A review by lprongs
In Limbo by Deb JJ Lee

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced
I'm glad this exists because I think the author needed to write it, and I think a lot of people probably need to read it. It didn't really click with me though - I struggled to follow the thread of a lot of the more jumbled panel compositions, and I often felt like I couldn't quite figure out what the author was trying to say/show, even when it felt very important. However, this book was not written for me.

I will also say that a lot of my own trauma from severe depression, a suicide attempt, and an unstable, formative relationship with my own mother informed a lot of my response to this book. It made me uncomfortable in a bad way and reminded me of things I'd rather stay forgotten. I think if I'd read this a few years ago, before I moved back in with my parents, I would have enjoyed it more. Now it's a little too close to home, and I think that prevented me from really sinking into it and understanding more of it as I kept a lot of it at arm's length in my head.

It was not an enjoyable read, and like most memoirs, it feels wrong to rate it. But I do think it's a valuable addition to the world: it introduces and discusses some very complex and important topics, the art was beautiful, and the inclusion of Korean was cleverly done.
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