After 12 years, writer and illustrator Lela Lee returns with a new collection of Angry Little Asian Girl comics. Adding to the six previous books, along with an animated series, Angry Little Asian Girl: Moments with My Mother lets us in on the frustrations, misinterpretations, and expectations that come with navigating life as a grade-school Korean girl named Kim. Children who have grown up under the strict ways of their traditional, immigrant parents will easily find themselves on these pages.
How do these books help you process your own emotions and experiences?
I’ve been drawing a comic every week since about 1997 and I would say doing this weekly activity has definitely helped me process a lot of things I had to keep hidden. I created the Angry Little Asian Girl as a video in 1994 when I was a sophomore in college. After I made it, I hid it in a drawer because it showed negative emotions and girls are not supposed to have any anger. When I finished college, I had to work at my parent’s dry cleaners. I had a lot of time waiting for customers behind the counter so I took ALAG out of the drawer and began doodling more episodes. In 1998, I self-published my comics on my website and that’s when I got a tremendous amount of feedback from other Asian-Americans who were also very angry. As I worked out my own feelings and experiences, I understood we were frustrated by wanting to be accepted in two worlds — American and Asian culture. We look different, so mainstream America doesn’t include us. Then our Asian culture is a culture of obedience and conflict resolution is handled with silence or suppression. So the Americanized kid who becomes independent and outspoken is often punished by our home culture. I think Asian immigrant kids, especially daughters, have a lot they want to talk about. “Respect your elders” is a saying that is used to end or never begin any conversations, so my comics became a place for me to talk it out with myself.
This book explores the immigrant experience and the opposing views of traditional parents and children learning to bridge the new and the old. What kind of responses do you get from readers who share similar experiences? How do other readers relate to your comics?
I get so much positive feedback from immigrant adult kids. I have done events where Asian-Americans I don’t even know spot my “I Survived An Asian Mom” tote and begin to tell me all their traumatic stories. Sometimes we laugh about it and sometimes we talk very seriously about it. Because our parents don’t allow for discussion, we have nowhere to talk about it – I grew up trying to blend in and be an all-American girl with my school friends, so I never talked about my home life. With other Asians, it was this weird competitive feeling of who was a better, richer, beautiful child/student/athlete. Asian parents put so much pressure on their kids to compete with even their siblings, so finding alliances with anyone was hard.
Also, immigrant kids are parentified young — they navigate America for their parents — for example, they read English contracts for their parents. We love our parents but we also carry a lot of sadness for the way we had to grow up. We can’t talk about it to our parents or our siblings, it was what it was. So when I get a positive reaction from someone who reads my comics, it’s usually because I have distilled an experience they thought they had in isolation. It feels super gratifying when someone tells me they can relate to my comics because in that interaction, we both feel seen.
How does your family feel about your Angry Little Girls series?
My family of origin ignores my work and they think it’s a worthless hobby.
My family — my husband and my kids — are very proud and supportive of me and my work.
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of your products goes to support abused women and children. Why is this an important cause for you?
My comic is called “Angry Little Girls” and it’s about girls feeling unsafe and angry in the world they are supposed to uphold without complaint. Generally speaking, I think girls and women are more vulnerable to being targets of abuse because they are not allowed to fight back. They’re taught from a very early age to “be nice.” I think this type of messaging blunts a girl’s ability to discern bad people and situations. Girls and women often find themselves in weird romances or friendships where the other party is taking advantage of these gender norms. If they ever get out of these situations, they are often blamed, shunned, and discarded. That is a painful experience and while I’m not a therapist, I can donate to organisations that help rehabilitate these broken girls.
Angry Little Asian Girl: Moments With My Mother, as well as loads of awesome Angry Little Girls merchandise is available at https://angrylittlegirls.com/
