The strength to confront it

“How do you admit you’re a man who was sexually assaulted?”  editorial comics artist Chris Kindred asks in his short comic My Black Skin Is Not An Invitation on Matter.

1-mylrhnu9bofsy2gicm9wuq

This beautiful piece uses the comics form flawlessly, walking the reader through the morning after the assault, his friends’ reactions, and his own framing and reframing of the experience.  Kindred interweaves questions about race, reputation, masculinity, survivorship, and intimacy, gracefully telling the essential details of a long and painful story.

1-s6zggoui36cwrujrzcjra

He concludes the story with the statement “I don’t have the strength to confront it.  Not for a while, at least.”

Yet, he had the strength to make a comic about it, and I feel lucky to have read it.

 

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

Website Built with WordPress.com.

Up ↑

%d bloggers like this: