There's a lot to take in with Kayla E.'s stunning long-form debut, Precious Rubbish. When I interviewed her recently, she noted that the name and the logo were the first things she created when she decided to write about the horrific events of her childhood physical, sexual, and emotional abuse at the hands of her father, mother, and brother. The title alone reflects the use of contradictory images to convey a contextualization of her life. While the most common understanding of the word "rubbish" is simply garbage, the verb and adjective forms of the word connote "worthless." And yet, Kayla E., from the very beginning, declares that she is precious (valuable) even as she is told she is worthless. The verbal abuse and extreme objectification of her at every level was the foundation for not only every other form of abuse she endured, but the lifelong, desperate need for feeling love and acceptance from these figures--especially her mother.
Kayla E. took a lateral approach in attempting to portray a monstrous level of trauma. Art Spiegelman mediated the monstrous, enormous scope of not only the Holocaust, but the difficulty of dealing with his father by using cat and mouse masks in Maus. Kayla E. goes a step further and mediates the entirety of her experience visually by using the layouts from children's comics like Archie, Little Lulu, and other comics from old publishers such as Harvey and Farrell. Her story required a level of extreme stylization in order to counter the extremity of her past. The sexual abuse at the hands of her brother, the neglect and sexualization (and implied sexual abuse) imposed on her by her father, and the parasitic manipulation of affection of her mother matched with her neglect and deprivation, was just too big to convey in a direct, chronological narrative. Not only that, but Kayla E. reports huge black-outs ending certain memories, which is almost certainly her toddler brain trying to protect her from some of the worst of the actual trauma.
There's also the consideration of the reader and exactly what kind of story she's trying to tell. Things are told episodically, partly through the structure of these older stories, but also by alluding to trauma at first without detailing it. Eventually, every incident she can remember, every feeling of horror and helplessness, is expounded upon. Kayla E. still often uses multiple textual storytelling tracks in these stories, with direct quotes from philosophy & psychology texts as well as Alcoholics Anonymous' Big Book. Even after specific details are revealed, Kayla E. goes back to masking them when referred to later. Part of this was the way she drew the book--in fragments, over time--but part of it was unveiling something monstrous and then throwing a sheet back over it. It's a process that's reiterated throughout the book.
So what is this book, exactly? What is its function? What is its intent? One thing it's not is "trauma porn," the sort of naturalistic memoir that emphasizes the gory details from a marginalized person for a largely mainstream and privileged audience. The episodic quality of the book, with only the very last piece of the book feeling like it's a definitive statement, feels almost ritualistic in nature. Being raised in a Pentecostal church by her mother, complete with speaking in tongues, exorcisms (for both her and her mother), and other "gifts of the holy spirit," is a key component of the book. Speaking in tongues (aka glossolalia) is not an unusual "gift," but a less frequent one in the church is the gift of interpretation. This is where someone feels God or the Holy Spirit speaking through them, interpreting the glossolalia that they hear.
Precious Rubbish is Kayla E. using a variation of this "gift" to create her own prayer or spell. The witch imagery throughout the book is positive (even if Charley the Witch and Petra the nun initially try to "help" her by pushing her toward becoming an alcoholic), and it's part of the fusion (with Christianity) that Kayla E. has mentioned making up her current belief system. This prayer/spell is one designed for healing, but it's also a way of trapping something horrible. There's a line in the book where Kayla is told that after her grandmother died, it was like some evil spirit descended on her mother, making her much worse. Similar to the way David Small had to face up to the fact that his mother never loved him in his comic Stitches, so too is the last story of Precious Rubbish a series of affirmations that Kayla E. is telling herself in order to rewire the emotionally manipulative programming she had been subject to her entire life. If you can rewire your brain, you can change your own reality.
The irony of mediating your trauma through cartoonish images is that it is easier for readers to connect with this narrative and their own trauma than with a more naturalistic depiction. She does other things to mediate the experience in the form of pin-ups, fake ads, and recipes. This intersitial material draws its inspiration both from the pin-ups one might see in a Betty & Veronica comic and from Chris Ware's ACME Novelty Company #10, which is full of acidly written fake ads. The recipes are vegan and are a way of Kayla E. to connect to her Mexican heritage, from which she often feels estranged. More than anything, they are a space for relief: the joy of redefining how you want to look, the vituperative pleasure one feels in landing direct hits on those who wronged you, and reclaiming aspects of oneself that had been denied. It also gives the reader something else to look at, and it's another way of recontextualizing these comics stories that she found comforting as a kid that's not entirely trauma-oriented. Precious Rubbish is a curse lifted, pervasive evil excised and isolated, and an entire life recontextualized in order to create her own sense of order, purpose, and self-worth. As painful a read as it frequently is, it's also ultimately a gift to herself and her readers.
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