9 Sapphic Graphic Memoirs That Illustrate Lesbian and Bi Women’s Lives

This title made a huge impact both in Japan and once it was translated to English. Nagata describes her experiences as a lesbian in Japan dealing with mental illness, including her overwhelming loneliness. She is open and honest about herself, describing her awkwardness and uncomfortable thoughts to the point where it’s hard not to cringe at times, but it’s also impossible to look away.

If you, like me, are still recovering from She-Ra ending, you’ll want to pick up the creator’s heart-wrenching memoir. If you’re familiar with Stevenson’s online work, you have likely seen some of these comics before. Their comics feel intensely vulnerable, but they’re also sometimes vague, not letting the reader all the way in. Because this is a collection of writings and illustrations over time, it doesn’t have a straightforward narrative, but if you enjoy their work, it’s well worth picking this collection to see how these pieces fit together.

This is a short sapphic graphic memoir, only 106 pages long, that discussed what it’s like to be a queer woman of color going through breast cancer treatment. In her article on Rethink Cancer, she explains, “I didn’t want to talk about how to recover my sense of femininity despite breast scars and menopause; I wanted to explore how losing my breasts might allow me to lean into my masculinity. I didn’t want to talk about how changing femininity could affect a hetero relationship; I wanted to talk about the implications of breast cancer on queer relationships between women.” She notes the gendered dynamics, heterosexism, whiteness, and apolitical nature of these spaces dedicated to cancer and how alienated that made her feel. Check out my Lesbrary review for some of the panels!

This is a memoir of Walden’s more than 10 years as a competitive figure skater. As a child, this was the point her entire world orbited around. It consumed all of her “free” hours. She discovers, as she goes into middle school and begins finding new friends and getting into art, that it’s also not something she particularly enjoyed. This is a moody, thoughtful story about Walden falling out of love with figure skating, as well as a bittersweet narrative of her coming out and having her first relationship in middle school. Spinning won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award!

This slim, 64-page graphic memoir has an academic bent — it even has endnotes with sources! It covers Yanow’s time in Montreal during the Quebec spring 2012 student strike. It is partly about Yanow’s experience finding queer community there, but it focuses on urban planning and its connections to military tactics: how wide, modernist spaces also help police control crowds, while winding narrow streets can protect resistance. This is a fascinating read about a subject I knew very little about, and I loved how the illustrations matched Yanow’s tone and emotional state (on first arrival to Quebec, Yanow is a tiny figure dwarfed by a towering city).

Thrash looks back at her stay at summer camp when she first developed feelings for a woman — one of the counselors. It follows her confusion trying to deal with what this means for her identity. Because this is a true story, it’s allowed the messiness that queer narratives don’t always get to have, and it’s not wrapped up neatly in a bow. It represents teenage girls as their flawed, complex selves, not stereotypes.

As the title suggests, this is an exploration of Leavitt’s relationship with her mother as she descends into Alzheimer’s. It’s not a fun read; in fact, it made our Books That Made Us Ugly Sob group post. It begins with Leavitt’s mother forgetting small things, slowly worsening over time. This was made using the drawings and notes she took at the time. After her mother died, she spent four years using that material to create this powerful read about family, love, pain, and illness.