Clutter: A Scatterbrained Sexual Assault Memoir
Clutter: A Scatterbrained Sexual Assault Memoir
Ariel Bordeaux
Fieldmouse Press
80-page comic by alternative comics legend Ariel Bordeaux. Ariel has always written powerful, personal stories in her expressive style of art. The cheery veneer of her art belies her scorching cultural and gender critiques. Her 90s minicomic Deep Girl was deeply influential for a generation of young cartoonists. Her graphic novel No Love Lost introduced her trademark, painstaking use of color, something that she continued in her anthology series Raisin Pie. Clutter is a devastating account of a horrifying incident as a child, but it’s also a moving story that confronts trauma and how it affects our brains and our emotions in ways we don’t expect. Bordeaux never shies away from what she went through, but her willingness to name and confront it while seeking out comfort and solutions is inspiring.