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ABSTRACT
This paper details the visual responses created by a group of preservice teachers reading a series of contemporary graphic novels about adolescence. Visual response is here understood as an interpretive methodology of transmediation, informed by theorists of multimodal literacies as well as particular forms of psychoanalytic inquiry related to creative symbolization. Over the course of 5 months, six readers collaboratively interpreted four novels, each of which took a unique glance at the emotional and developmental challenges of adolescence: Tamaki and Tamaki’s “This One Summer,” Barry’s “My Perfect Life,” DeForge’s “Big Kids,” and Yang’s “American Born Chinese.” Responding in visual form, readers were able to reacquaint themselves with the emotional value of adolescence, a value that is often unavailable to strictly linguistic modes of expression.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. In this paper, I refer to comics and graphic novels interchangeably, recognizing that neither term is strictly or consistently defined. While some use the term comics to refer to comic books, which are usually periodicals in slim volumes, I use it to refer to the medium of comics art, which – following McCloud (Citation1993) – implies “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer” (p. 9). While there are certainly exceptions to this definition, the narrative conventions of comics generally follow this broad aesthetic pattern. Graphic novels, on the other hand, are books composed of comics content, which may include fictional or non-fictional stories, but whose storylines are generally contained within one standalone volume. Of course, there are also exceptions to this rule. Since the term graphic novel appears to imply a fictional account, Chute (Citation2008) adopts the language of graphic narrative, “to accommodate modes other than fiction. A graphic narrative,” she clarifies, “is a book-length work in the medium of comics” (p. 453).
2. Since it may be hard to make out, I provide a transcription of Clara’s story below: Am I a mark on your history? Your confession & departure punctured me. I have been trying desperately to patch the wound. I have been trying to forget the lessons you taught me about what worlds I could imagine and what worlds I could live in and the difference between them. You left. The growing bend in my spine seemed more obvious. Another pin. Did I believe that if I tried hard enough I could shake the pain, stand normal, and straighten my spine?
3. As Jason did not provide a visual response to American Born Chinese, his comments about Yang’s novel will not be included in the following section.
4. Again, since it may be hard to make out, I provide a transcription of Clara’s story below:Teddy Bear: When I was four years old my grandmother took me to a garage sale and told me to pick anything I wanted up to $1.00. I picked a teddy bear, old and worn out, the stuffing spilling from his left leg. He was .25¢. I took him home and named him “Pooh.” Like in the stories. It wasn’t long before all my playing emptied his leg of its stuffing, leaving him hollow and incomplete. I was scared to play with him so I built him an altar – a makeshift wheelchair out of a doll’s chair. I BEGGED my mom to patch him up. And she did. AGAIN & AGAIN & AGAIN & AGAIN. She even fixed his detached head once or twice. My grandmother had asked me if I was sure, that day at the garage sale. I was unable to grasp her adult logic that something worth $1.00 is better than something worth a scant quarter. And even more unable to grasp the heavy weight of loving something that was once someone else’s to love.