Portrait of a Body

January 1, 2024
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.

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January 8, 2024
Delporte (This Woman’s Work) reckons with sexuality, identity, and belonging in this searching and intimate graphic memoir. Detailing the realization of her own lesbian identity at age 35 in soft-pencil cursive and full-page drawings, Delporte interrogates her past relationships (“The whole game is rigged”), grapples with the enduring toll of sexual traumas, and bemoans “compulsory heterosexuality” (per Adrienne Rich). Throughout, she confronts nagging worries over queer authenticity (“I was afraid of having to perform my new sexuality to be accepted”). As she lays bare her insecurities and anxieties in concise ruminations, she cites the many artists and theorists (including Chantal Akerman, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Rich) who’ve helped her make sense of the world. Probing lines of text snake between drawings of vulvar flowers, agate slices, lichen, film stills, and lovers in repose. There’s an intuitive cast to the interplay of calm, bright images and often-restless confessions, while the discreet “pencil swatch” color tests scribbled at the margins of many pages underscore the artist’s enduring interest in process—and her recognition that each person remains an ongoing work in progress. “Time hasn’t healed all my wounds,” Delporte writes, “and yet here I am, still very much alive.” The result is a poignant, sometimes tortured, but ultimately hopeful study.

February 1, 2024
Delporte's (This Woman's Work, 2019) latest memoir highlights her realization and acceptance as a later-in-life lesbian at age 35. Her dichotomous journey encompasses both sexual-assault survival and loving discovery. Despite her "dying of embarrassment that [realization] had arrived so late," films, literature, music, therapy, and self-study enable her to realize "I am the sum total of everything that has happened to me . . . I am not unqualified to speak, I am not 'broken.'" Enhancing her narrative--again brought to English by lauded translator Dascher, in collaboration with Karen Houle--are often whimsical illustrations, presented mostly in colored pencils after the first couple dozen pages in black-and-white watercolor ink. On a single page or spread, Delporte's text--notably, intimately handwritten in cursive script--and art often don't seem to align: a tarot card and healing; a caf� conversation paired with blooms; contemplating existence despite erasure beside Frida Kahlo. Something wonderful beyond words is happening throughout. Hints are offered at book's end as "notes," but personal contemplation and connection will undoubtedly enhance this intriguing, provocative reading experience.

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January 26, 2024

This book is a diary, a travelogue, and a thought exercise in the pursuit and practice of a lesbian identity. Delporte considers her own journey from compulsory and sometimes traumatic experiences with men to naming that disappointment and working to define her sexuality outside of that. She tracks her journey as a woman, as a feminist, as an artist gravitating to lesbian artists (memorably Moomin cartoonist Tove Jansson) and as a woman who celebrates her own body and aesthetic and sensual form. Wisely and quietly, her exploratory texts are bordered by soft, even dreamy, colored pencil sketches of some of the creative women she admires and their work, as well as observational drawings of curving, sloping feminine forms in nature--shells, moss, mountains, berries, and wildflowers. Delporte's queer journey is specific to her own life, and this book feels like a meditative labyrinth rather than a memoir with sharp resolution. Perhaps the most impressive choice she makes is to situate her story within the essential context of feminist and lesbian artists who helped her see herself more clearly--both in salient quotes and visual homages. VERDICT Moody, elegant, slow, and serious, Delporte's self-portrait feels defined in great part by its beautiful, formidable frame.--Emilia Packard

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