a new level of potential for connecting with the trauma narrative.”
It’s true. Page one is a word search that asks readers to find the words alcoholism, poverty, stress, depression and neglect. Something twists in your heart and in your gut when your eyes scan the grid of letters searching for such charged, heavy words. And something twists in you again when you find them.
Kayla E. talks with Virginia Commonwealth University Professor Dr. Francesca Lyn on April 7 at 6 p.m. about “Precious Rubbish” and will sign books. The talk is curated by independent artist Rae Whitlock and VCU’s Graphic Narratives Lab and will be held in Room 216 of the STEM Building, located at 817 West Franklin St. The event is free.
