Visual Communication, Discussing Forget Sorrow

Visual Communication, Discussing Forget Sorrow

By Jamie Harper

Upon first opening Belle Yang’s graphic novel Forget Sorrow, I was initially very excited by the style of art she utilizes in her panels, and the depictions she fills them with. Yang’s first few pages incite readers with the images of a E gui-like depiction of her stalker (p.10), playfully melancholic drawings of ghosts and bottles full of bones (p.15), and landscapes clearly inspired by traditional Chinese art (p.21), all promising an imaginative depiction of a generational story. But in reading further in, I found the storytelling to be a little flat in comparison to the bold black and white illustrations. Like many memoirs, Forget Sorrow does not have the steepest of plot arcs, rather instead focusing on the journey of paralleled traumatic periods and cultural parental expectation, as the main plot “wiggles” (as Oliver so aptly coined in our second class), I take no issue with this, but without Yang’s strongly defined art and visual communication styles, I doubt the memoir would have held my attention.

Graphic novels are known for their use of art and panels of visual action as a means of not only representing, but also enhancing a storyline, allowing for a greater amount of subtext, subplots, and subliminal symbolism to saturate the reader’s mind. We can easily see Yang following in this trend with some of the choices she makes in what to depict and how, such as in the oversized, corpulate, looming, and infantile E gui figure of her ex boyfriend now stalker, the humerus, shocked face of the caped bull held up by its wrists (p. 165), the demonic silhouettes of the bandits (p. 159), the squashed Hitler under the boot labeled “Allies” (p. 143), or the face she gives herself after a nightmare, clearly inspired by Munch’s painting “The Scream” (p. 132). Each monochrome frame of these highlights bring extra emphasis to the emotions felt by the narrator, the fear of her stalker, the disbelieving surprise at the disemboweled bull, making them that much more salient to the reader.

The formatting of this story as a graphic novel also allows for the inclusion of cultural influences Western readers may not be previously clued into, such as style of dress (p.77), or language and etiquette (p.18). Historical information is also readily available through the visuals of the novel, as we see Yang depicting the execution of “Devil Guo” and his wife (p. 109) or the effects of labor camps (p. 202-203) and Stalin’s invasion of Manchuria (p. 143). All of this is included without “bogging down” or slowing the story in anyway, it is all right there for our eyes to scan over at our own convenience, be we reading for leisure or carefully analyzing for a class.      

The art style remains consistent and thus familiar throughout the novel, so even when she distorts or morphs the style a little, such as in the dream sequences, Yang still ensures we remain comfortable with the characteristics of her images, lending the sort of security commonly felt when we know a narrator is a reliable one. This trust in style and therefore storytelling allows the reader to feel that the narrator, and Yang as an author, is telling us this story with as much emotional and environmental truth as she possesses. We of course do not know for a fact that this story is true, but we feel mostly secure in believing that Yang believes in it, even if we may wonder how much of the father’s story is true, how much is misremembered or embellished through a sense of pride or loyalty to family and culture. Alternatively, the father could have also embellished things to worsen the experiences of the family, either as means of bolstering or shaming his daughter (p. 177, p. 69-70, p. p38), considering how much emphasis the father places on failure. Either way, we as readers can only place our trust in the consistent style and narration we see throughout the graphic novel.

While there were some moments when I cocked my head a little at Yang’s choices for panel content (the repetitive facial close ups, for one), I was generally sold on her take on visual storytelling and the implicit communication contained there in.