Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics

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“I set out to make a comic that I would want to

read”: a conversation on queer motherhood and
LGBTQ+ comics with A.K. Summers

Chinmay Murali & Parvathy MS

To cite this article: Chinmay Murali & Parvathy MS (2023): “I set out to make a comic that I
would want to read”: a conversation on queer motherhood and LGBTQ+ comics with A.K.
Summers, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, DOI: 10.1080/21504857.2023.2233582

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2023.2233582

Published online: 09 Jul 2023.

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JOURNAL OF GRAPHIC NOVELS AND COMICS
https://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2023.2233582

“I set out to make a comic that I would want to read”:

a conversation on queer motherhood and LGBTQ+ comics
with A.K. Summers
Chinmay Murali and Parvathy MS
Department of English, Sanatana Dharma College, Alappuzha, India

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

A. K. Summers’ graphic memoir Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Received 12 March 2023
Spent in Drag (2014) visually enunciates the author’s lived experi­ Accepted 1 July 2023
ence as a pregnant butch in a cis-normative culture. In this inter­ KEYWORDS
view, Summers elaborates on her intention behind creating the LGBTQ+ comics; queer
memoir as bestowing visibility and intelligibility to the reproductive motherhood; graphic
experiences of the LGBTQ+ community. The conversation also memoir; homophobia;
addresses the memoirist’s insecurities and fears as a queer parent heterosexism
raising a child in a homophobic cultural setting, also pointing out
how being a ‘child’s mother’ accords cultural legitimacy to her non-
normative queer family. Identifying comics as a potent medium to
represent one’s inner realities, Summers emphasises the wider
scope of the visual-verbal canvass in representing lived and
tabooed experiences unswervingly when compared to mere verbal
expressions. Furthermore, the conversation highlights Summers’
observations on the homophobic attitudes that mediate medical
attitudes towards queer motherhood and the significance of queer
autobiographical comics in destigmatizing the often complex and
diverse LGBTQ+ experiences.

Queer comics artist and author AK Summers holds a Studio Arts major from Oberlin
College, Ohio. Summers moved to Chicago after their graduation where they self-
published Negativa: Chicago’s Astute Lezbo Fantasy Mag. Summers’ comics have
appeared in several publications including Discontents: New Queer Writers (1991) edited
by Dennis Cooper and the online parenting magazine Mutha. Initially serialised online
on Activate Comix in 2012, Summers’ debut graphic memoir Pregnant Butch was
published in 2014 by Soft Skull. A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award of 2015, the
book documents the author’s complex experience of pregnancy and queer motherhood.

Your graphic memoir Pregnant Butch was published in 2014, ten years after your
pregnancy. Now that your child is in their teenage, how do you reflect on your
experience as a butch mother in a heteronormative milieu?

I brought the baggage of deep insecurity, fear, and suspicion to my role as a butch
parent. I was frightened about what I would encounter and to what stigma I would expose

CONTACT Chinmay Murali [email protected] Department of English, Sanatana Dharma College,

Alappuzha 688003, India
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 C. MURALI AND P. MS

my child. It was only logical, considering what I’d experienced as a gay gender-
nonconforming person. I didn’t expect to be accepted as a normal parent. However,
the presence of my child complicated the old script. I didn’t anticipate this. It turned out
that I had assets that legitimised me: I was my child’s birth mother. We had the same last
name. In his first couple of years, I was his primary caregiver. In the (straight) world’s
eyes, my butch appearance was trumped by the fact that I was clearly this child’s mother.
I had not expected that I would be accepted in this way. But I was. Sometimes it was
a challenge for me to inhabit this role in public with confidence, because of the fear that
I would be challenged/humiliated in front of my child. I was scared that my child would
pick up on how I was different – not as secure as other parents, somehow lacking parental
‘realness.’ I was worried that he would not feel safe with me and would grow up feeling
that he had less value than other children.
Those fears didn’t materialise. I experienced humdrum, low-level gender-confusion.
My child and I dealt with it. Occasionally my partner and I encountered homophobia
(usually in the form of ignorance and cluelessness rather than aggression and hostility).
We had some unnecessary, delegitimizing hoops to jump through, such as having to
formally adopt our own child. Nonetheless we surmounted these challenges. We lived in
a big, cosmopolitan city. We were not the only ones. And, most significantly, the
U.S. changed A LOT during the time my child was a child. Laws changed. Sodomy
laws were struck down. Gay marriage was legalised. Gay people and gay families achieved
some civil rights and became normalised. Our numbers rose and we became more visible.
If we’d had our child now, we would not have had to ‘adopt’ him in order for my partner
to be one of his legal parents. I’m sure I don’t need to explain that there’s been a sea
change in wide cultural acceptance of gay people going about their business like everyone
else. And now there’s been great headway in making gender nonconforming and trans
lives understood as things that just exist, as neither pathological nor threatening.
Sometimes I think my child has a better grasp on this than I do. His friends inhabit
various gender categories – to each his/her/their own. To him it is no big deal.
Of course, for ME it will always be a big deal. I am still processing the difference
between then and now. I am suspicious of ‘sea changes.’ It all rests on shared beliefs and
we can see how fragile those are in our current political moment here in the U.S. Still, an
awful lot of kids have now grown up with a more expansive model of gender and
sexuality. If the significance of my own upbringing is any indication, theirs will cast
a long shadow too – but in a good way.

Pregnant Butch has been included in a recent anthology of comics on reproduction

titled Graphic Reproduction: A Comics Anthology (2018), edited by Jenell Johnson.
There is a growing corpus of autobiographical comics that centres on people with
reproductive experiences outside the mainstream. Do you think the medium of
comics has the potential to enable authors to visualise their intimate and embodied
experiences in its inherent complexity?

Yes. Drawing makes possible the depiction of external reality – after all, prior to
photography, drawing was THE means for documenting the appearance of things.
And it is also uniquely well-suited to representing inner realities. For me, comics
allowed me to portray multiple subjectivities: in addition to how one looks there is
 JOURNAL OF GRAPHIC NOVELS AND COMICS 3

how one thinks they look, how one hopes they look, how one fears they look, how
one FEELS, etc. And because of its serial structure (panels, sequence of images),
comics can tell long, complicated stories about changing bodies and experiences. Of
course writing can do that too, but there is a directness and physicality in drawing
that language doesn’t have. I’m not just talking about the visual impact of
a drawing – but the act of drawing itself. It is a physical act, and leaves a trace
of that physicality on the page in its lines – sketchy, violent, sure, wavering,
controlled, etc. I believe the physical act of drawing one’s experiences taps into
bodily memories in a more direct way than just writing about them does, and helps
with retrieving memories and with accessing/expressing feelings about those
remembered experiences. Anyway, that has been my experience drawing autobio­
graphical comics.

In your Introduction to your memoir, you have mentioned about a generational

shift taking place in LGBTQ+ politics (Summers 2014, i-iv). As you have observed,
the term ‘butch’ is no longer actively used by young queers and the present generation
of pregnant masculine people would adopt different descriptors that they feel rightly
fit them. How do you respond to the contemporary queer politics and activism that
are focused on queer reproduction and parenthood?

Oh god. And I keep getting LESS contemporary! I thought that butch might be
coming back, that we were in a cycle of 1990s nostalgia, but nope. Doesn’t seem to
be. I have two good friends who are about 15 to 20 years younger than me,
masculine-identified, AFAB [assigned female at birth]. They are in the prime family-
building age. One of them had a baby last year. The other is not interested. Both are
doing things differently from me – and seeing things differently from me. My
family-building friend broke it to me recently that she/they doesn’t identify as
butch. For them, Nonbinary/genderqueer feels more like home. And my other
friend prefers trans/queer. OK, well. That did kind of burst my bubble. I thought
we were all butches! Maybe butches with different generational tics but still
butches – masculine-identified people who still nominally consider themselves
a ‘kind’ of woman. Nope. Turns out ‘putting up with shit’ like gender identifications
that don’t feel right, is not what Milennial or Gen-Z is doing.
We are all working within our own historical contexts – the frames we’ve had to look
through, wrestle ourselves to fit into or break out of. To me, keeping up with the roiling,
burgeoning list of queer identities feels exhausting (what an old person thing to say!).
Luckily, I realised embarrassingly recently, I don’t have to. It’s not about me. I don’t have
to question my own gender/sexual preference every time someone else describes them­
selves with a new and different one. All I have to do is pay attention to what they’re saying
and asking for – and understand that they are wrestling within – or to break out of – their
own current frames. It doesn’t take anything away from my own life experience to
recognise that someone else has a different one. After all, Leslie Steinberg’s Stone Butch
Blues1 still talks to me – even with my different generational/historical/class experience.
And Pregnant Butch can still resonate for people who don’t identify as butch.
As far as nominal womanhood goes, I actually think butch is its own gender, rather
than as a modifier for a kind of woman. But that’s just me.
4 C. MURALI AND P. MS

Pregnant Butch was essentially a political project to make the fraught contours of
LGBTQ+ reproduction visible to the cultural mainstream. How did readers react to
your memoir?

Wellll . . . that’s ONE thing it was. To me, though, Pregnant Butch was first and
foremost a work of art. I can see why you’d characterise it that way – because I make
artwork that’s primarily autobiographical, with the intention of making the unseen queer
experience visible. But it’s as much (if not more) for a queer audience as for the cultural
mainstream. And I had artistic aims and interests that went far afield of representation.
Like drawing aliens in ketchup-soaked underpants.
But back to your question. I got different responses from readers. Many people
identified with the psychic discomforts of pregnancy and its straitjacket of societal
expectations. It turns out that many pregnant people, cisgendered women included,
object to being straitjacketed! The most complicated responses, however, were from
people within the LGBTQ+ community. Again, there was lots of reader identification
with my portrait of pregnancy as a struggle to maintain gender identity. But there was
also pushback for a section in the book where I talk about butch and trans identities.
Some readers thought I disrespected or misrepresented the choices made by trans people.
That was a very tough section to write. Those early years of the trans movement (in the
early 2000s) were confusing to me as a self-described ‘butch dyke.’ I felt personally
challenged by seeing so many people who had previously identified as butch ‘leave’ the
identity and come out as trans. It made me question my own gender identity. I felt
insecure. Was I insufficiently masculine? Was I playing dress-up while others were doing
something ‘real?’ It was an unsettling moment for many queers – when gender became
more of a focus point than sexual orientation. It may have been one of the first times
I encountered a shift in the historical moment/zeitgeist that made me feel left behind.
And it was happening at a time when my own decision to become pregnant was bringing
on physical changes that were feminising, were making me feel very un-butch. The
section is really about grappling with the question of ‘how much discomfort and
dysphoria can I tolerate?’ It is about me and my gender ruminations and feeling like
a wienie, rather than being a criticism of trans men. However, there were snarky parts.
And were I to write it today, I’d try to make fewer jokes about other people’s masculinity –
and stick to making fun of my own. Maybe I’d even be able to get across that we are all
struggling to be who we are and that other people’s journeys don’t undermine the truth of
our own. However, I’ve only been in therapy for 11 years – and I didn’t have a firm grasp
on this insight when I was writing Pregnant Butch.

Interestingly, your comics such as Nursing While Butch (2015), and Those Other
Nurses (2016) address nuanced issues including the impact of parenthood on your
gender identity and sexual self. These issues are often under-represented in main­
stream discourses on pregnancy and motherhood. How significant are these themes
particularly in the context of queer parenthood?

Gender and sexuality are the primary themes I deal within my work. Traditionally they
are obfuscated or left out in discussions of queer parenthood (when there even ARE
discussions of queer parenthood!) for a few different reasons:
 JOURNAL OF GRAPHIC NOVELS AND COMICS 5

#1. Because gender and sexuality, except in the dominant cis/hetero form, are under­
represented in the mainstream discourse, period!

#2. Because there’s fear and vulnerability involved in allowing these areas to be
seen by people outside of the LGBTQ+ community – particularly where children
are concerned. Historically, LGBTQ+ people have experienced threats to custody,
danger and/or interference from schools, social services, law enforcement, neigh­
bours, families of origin. Gay sexuality and parenthood are not safe to show in
combination to the mainstream. We still find ourselves ‘proving’ that we are
responsible, credible, legitimate caretakers of children – not pederasts or malign
influences. So acknowledging gender and sexuality in the context of children feels
risky, sometimes IS risky.

#3. There’s a notion that parenthood means leaving childish things – like gender and
sexuality – behind. I’m supposed to be grown up if I’m a parent! And I’m certainly not
supposed to be embarrassing my child by still yammering on about my gender identity
and (please, Mom!) sexuality. What was the question again?

Ah, yes. How significant are these themes? A: VERY SIGNIFICANT. I grew up
desperate to see these things described and discussed, so that is what I do in my artwork.

In Pregnant Butch, you have depicted your visual avatar as a Tintin look-alike. Is
there any particular reason for adopting Tintin elements in your memoir?

Tintin was my first favourite comic. As a child, I wanted to ‘be’ Tintin. And that
seemed possible! He was masculine without being a fullblown man. He was a ‘boy,’ and
also, somehow, adult. He escaped the binds of gender which accompany adulthood.
Nobody asked him when he was going to get around to getting married or whether it was
strange that he spent so much time with boozy old Captain Haddock. Plus, I really
coveted his knickerbockers and trenchcoat. When I was first considering getting preg­
nant, a friend asked what I would look like. Without hesitating I said, ‘A pregnant Tintin,’
and I drew a quick sketch of Tintin with a beach ball under his sweater. Then later, when
I’d actually been pregnant and decided to draw a comic about it, I remembered the image.
Tintin helped me imagine myself with my butch gender intact. And in the comic, the
figure of Tintin functions as a visual reminder of the strangeness and incongruity of
a pregnant butch. I also liked the genre associations Tintin brought along. Tintin comics
are adventures, and often have some mystery that has to be solved. What better way to
frame a gender-nonconforming pregnancy memoir?

Do you think professional training is essential for making comics?

I’m actually not trained as a comics creator. I have an MFA in Printmaking and I’m
a visual artist who got into comics because I like to use words and images together. Many
(maybe even most?) comics artists are self-taught. So obviously professional training is
not necessary. I do think READING a lot of comics is necessary. Or, if not absolutely
necessary, it sure helps.

As a comics creator, are you influenced by any particular artists or movements?

6 C. MURALI AND P. MS

I am influenced by many comics artists. Probably my biggest influence, besides Hergé,

is Jaime Hernandez of Love & Rockets. I also love Daniel Clowes, Lynda Barry, Tom of
Finland and the covers of lesbian pulp novels. From my childhood, comics that made me
want to draw were Walt Kelly’s Pogo, Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant. From my child’s
childhood, I got introduced to Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo, Linda Medley’s Castle
Waiting and Jeff Smith’s Bone. My new favourite comics writer/artist team are Mariko
and Jillian Tamaki (Skim, This One Summer). And for graphic memoir, there’s no more
important work than Art Spiegelman’s Maus.

Your memoir not only critiques the heteronormative assumptions in mainstream

culture but also laments sexist bias that characterises medical attitudes towards
pregnancy and motherhood. Do you think biomedicine internalises homophobic
values from the cultural mainstream?

Well, yeah. How could it not? Look, I am 53 years old and I am deeply suspicious of
medical ‘experts.’ Homosexuality was only taken out of the DSM as a pathology in
1973! – and gay people continued to be treated as second-class citizens and not really
fully human by the legal system and civil society for long after that. So why should
biomedicine be any different than the rest of society? Doctors are people and people
reflect attitudes from the cultural mainstream. Plus there is the Authority problem.
Doctors are authority figures who are accustomed to taking the word of other medical
authorities more seriously than the accounts of people in their care (especially if those
patients are BIPOC [black, indigenous and people of colour], women, less educated, have
less money). Also, Capitalism! When time is money, people who are a ‘pain’ to deal with
because they are part of a minority, are unfamiliar, scared, uncooperative, and/or have
mental health issues tend to get shittier care. That’s how a for-profit health care system
operates.

You have adeptly laced your memoir with humour. What do you think is the
significance of humour while narrating intimate and often tabooed experiences in
comics?

I come from a long line of queer storytellers who have used camp and humour
to assert our humanity and to take control of our own stories. It’s a survival
strategy. Humour keeps stories about painful life experiences from becoming just
an endless sea of unrelenting suffering. Who would want to read ANYTHING
unrelenting? I set out to make a comic that I would want to read. And I am
allergic to work that takes itself so seriously that it presumes that its reader will
want to go on reading someone’s dirge/screed/death march without some good
reason – like pleasure!
And in case this sounds too strategic (which, rereading it, I think it might), I’m
not suggesting the deployment of humour like a presenter looking up jokes to
keep an audience awake during a PowerPoint on investing for retirement.
Humour is an art form itself – not merely a strategy and certainly not an add-
on. Just because drag and gay camp are survival strategies doesn’t mean that the
artistry involved in the performance is incidental. Vaginal Creme Davis’s2 perfor­
mance, or David Sedaris’3 writing IS the point – and why they are making art and
 JOURNAL OF GRAPHIC NOVELS AND COMICS 7

not just anecdote or diary entry or document or agitprop or the blather of an

unmediated personality. The significance of the humour is that this is the kind of
art I make and the kind of stories I tell.

Your comics form part of a powerful LGBTQ+ comics tradition. What are your
observations on the significance of contemporary autobiographical comics in lending
visibility to queer experiences?

Well, I think they do add to the visibility of contemporary LGBTQ+ experience. It

seems to me that we’re in a moment when the media attention to famous first-person
autobiographical comics like Maus and Fun Home has met longstanding conceptual/
pedagogical projects like Lynda Barry’s work explaining image and writing. This in turn
has met up with comics programs like Justin Hall’s at CCA [California College of the
Arts] and the Center for Cartooning in Vermont, where learning to write/draw comics is
treated as seriously as the Iowa Writers Workshop4 teaches prose. All these factors have
unleashed a new generation of LGBTQ+ comics artists taking on the depiction of their
lived experiences.
I myself think there is no better form than comics for depicting gender and
trans lives, because of the way multiple views of the self are possible and the
control offered to artists to depict their own experiences of sexuality and power.
Comics have an incredible ability to SHOW interiority and it’s just a wonderful,
natural fit between form and subject matter. I think it’s a really exciting boom
time for new queer comics.

Notes
1. Often regarded as one of the classic works of LGBTQ+ community, Leslie Feinberg’s Stone
Butch Blues (1993) is a partly autobiographical historical novel that depicts the life of a butch
lesbian in the America of the 1970s.
2. Born intersex, Vaginal Davis’ artistic performances are often categorised as queercore punk.
Davis’ performances, laced with nuanced wit and satirical elements, criticises white-
privilege, heterosexism and patriarchy, among others.
3. David Sedaris, the author of the popular Santaland Diaries, is a homosexual essayist,
comedian and radio contributor.
4. Formally founded in 1936, the Writer’s Workshop at University of Iowa is credited as the
first creative writing degree program in the United States which also honed the literary
talents of thousands of remarkable authors.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Reference
Summers, A. K. 2014. Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag. Berkeley: Soft Skull Press.