Recurrence in Sequence: Katie Green’s Lighter Than My Shadow

This article examines how Katie Green’s graphic memoir Lighter Than My Shadow (2013) visualizes the invisible and the unconscious at the intersection of mental health and coming of age. Contextualizing Green’s work within the studies of graphic medicine and psychoanalysis, it investigates the black nonsensical scribbles in different shapes and sizes throughout the book. It discusses how their recurrence externalizes the narrator’s struggles with low self-esteem, body image, bullying, abuse, and perfectionism, all of which are entangled with her eating disorders. In addition, this article explores the artist’s choice of minimalist gutter space and varied panel layouts that break away from comics’ formal conventions to represent the psychological process of experiencing, remembering, and making sense of her illness. It addresses the artist’s deliberate strategies to create and connect seemingly disjointed moments in her life to provide insights into her eating disorders beyond medical diagnoses and interventions. Presenting multiple self-portraits throughout the book, and sometimes on the same page, the narrative weaves together different moments in time and visualizes the nonlinear process of living with and managing the disorders. It portrays recovery as a complex, continuous, and personalized process filled with progress and setbacks, rather than a closure.