{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02466525722339676, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.604651162790698, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
‘Don’t worry. It’s just the baby blues’: representations of new motherhood in contemporary graphic memoirs

ABSTRACT All bodies are governed by principles of temporality, yet regarding their roles as (potential) mothers, female bodies are kept under particularly strict observation. I argue that comics’ power to offer ‘a more inclusive perspective of medicine’ can be made fruitful to interrogate the impact that implicit temporal regimes that govern pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period have on new mothers. Analysing two autobiographical comics, Teresa Wong’s Dear Scarlet and Lucy Knisley’s Kid Gloves, I examine how Knisley’s struggles with pre-eclampsia and Wong’s postnatal depression turn their time as new mothers into a period of ‘crip time’ in which their chrono-normative time experience is altered. Both artists use different aesthetic means to illustrate experiences that differ from the positive image of an easy birth, swift recovery and blissful postnatal period perpetuated by contemporary discourses. I suggest that the medium of comics is particularly suited to illustrate these shifts in their subjective time experience. My paper explores how Knisley’s and Wong’s graphic narratives create alternative representations of the corporeal experience of the postpartum period, providing a social commentary on the discursive constraints of motherhood and an underrepresented time in women’s lives.