Enter to win I Thought You Love Me
Enter to win I Thought You Love Me by MariNaomi. To enter the contest, fill out the form below between Friday, May 12, and Friday, June 2.
Invoking Michelle Tea and Lauren Redniss, this mixed-media forensic journey explores flawed memory and lost queer friendship.
This Gen-X memoir, which is told in prose, collage, and sequential art, explores queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and the flawed nature of memory as Mari works to uncover a long-lost best friend that she can no longer remember but can't let go.
Jodie was Mari's best friend through their teens and twenties. As Mari began to explore their identity as a bisexual, biracial outsider in a rich, white town, Jodie was their constant confidant, even kissing Mari out of the closet. The two were inseparable until suddenly, Jodie ends their friendship. Years later, Mari is stunned when they discover why. Now much older, Mari is ready to forgive, but their memories of Jodie seem to have vanished. The reader follows in real-time as the author unravels their own mystery, examining the expectations of friendship, the unreliability of memory, and the struggle to let go.
Advance Praise
"Innovative...captivating...equal parts wistful and skeptical, wise and all too human." - Publishers Weekly, Starred Review ??
"Dazzling in theme, story, and visuals…a standout graphic memoir." - Foreword, Starred Review ??
"A visual feast…ideal for anyone who remembers the betrayal of losing your best friend but still knows that we all grow and change-so the future holds hope." - Booklist
"A tremendous achievement, a penetrating exploration of memory and relationships and the messiness of living with a changing self and other changing selfs…I've never read anything else quite like this." - Steph Cha, author of Your House Will Pay
MariNaomi (they/them) is the award-winning author and illustrator of Kiss & Tell: A Romantic Resume, Ages 0 to 22 (Harper Perennial, 2011), Dragon's Breath and Other True Stories (2dcloud/Uncivilized Books, 2014), Turning Japanese (2dcloud, 2016; Extended edition Oni Press, 2023), I Thought YOU Hated ME (Retrofit Comics, 2016), the Life on Earth trilogy (Graphic Universe, 2018-2020), Dirty Produce (Workman Publishing, 2021), and I Thought You Loved Me (Fieldmouse Press, 2023). Their work has appeared in nearly 100 print publications and has been featured on websites such as The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, The Washington Post, LA Times, The Rumpus, LA Review of Books, Midnight Breakfast, SF Examiner, and BuzzFeed. Their comics have been translated into French (Devenir Japonaise, Editions IMHO, 2021), German, and Russian.
MariNaomi's comics and paintings have been featured in the Smithsonian, the de Young Museum, the Cartoon Art Museum, the Asian Art Museum, and the Japanese American National Museum.
In 2011 and 2018, Mari toured with the literary roadshow Sister Spit. They are the founder and administrator of the Cartoonists of Color Database, the Queer Cartoonists Database, and the Disabled Cartoonists Database. They have taught classes for the California College of the Arts Comics MFA program, and was a guest editor for PEN Illustrated. They were cohost of the Ask Bi Grlz podcast with author Myriam Gurba.
MariNaomi lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with their partner and a menagerie of beloved rescue animals.
