Koyama: Hannah K. Lee's Language Barrier

One of the things that sets Annie Koyama apart from many other publishers is her nearly-unerring eye in sensing what kind of self-published work might make a good collection. Such is the case with Hannah K Lee and her book Language Barrier, which has four separate chapters of "zines, comics and other fragments". It's an excellent description of the book's structure, as there's a little bit of everything from an artist who teaches illustration and also works in design. Her use of text reminds me a bit of Ray Fenwick, who turned the decorative qualities of text into narrative in his short stories in Mome and in two books published by Fantagraphics. That use of text is just one of many tools the incredibly sharp Lee uses to express herself. Even zines without an obviously discernible narrative still have an unspoken storytelling flow from page to page.

"Hey Beautiful" was the most recent of these works, and it's the one that most closely resembles sequential art. This section's about sex, loneliness, desire and the minefield that is negotiating the male gaze and online dating. It starts with a series of strips called "1 Is The Loneliest Number", which hilariously break down that sense of feeling desire and being embodied in situations where one is alone--getting physically ill in an embarrassing way in public, eating alone, going to the movies alone, and then (as though to make fun of her own concept) to be haunted by a spirit alone in bed, one that marveled at the size of your apartment. There are some strips about penises that are also very funny ("a terrible, unknowable surprise") where she imagines each one she sees as a hilariously different shape. Later on, there are some unforgettable images: her body rendered into its sexual components and displayed in a bowl as though it were fruit, with phrases of sexual violence making part by part disappear. There's another image of her lying prone, with assorted mansplaining monologues filling up her ears and drowning her. ("Let me tell you about Kubrick" was laser-like in its precision). Lee veers back toward more lighthearted but still-pointed material with two pages of Valentine's candy hearts with phrases like "I'll Do Emotional Labor" and "Be My Emergency Contact". Concluding with yet another hilarious series of "Interpretations of Emoji Sexts" led to another image of bodies warped, in pieces, on display. What was remarkable about this section was the way Lee arranged sex, identity, and sexual desire in such conflicting ways. It's not just a statement against the male gaze (though it's part of that), it's also a statement about sex in all its weirdness.

"Shoes Over Bills" is much more straight-ahead in its presentation, as it's about various beautiful kinds of shoes on the left-hand side of the page and then some kind of financial obligation written in spectacular script on the right, like "credit card debt". The best part is when Lee had a rate of exchange, like one pair of shoes worth ten boxes of ramen, another pair worth emergency dental work, etc. It's less about the actual shoes and more about how economic inequality (especially for those who chose to become artists) can leave one utterly abjected from market goods, and in a sense as an outsider from society in general. "Everyone Else Is Younger And More Talented" goes into the negative self-feedback look where one is unable to accept positive thoughts about oneself and twists them into vicious insults. As an artist, it's especially deadly, because it is the very definition of falling prey to Lynda Barry's Two Questions: "Is this good? Does this suck?" Unstated but inherent in those questions are two related questions: "Am I good? Do I suck?", where one's self-worth is tied up in one's work. Lee eventually boils it down to "beautiful" vs "We see you", in gorgeous type. Visually, a group of shapes is mirrored by cigarette butts, another indictment of one's art and oneself.

Finally, "Close Encounters" details a relationship through single word or phrase descriptions that snake around and through related images. From "small talk" to "affection" to "attraction", Lee goes through a gamut of experiences as though one was walking through the back yards of one's neighborhood, seeing things that should probably remain hidden. It eventually resolves, in tiny print to "settling in your ways", skips a beat with a page of linked lines (chains?) and then giant print over two pages that screams out "Nowhere to hide". The set of more abstract images that follow resolve in an interesting direction, as "You Don't Owe Anyone Anything" is contrasted to a naturalistic image of a couple kissing--a direct image after the deception of text. Indeed, this all ties into Lee's central theme and the book's title: the barrier here is language itself, forever obfuscating meaning and impeding connection. In this book, language goes from being humorously foolish to actively dangerous and destructive, rendering people into objects. Lee's skill in creating the book's images is what make its themes resonate, as she dances from idea to idea at a breakneck speed, thanks to the ways in which images precede the meaning supplied by text. It's that slight lag that creates cognitive dissonance in the reader and gets them to take another look about both image and word.