NUMB TO THIS - Serio Comics 7
NUMB TO THIS: Memoir of a Mass Shooting written & drawn by Kindra Neely, published by Little, Brown and Hachette Book Group
This month’s enthusiasm is for the first work of graphic literature I’ve found about the impact of guns on America
It’s a brave and deep debut by Kindra Neely, a survivor of a mass shooting who is also a recent grad of Savannah College of Arts and Design, that combines the genres of memoir and social commentary with a seriocomic YA tone
Published in October 2022 it’s called:
NUMB TO THIS: Memoir of a Mass Shooting
Memoir + Gun Violence + YA = Gen Z’s The Diary of Anne Frank?
There’s a long tradition of memoirs in graphic literature, especially those that mix in societal commentaries like Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, which combines her relationship with her closeted father with her lesbian coming of age, or last month’s author, Marjane Satrapi, and her debut Persepolis, which combines her relationship with her cosmopolitan family with the rise of a religiously repressive Iran
And there’s also been a growing trend of YA graphic memoirs by younger authors who express the immediacy of their insights about their not-that-long-ago years like Tillie Walden’s Spinning about her coming of age as a queer ice skater or Rx by Rachel Lindsay about her early bipolar disorder diagnosis
In a way, Neely’s book evokes a contemporary comparison with a real-time visceral autobiography of another era - The Diary of Anne Frank
Both books candidly and impassionately portray young people trying to survive during systemic life-threatening crises, in Anne Frank’s era - the Holocaust
Here, Neely speaks and draws for Gen Z, which has been impacted by an ongoing, yet often unseen, type of widespread American trauma - gun violence
The Diary of Anne Frank itself has also recently been adapted into a successful work of graphic literature to reach even more audiences
Unending Survivorship as Narrative Device
In the opening pages, Neely displays how different life can seem to be in areas of America when she describes growing up first in the more violent-seeming Texas
Versus life in the more seemingly peaceful Oregon after moving there in adolescence:
And yet part of the tragic reality of the book is that it reports how unsafe everywhere has started to feel in this country for many people
The Mary Sue, which is a girl geek entertainment website, describes why the recent young survivor perspective is so needed in their review:
“What makes Numb to This so powerful is that it tackles gun violence from a perspective we don’t hear enough….With every subsequent mass shooting, there are so many loud voices trying to opinionize, politicize, and dehumanize the event, that the voices of survivors are far too often drowned out.”
Neely’s autobiographical perspective seems to more truly show the lasting ramifications that people who debate or legislate the subject but haven’t been directly affected by gun violence get to mostly live without or at least live with a lot less of
The narrative has a repetitive nature that sometimes seems to frustratingly not move a traditional plot forward but also displays the cyclical non-linear nature of recovery
And how maybe recovery from gun violence doesn’t mean returning to before’s normal
The Characterization of Forms of Resilience
At the same time, Neely vibrantly shows how art practices can help transmute suffering and reconstitute a lighter existence
And how vital participating in community and interdependence can be to providing resilience
For instance, when she offers comfort to a brother of a survivor of Parkland at her school
Or helps her foreign student roommate deal with the consequences of ethnocentrism after the election of Trump in their college’s Southern state
And in return, she develops more caring interdependent relationships with her peers
As well as feels empowered to seek and receive access to limited counseling resources
The Trust of an Emotionally Real Tone
Lastly, for me, one of the most poignant moments is how Neely doesn’t shy away from the melancholic depths of this experience, which unfortunately includes suicidality
It’s not just that Neely depicts this struggle but she trusts her readers will appreciate that the reality of it is that it’s often not ever fully resolved
As Neely explained in an interview with NPR:
NEELY: “I think I would tell them that I don't necessarily know that it gets better. I still have those thoughts. And that's OK because I have ways to deal with them now. It's not - you're not a bad person for having those thoughts. And - but there are a great many people, people that you would be probably really surprised about that, that would be very upset if you were gone. And there've been so many moments that I'm so happy that I didn't miss. And I just can't express how much joy you will feel in the moments when you realize that you didn't miss them later.”
Thank you, Kindra!
It was an honor and joy to find and enthuse about your book
This weekend I was with some children during the memorial day weekend
Two of whom were excited to talk about graphic novels they have read and even have been working on some themselves
Both of them were of an age where this kind of story hasn’t seemed to enter their consciousness yet
However, soon they will be YA readers
Who hopefully won’t have to confront these experiences directly
But likely could benefit from reading your experience in case they ever do
Or in case they need to support others in their generation who have
Thank you, Kindra, for paving the way for future works of graphic literature about this subject ;)
Okay, that’s the seventh Seriocomics!
