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Graphic Autofiction and the Visualization of Trauma in Lynda Barry and Phoebe Gloeckner’s Graphic Memoirs

  • Olga Michael
Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Palgrave Studies in Life Writing book series (PSLW)

Abstract

Olga Michael examines ‘graphic autofiction’ in Lynda Barry’s One! Hundred! Demons! (2002) and What It Is (2009) and Phoebe Gloeckner’s A Child’s Life and Other Stories (2000) and The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Pictures (2002), demonstrating how it allows feminist performances that visualize the cartoonists’ authentic experiences of sexual and other forms of trauma. The chapter makes a valuable contribution to current debates on autofiction by moving beyond its literary expressions and investigating how the hybrid medium of comics accommodates the genre and how that, in turn, complicates the representation of trauma. Michael also proposes that ‘graphic autofiction’ allows the formation of feminist counter-narratives to the silencing of female abuse victims and the latter’s representation beyond victimhood.

Keywords

Graphic autofiction Comics Childhood trauma Phoebe Gloeckner Lynda Barry 
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  • Olga Michael
    • 1
  1. 1.University of Central LancashireLarnacaCyprus

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