PORTRAIT OF A BODY

A queer woman narrates the evolution of her sexuality, womanhood, and capacity for love in this graphic memoir.

“Time hasn’t healed all my wounds and yet here I am, still very much alive,” writes Canadian artist Delporte at the beginning of this exploration of her journey as a “late-life lesbian.” Her expressive prose makes copious references to books by Annie Ernaux, Dorothy Allison, and Lauren Berlant, as well as such provocative films as Chantal Akerman’s 1975 cult classic Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which depicts a widowed housewife’s mundane routine spiced up by sex work (and murder). The author admits to episodes of unwanted sex with men, considering it “the price I paid for a bit of affection.” Later, she would “come to call what happened an inadvertent rape.” To cope with these ordeals, Delporte sought out psychotherapy in her later years, and she also dealt with disassociation and extended respites from intimacy. In cursive text featuring tender poetic declarations and line drawings in both colored pencil and watercolor brushstrokes, the author/illustrator describes her gradual emergence as a lesbian: cutting her hair, changing her dress code, and feeling liberated from the “demands” of conventional femininity. She began a punk rock band, channeled French philosopher Monique Wettig and Finnish author and illustrator Tove Jansson, and fell in love with a woman with whom “for the first time, there was space for my trauma when we had sex.” Delporte’s eye for artistry shines throughout both the text and illustrations, and her evocatively resonant watercolors illustrate her deeply felt sexual trauma, her insecurities and early trepidations about her queer inclinations, and, in pages bathed in vibrant swaths of intermingling colors, her most intimate desires. Delporte’s memorable artwork brims with vitality and authenticity.

An artistic confessional of identity, sexual deliverance, and self-acceptance.