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GRAPHIC LIFE NARRATIVES: LYNDA BARRY, MARISA ACOCELLO
MARCHETTO AND ALISON BECHDEL
S. Bilge MUTLUAY ÇETİNTAŞ *
Introduction 1
Autographics, to use the term Gillian Whitlock has coined specifically for graphic life narratives, 2
have certainly proven their effective narrating capabilities starting with Art Spiegelman’s Maus.
Although Maus sets the standard for comics as a medium for graphic life narratives, other notable
examples, such as Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons (2002), Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s
CancerVixen (2006) and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006) are added to the increasing number of
autographics, drawn and written by American women graphic artists. These American women artists
choose to narrate in a medium that is relatively new. After all, even the trendsetter of the genre, Art
Spiegelman’s Maus, was published in the early 1980s. Thus, American women artists who both
illustrate and write their life stories are few in number, compared to the male writers/drawers. Apart
from the mentioned names there are a limited number of these creative artists among which Phoebe
Glockner, Aline Kominsky Crumb, Miriam Katin, Joyce Farmer, Lila Quintero Weaver or Lucy Knisley
could be mentioned. A worldwide search might yield others such as Marjene Satrapi, the Iranian
artist whose well‐known work, Persepolis, was also made into a movie. These American women
artists embrace marginal subject matters that may not always be easy to narrate or draw such as
childhood sexual abuse, promiscuity, coming out of the closet, using drugs, illness and dying or
matters of larger historical events such as the effects of the Holocaust or the Civil Rights Movement.
Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson observe that graphic memoir is distinguishable from other forms
of self‐representation since, first, it is a hybrid form of “mixing verbal and visual… occila[ting]
between different planes of representation.” Second, “the overlapping layers of self presentation”
moves between the drawing narrator and the narrating voice, further complicating the visual and the
voiced avatar. Third, graphics “advances and retards time” through frames and gutters. And finally,
the medium proves to be effective in narrating the experience through the economy of drawings. 3
Scott McCloud while theorizing cartooning uses the term “amplification through simplification,”
explicating in the following manner:
When we abstract an image through cartooning, we’re not so much eliminating
details as we are focusing on specific details. By stripping down an image to its essential
“meaning” an artist can amplify, that meaning in a way that realistic art can’t. 4
Thus, simple and iconic renderings can add another dimension to the necessary and ethical act of
writing about the life experience. Combining words and images give depth to the narrative
representation in more ways than possible with only one type of medium.
The narrating self and drawings of these artists are as versatile as their subject matters. I will be
concentrating on three autographics, Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons, Marisa Acocella
Marchetto’s CancerVixen and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home to exemplify these narratives. These selfreflexive
graphic novels have different types of drawing techniques, paneling and the use of speech
balloons. Lynda Barry and Alison Bechdel use childhood avatars to tell their stories. Both Barry and
Bechel’s avatars grow up as story progresses but the adult narrators’ voices are always present on
top of the frames, narrating and commenting over incidents. In Barry’s case the explanations on top
the frames often take more space than the speech balloons, partially covering the drawn figures and
*
Hacettepe University, Department of American Culture and Literature