Title: My Lesbian Experience with LonelinessAuthor: Kabi Nagata
Translator: Jocelyne Allen
Series: My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness #1
First Published: June 6, 2017
Publisher: Seven Seas
Pages: 152
Genre: Humor, Josei, Memoir, Non-Fiction, Yuri
Format: Paperback
Source: Gift
Rating:
Synopsis:
My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is an honest and heartfelt look at one young woman’s exploration of her sexuality, mental well-being, and growing up in our modern age. Told using expressive artwork that invokes both laughter and tears, this moving and highly entertaining single volume depicts not only the artist’s burgeoning sexuality, but many other personal aspects of her life that will resonate with readers.
Buy the Book: AmazonReview
I have had my eye on this manga since its initial release, but had held off on reading it. I don’t know why I didn’t pick it up until now because My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness is absolutely worth all of the attention it received when it first went viral. This humble manga is a graphic memoir about the author, a NEET that comes to realize that she’s queer.
While I knew that this manga was about the author’s experiences hiring an escort, it was so much more than that. Nagata exposes the most vulnerable parts of herself; her struggle with mental illness, loneliness, her sexuality, familial tension, and difficulty maintaining friendships and stable employment. I really appreciated how candidly this memoir is written.
I was surprised by how relatable I found Nagata’s story to be. Being a young adult is hard; it’s even harder with anxiety, a lack of education and life experience while carrying the weight of parental expectations in a sink-or-swim economy. It’s hard to stay motivated, and my twenties were startlingly similar to Nagata’s. My greatest struggle was making peace with who I was.
But Nagata did something special by gathering up all of the difficult, disparate parts of her life and using her experiences to fuel her art. Her story is brutally honest, comical at times, and a perfect example of millennial malaise.
Quote
“I lost the things that had given me shape, and as they disappeared, I felt like I was dissolving into thin air.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Kabi Nagata
Kabi Nagata is a Japanese manga artist, author of My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness. Nagata has been drawing for as long as she can remember. However, she did not start reading manga until 4th grade with Takehiko Inoue’s sports manga Slam Dunk.
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