Journal Article

Stand on Guard for Me

Kang, Nancy

2021

Overview

If being Canadian means being predisposed to niceness and caring, then being mixed-race Asian and female like Skim must entail an even larger, compounded burden, namely the need to care more because of gendered as well as racial expectations. In her survey of contemporary Canadian comics for youth, Naomi Hamer discerns a \"pedagogic agenda\" underlying the most acclaimed of these visual texts, with prevalent themes being formative events in national history, environmentalism, and an array of social justice concerns, including racism and homophobia (170). Social concerns like suicide, homophobia, bullying, body shaming, negative self-concept, and depression persist among teens decades after the books publication, testifying to Skims ongoing relevance and continued capacity to appeal to a broad range of readers.3 It is the suicide of a popular athlete rumoured to have been gay, John Reddear, from a neighbouring school that initiates Skims journey to self-awareness as a \"fat, goth, Wiccan-practicing, lesbian Asian girl who has been the project' of her school's anti-suicide, bullying prevention campaign\" (Froese and Greensmith 43). The all-girls' religious school, which Skim distrusts as a site of surveillance and suffocating conformity (a \"goldfish tank of stupid\" [47]), facilitates this coercive process of \"girling\" and the constant policing it entails.

• Publisher: Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE),Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English,ESC: English Studies in Canada
• Subject: Animators / Asian Americans / Caregivers / Cartoonists / Cartoonists and animators / Criticism and interpretation / Females / Femininity / Homophobia / LGBTQ people / Minority & ethnic groups / Narratives / Novelists / Paradigms (Social sciences) / Portrayals / Race / Racism / Self concept / Social aspects / Social justice / Tamaki, Jillian / Tamaki, Mariko / Witchcraft