DECODEPENDENCE

A cartoonist reflects on her struggles with codependency.

Piecing together her life in cartoons and words, freelance cartoonist and regular New Yorker contributor Ash describes her mental health journey as a woman dealing repeatedly with codependency in romantic relationships. As the author shows, it can lead to being stuck in a cycle of abuse, and she does not sugarcoat issues such as depression and substance and domestic abuse. Ash writes about codependency as a part of her identity, something she will always have to live with and overcome, and her memoir reads as a psychologically informative text. Ash tackles these moments with humor and relatability, but it doesn’t take away from the power of self-reclamation. The full-color illustrations are simple and clear, as the author leads us through her parents’ divorce, a poignant summer camp trip, old boyfriends, art school, therapy, the pandemic, and recovery. Ash pairs each chapter with facts and statistics about codependents, ending with material for getting help. The sincere moments of life and the complex dynamics of growing into your best self are the tenets of this “tragi-comedy,” which acts as a therapeutic output for both reader and writer. Ash’s humor is a shrug after a tragic fall, comforting readers as they, too, seek to investigate difficult periods in their lives, and the book serves as a tender confession of something that the majority of Americans will experience at some point in their lives. The cartoons themselves aren’t exceptionally beautiful, and one can assume Ash was going more for a jocular approach to balance out the subject matter. The author breaks the fourth wall plenty of times, and the resulting feeling is that she is not so much guiding us through her memoir as giving a class on it.

A quirky graphic memoir sheds light on an overlooked mental health issue.