We all daydream about what it might be like to pack up a single suitcase and start over in a new place full of possibility — but does the reality always live up to our expectations?
For Amelia Eqbal, and a lot of young adults, chasing after a sense of purpose and belonging is par for the course, even if there are the missteps and setbacks along the way.
“It’s so easy to think, ‘What if I just moved to another country? What if I just start fresh somewhere else? Is that going to solve my problems? And I’ve reached the very clear conclusion that that’s not how it works.”
Eqbal is an associate producer for CBC’s Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud and a big fan of artists and graphic novelists. For her, reading illustrative stories from people who have gone through their own coming-of-age provides a lot of comfort.
She sat down with Antonio Michael Downing on The Next Chapter to share three of the graphic memoirs that tackle the emotional heft that comes with navigating young adulthood.
Full of Myself by Siobhán Gallagher
In Full of Myself: A Graphic Memoir About Body Image Siobhán Gallagher reflects on her experiences with diet culture and her anxiety disorder as a teenager through humour. As a young person, Gallagher strived to adhere to an idea of beauty and thinness that felt too far out of reach.
Through comics, she grapples with the vision of who she thought she’d be at age 30 and the person she is becoming now.
What Eqbal loved most about this book was the moments of levity in otherwise heavy times.
“There are some dark moments in the book for sure, but the miracle of it is that she finds a humorous and lighthearted way to walk you through those moments with her and really take you into her mind by taking you in through her very creative side.”
Gallagher is a Canadian author and illustrator currently based in Laguna Hills, Calif. Her artwork has been featured in several publications like The New York Times and Penguin Classics.
She is also the creator of the book In a Daze Work: A Pick-Your-Path Journey Through the Daily Grind.
Give Me Space but Don’t Go Far by Haley Weaver
Is your anxiety actually just trying to keep you safe? In Eqbal’s second book recommendation, Give Me Space but Don’t Go Far, artist Haley Weaver and a personified version of her anxiety work towards building an “unlikely friendship.”
In the illustrated memoir, Weaver describes Anxiety in her childhood as a wall that blocked her path to feeling happy before she realized Anxiety’s core purpose was to try and protect her.
“Instead of getting lost in her mind, we’re lost in her world, everything is coming out around her. So it’s making the internal extremely external in a really fun and ridiculous way,” said Eqbal.
Weaver depicts her worries as well as the coping mechanisms she has developed over the years to cooperate with Anxiety through colourful characters like the Distractor, the Partier and the Compartmentalizer, who Eqbal describes as “a little moving truck driver.”
Weaver is the artist behind the popular Instagram account @HaleyDrewThis currently based in Seattle. Her webcomics and illustrations have been featured in publications such as New York Magazine and Bustle.
Give Me Space but Don’t Go Far is her first book.
Halfway There by Christine Mari
Eqbal’s last graphic memoir pick is a coming-of-age story about a biracial teenager’s year abroad in Japan. Halfway There: A Graphic Memoir of Self-discovery follows Christine Mari, a Japanese American who is just about to enter adulthood and feels stuck between two cultures and two countries.
When she decides to spend some time in her birthplace, Tokyo, she is shocked by how isolated she feels. As Mari yearns for a sense of belonging she questions her desires in life and if she can ever reach more than halfway across the divide.
“This one is really about cultural identity as much as it is about belonging and home and family,” said Eqbal.
“I felt emotional reading all of these at different places but this one in particular I found very powerful.”
Mari is an author and illustrator born in Tokyo and currently based in Los Angeles. She runs a popular Instagram comics account @ChristineMariComics and is also the author of Diary of a Tokyo Teen.
Amelia Eqbal’s comments have been edited for clarity and length.
