Excavating Childhood: Fairytales, Monsters and Abuse Survival in Lynda Barry’s What It Is

Michael, Olga orcid iconORCID: 0000-0003-0523-9929 (2017) Excavating Childhood: Fairytales, Monsters and Abuse Survival in Lynda Barry’s What It Is. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 32 (3). ISSN 0898-9575

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2017.1338002

Abstract

This article investigates the excavation of abused childhood in Lynda Barry’s What It Is. Looking at the centrality of childish play, fairy tales and the Gorgon in the protagonist’s effort to cope with maternal abuse, it argues that comics complicate the life narrative and allow the feminist reconfiguration of the monstrous mother of Western psychoanalysis and art.


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