What is the ideal time to write your memoir? Logically speaking, a memoir comes after years, or perhaps decades, of shared experience. But a memoir can also come earlier in one’s life, allowing the author to look back on childhood and formative years to understand more about the adult they are becoming today. This latter idea is perhaps the genesis behind cartoonist Liz Montague’s new memoir, “Maybe, An Artist,” debuting today. Known for her cartoons in The New Yorker, her cartoon “Liz at Large” in the Washington City Paper, and a Google Doodle celebrating cartoonist and activist Jackie Ormes, “Maybe, An Artist” is her first all-ages graphic novel.
Liz took some time to chat with us about her inspirations to tell her life story at this particular point in time, things her childhood self taught her as an adult, and what keeps her motivated. We have a first look at some pages of “Maybe, An Artist,” available at retailers today, at the end of this interview. And of course, we thank Liz for her time.
“Maybe, An Artist” is your memoir. What inspired you to tell your story of your journey as a comics creator at this particular point in time?
Liz Montague: I feel like this is like always such a hard question. I never honestly would have thought to do anything like this if Random House hadn’t approached me. They had just read about me on this blog that I had been on, and reached out and asked, “Would you ever want to do something like this?” And I was like, “huh, yeah, I guess. Why not?”
I never thought I never saw myself doing this. No one ever sees themselves sitting one day and saying, “Oh, i’m going to write my life story at this particular point in time.” So you no one ever sees this.
It’s more a reactionary decision than an active one, if anything.
LM: Yeah, if someone wants you to do it rather than you make a conscious decision to do it, if that makes sense.
At the time I was like twenty three, and I was like I don’t know what i’m doing. I don’t know where i’m going. You want me to tell a story about my life. I haven’t done anything yet. I just had no idea this had no idea about anything. It was like, I don’t know if i’m really qualified to do this.
And that explains why the book is mostly devoted to your K-12 years and less to when you are in college and early adulthood, which is often when people find themselves.
LM: I remember if somebody was like, Oh, the book is so short. I was like, Okay, Well, right in here now. I’m 26. It took two years to write this book, so like I think I signed the deal when I was like, had just turned 24 or was like like late 23. This is who I am right now, who I’m still trying to figure out.
But it does leave some room for a sequel, a volume, two, or an updated edition of the story. And you can see how much your K-12 years, your younger years really played a role in bringing you to this particular point in time.
You dedicated this book to your nine-year-old self. What made you do that?
LM: I feel like that was just like such a fearless age for me. I did track my whole life, and every year we would get these little like team pictures done, and we would get trading cards of ourselves. So it’s like a little picture of yourself on a card stock, with all the facts about you that age. And while I was writing this I had like the one from when I was nine years old, taped my desk, and I would look at it and be like, “Okay, let me inhabit her brain. What’s actually going on for her right now?” And it really helped me.
So I felt like that was like my my little guide while I was writing this.
I love that idea of your younger self as your inspiration, because you realize that you’re at that age like a lot of kids. You’re just fearless.
Continued belowLM: oh, totally. You’re not fully developed, in terms of your brain. You have a more fearless approach to life than you probably would if at 29, as opposed to it, nine years old, or even at 39, or 49. You have no concept in anything it’s like, Yeah, let’s just do whatever.
You both wrote and drew this book. Which of those now of those two which of those was harder for you to do, and why?
LM: I think it was probably harder to draw it. They were both really hard because I was doing both at the same time. It wasn’t like like I’ve done a picture book. Since then. I’ve had some other projects since then. It wasn’t like “oh, here’s the text manuscript, and now i’m going to go and write.” I was doing both at the same time, trying to figure out layouts as i’m doing the text, because I really wanted them to like work together and have the art something contribute things that aren’t going to be captured in the text. But the text is still necessary.
I would say the art was harder just because I really thought long and hard about composition, how to use the page, how to make the eye travel, how to make it look like for every line to be necessary. I didn’t want it to be super cluttered and overwhelming. That happens to me a lot when I read manga and graphic novels and I just get overstimulated so quickly and shut down. I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted it to feel like very digestible, very easy – – which means that it was like very, very hard to make.
I agree with you on the idea that some some manga and comics have so much going on on the page. And that’s why I like your book: very, very simple artwork. You respect white space, and you didn’t crowd your pages.
So I’m curious about some of your artistic inspirations for this book, and maybe even for some of the work you’ve done with The New Yorker and for Google.
LM: Obviously Norman Rockwell was a huge one. His triple- self-portrait.
I guess like just like that nostalgic feeling really of like Sunday cartoons. I didn’t really have a long time of that. I think we stopped getting the paper, a physical paper, when I was really young, like second grade, but like the one we did have it, I remember them. It was something that I could just like with eating a bowl of cereal and felt like it was approachable. Does that make sense?
The Sunday comics, the Sunday funny pages. Spending your morning eating a bowl of cereal and reading the latest Peanuts or Garfield, for example.
LM: Yeah, And you have five panels and that’s enough. It doesn’t feel super overwhelming. It doesn’t feel like too much.
As far as actual artists for inspiration, Marjane Satrapi. I love her work. I have her quote in the beginning of the book. She has a very flat and simplistic style. And I think that she communicates a lot of her experiences, especially with what’s going on right now in Iran and then Iranian revolution.
You shared a lot of stories of growing up that have a thread of social justice in them. Were there any that as you were as you were writing this book that were a little hard for you to bring back to the page, to relive or recall?
LM: Nothing was really hard for me to like, really ever recall. It all feels so long ago, even though I guess it’s really not. I mean ten years ago I was sixteen, so I guess childhood is not as far away as it was as I would like to think it is. I guess I didn’t want to make my town look bad. I don’t want to portray it as a bad place to live, because it totally wasn’t. I grew up in South Jersey, and just moved back. My husband and I were living in Philadelphia, and we just recently bought a house back here.
Continued belowI wanted to stay true to my experiences, and offering a narrative that was helpful while feeling like “oh, but I don’t want to offend people.” But I know that that’s like a very like gendered impulse in and of itself: I don’t want to hear people’s feelings, even though it’s the truth.
You want to tell your story authentically, but you also want to do it in a way that is constructive. We’re both from New Jersey, we’ve both heard every joke about the state of New Jersey, and some that probably haven’t been written yet. But you don’t want to turn into a trash talking where you grew up.
I’m proud to be from New Jersey. My mobile phone still has a New Jersey area code number on it. I’ve lived in Connecticut for over a decade now, and I’ve never changed my phone number, and wherever I live I will never change my phone number. It’s that little source of pride to have that New Jersey area code to remind me of my roots.
LM: Yeah, I’m very proud to be from New Jersey. I love New Jersey.
What is one thing that you do hope readers take from this book once they finish it?
LM: I really just hope that people like believe in themselves. I know that that sounds so like canned, but like I feel like, especially for women, and especially for minority women, I feel like it’s so hard to take chances on yourself, to take that risk because of so many external factors. It’s so much harder to listen to your inner voice. I am going to try this thing that maybe my parents don’t support, or I am going to take this path that maybe nobody else has taken like. Trying to build up the confidence to actually do that is so hard. And it’s a really unacknowledged kind of hard.
I just hope that more people feel like: why not try it, even if it’s not perfect, even if you’re not perfect, even if the times aren’t perfect, you’re still allowed to try, And even if it doesn’t work out, that’s also fine. You don’t need to have a guaranteed outcome or a guaranteed anything, and you’re still allowed to be a fully realized person,
I think that’s a great lesson to take. Just try.
LM: Just try. Why not?
Written and Illustrated by Liz Montague
A heartfelt and funny graphic novel memoir from one of the first Black female cartoonists to be published in the New Yorker, when she was just 22 years old.
When Liz Montague was a senior in college, she wrote to the New Yorker, asking them why they didn’t publish more inclusive comics. The New Yorker wrote back asking if she could recommend any. She responded: yes, me.
Those initial cartoons in the New Yorker led to this memoir of Liz’s youth, from the age of five through college–how she navigated life in her predominantly white New Jersey town, overcame severe dyslexia through art, and found the confidence to pursue her passion. Funny and poignant, Liz captures the age-old adolescent questions of “who am I?” and “what do I want to be?” with pitch-perfect clarity and insight.
This brilliant, laugh-out-loud graphic memoir offers a fresh perspective on life and social issues and proves that you don’t need to be a dead white man to find success in art.
