This woman’s work, a review

 

This woman’s work BY JULIE DELPORTE

Drawn & Quarterly, 2019

A graphic memoir

I loved this small compressed book full of watercolors/washes. They are like small postcards mailed to the self. This book is perfect for the Millennial feminist in your life—what! You don’t know any—then get some.

The protagonist (Julie?) is in the midst of a research project, exploring the work and life f Tove Jansson—and from there it spirals. Questions about relationships, the choice to have a child, or not. Who she is in relation to her father, lovers, film, literature, memories. She deals with abuse and the interior threat of self-denial.

More than anything else it is a record, a journal of daily thoughts, doubts, questions that wash over her as she holds conversations with the life of Tove Jansson. Because I’m working currently on a non-fiction hybrid project involving a historical figure I am interested in how Delporte handled the material and wove in her own insights that may or may not parallel Jansson. She holds Jansson up like a mirror to her own artistic career. For many of us there are not a lot of role models—of other women who have threaded the fine needle of art, children, partners, past abuse. She specifically asks herself some basic questions about her art, the “value” of her work, and who her audience is. Who does she seek to please: herself or some other?

As women we deal with numerous thresholds that seek to keep us at one level (this is influenced by a week where the soccer federation came out with a statement basically saying women soccer players are not worth as much as male players—sheesh how wrong is that!!)

This week with the coronavirus impacting most of my everyday life, I have fallen into existential questioning. Why waste time creating when I could be dead next week. Then the next thought: if I die next week then I want, until my last breath, to create.