By Essa Rasheed
When you’re a kid getting into reading, every now and then a grown-up hands you a book that’s your first experience with a radically new author or genre, and it expands your mind, your imagination, and your relationship to literature. There’s a whole new “type of book” suddenly, and your world becomes just a bit more colorful. That feeling becomes less and less common as you grow up, but I’m absolutely delighted to say that I found myself feeling that way again – absolute awestruck at the sheer potential of literature and the limitless creativity of authors – reading Japanese American comic artist Rumi Hara’s The Peanutbutter Sisters and Other American Stories. Though I may struggle with communicating everything that makes this book so special, because doing so would consist of breaking down and gushing over several short stories in a way that would take any sense of brevity from this review, please take that as my complete and unabashed endorsement of this book.
The Peanutbutter Sisters and Other American Stories is a collection of short comics that is ambitious in scope, with stories ranging from a grounded and realistic conversation two classmates have as they explore Newtown Creek looking for inspiration for a play for their Modern Japanese Literature class project, to a sci-fi reporting of a whimsical Wacky Races-esque sporting event in the distant future, to the story of a man who goes into hypersexual seizures every time he sees a belly button. I could see how, for some, the sheer expanse and range of stories might make it difficult to engage with the book as a cohesive work. Many anthologies contain stories with similar themes or genres, and though within this book there certainly are recurring motifs and paralleling themes in different stories, those aren’t necessarily a constant. One thing that is constant, however, is Hara’s masterful hand as she makes the most out of this exploration of imagery, narrative, and poetry. Hara embeds a rich vibrancy in every panel – the worlds of these stories are beautiful and feel palpable and lived in. Hara also uses the concept of the collection to its full advantage; the varied subject matter allows for a more liberal exploration of concepts like femininity, American identity, and the destruction of nature in a way that communicates the complexities of these themes in different stories more than a single work might. As a result of that, I feel this is a work of art that every reader will leave with a diverse range of what struck them as most resonant. For example, what particularly stuck with me was its reflection on mythology, folk culture, and our shared American stories.
The themes of culture and folk art are webbed throughout several stories, each of which at times seems to be in conversation with each other. There’s a larger than life fantastical quality to the eponymous short story, “The Peanutbutter Sisters,” with the fantastical logic of jumping into the winds of a hurricane to travelling across the United States and hitchhiking rides back from whales that fits right at home with the logic of Rapunzel, One Eye Two-Eyes Three-Eyes, or, more aptly, American folktales like John Henry and Paul Bunyan. It operates on the terms of these shared tales but also features eBay and Coca-Cola and climate change, and though I can’t intellectualize it, there’s something poignant about that – a deeply familiar and nostalgic feeling but also something energetic and radical. I was left to reflect on what value folk stories had on the people who made them, and on how the folk stories we share reflect an America of the past – a less diverse, more patriarchal nation. The idea of folk culture is further expanded in “Bombalada,” which tells the story of a mythical figure who points and sends a swarm of bomb creatures to destroy buildings leaving space for new construction – functioning as a creation myth of construction in New York City. It recontextualizes cities as part of ecosystems whose expansion and destruction are as much a part of our experience of our environment as Zeus and his lightning bolts were for the people of Ancient Greece.
Furthermore, in “Walking with Tammy Tabata,” two students explore Newtown Creek in New York City looking for inspiration for a Japanese Noh play they hope to write that’s set in that area. The character of Tammy is Japanese American and reflects on the alienation she feels from her nationality (not being seen as Japanese enough). As she continues finding inspiration with her classmate Steven, she reflects, “We can make anything Noh if we want to. There can be many different ways to be Japanese.” The reality of an Asian American reacting to the alienation they’ve felt in regards to their identity with an act of creation – making their own bit culture out of the cultures they’re from – is something that I found extremely profound. It not only made me wonder whether these mirror Hara’s own relationships with narrative and representation – that this book itself was a way to claim a place in culture – but it also made me consider how the act of Asian Americans creating their own art is inherently radical because it stands as an affront to a society that questions the validity of their culture. It made me reflect on folk culture as being a claim to a culture and a past and the tremendous power that that entails. The motif of folk culture is just one thread of many within this anthology – it’s the thing I latched onto and this would be the type of book I would love to have read in a literature class, to hear from the people that latch onto the profound ways the book interacts with gender or sexuality or the environment.
It also needs to be said that Hara’s artwork is gorgeous and fits each story well, whether it be the wacky alien and vehicle designs in the sci-fi story “Living Things,” the frantic ecstasy filled orgy scenes of “Verti-go-go,” or the ethereal watercolor of “Bombalada,” Hara’s artwork is married to the emotional journey of her narratives in a way that’s masterfully done. The stories are occasionally broken up with a series of drawings entitled “The Builders,” each work showing the gradual process of a group of fur clad women in crotchless outfits living in nature, acquiring lumber, and building a home. Those are stunning pieces that are a blend of the black and white inking that’s found in most of the book and vibrant sparks of color that paint the nature in the scenes.
The Peanutbutter Sisters and Other American Stories is a rich, multifaceted, fun, contemplative, and spiritual experience that takes you on a journey through sobering reality, fantastical escapism, and charming farce, and I’ve never read anything like it. It exists more as a collage than it is a painting – not a single unified work which leaves a single impression, but many that all feed into a larger experience that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Hara is an incredibly talented author and artist and without a doubt, a talent whose career I’m going to eagerly follow.
The Peanutbutter Sisters and Other American Stories is available from Alexander Book Co, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Drawn & Quarterly, Elliott Bay Book Company, Octavia Books, and Talking Leaves.
Essa Rasheed is a Pakistani American animator and illustrator from Corona, California. Rasheed graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in English and film and media studies. He was previously a food writer for The Bloomsday Review.