Illustrated Autobiography: “The Bride Was A Boy” and Biographical Comics
In a world where transgender stories are treated as inaccessible and complicated, mangaka Chii can tell her story in four simple boxes.
Any discussion about LGBT+ matters in society, particularly ones pertaining to transgender people, inevitably becomes a point of contention. This is the case for almost anywhere in the world, which makes the sharing of these kind of stories incredibly valuable for normalizing and helping people come to accept LGBT+ peoples’ places in society. Thus, when I came across the autobiographical manga The Bride Was A Boy (Hanayome wa Motodanshi in Japanese), I was elated, both as an avid reader of manga and as a transgender person myself.
The Bride Was A Boy was written by Japanese blogger “Chii”, and focuses on her life as a transgender woman in Japan. Specifically, the story revolves around how she came to marry her husband, using that narrative as a lens to look at her transgender experience. The story begins by touching on how Chii-chan met her husband, affectionately referred to as “Husband-kun” throughout the story. From there on, she recounts her early years as she was still living as a man, through to her transition surgery, and finally on to the proposal and marriage itself. This story runs parallel to Chii’s explanations of how Japanese culture and legislation impacts its LGBT+ and transgender citizens, particularly in regards to legal gender changes and how that plays into their laws on marriage, particularly the ban towards same-sex marriage.
Along with the major narrative of the story, which is drawn in a simple, diary-esque style, these chapters are broken up by four panel comics or splash pages usually touching on common questions Chii receives on the blog she runs. Here, she’ll clarify vocabulary such as “Gender Identity Disorder” — or the more accepted “Gender Dysphoria” — as well as “LGBTs”. Or, to break up the seriousness of much of her subject matter, she’ll offer short anecdotes from her life, usually involving her family or Husband-kun.
As an autobiographical comic, The Bride Was A Boy is a charming, heartwarming story whose mix of narrative, anecdotal and educational content makes for a very valuable book. Its casual tone and cute, simplistic art style makes it appealing, and differentiates it from the more common, serious and depressing narratives about transgender identity. Additionally, by writing from the perspective of a relationship, Chii is able to create a more relatable vision for her readers, perhaps making it easier to emphasize or understand the issues unique to her transgender experience. As a whole, The Bride Was A Boy is an incredibly accessible narrative, both in content and style, and makes for an un-intimidating piece of literature about transgender life for both adults and children. Chii’s ability to speak on such deeply personal matters, using her art for both anonymity and as a tool to make her experiences tangible for a reader who had not gone through them, creates a strong sense of trust in her writing. While comics are often viewed as a lesser form of narrative storytelling, Chii’s manga is a testament to their place in non-fiction and fiction writing.
And as for some perspective from a transgender reader, Chii’s manga is a wonderful peace of literature for a transgender person to see. It provides hope for a group of people who are often told they will never find love and acceptance for being who they are. It’s a story more focused on showing how a transgender woman can live a happy, normal life, rather than pushing the “tragic LGBT person” narrative once again. Nearly every chapter warmed my heart, seeing how honest Chii was about her transition and the people who supported her through it, and to see the love those people had for her. The Bride Was A Boy is an honest and wholly necessary look into a transgender experience not often caught in literature, and I do hope it is spread more broadly both inside and outside of the LGBT+ community.
If you’d like to visit Chii’s blog, you can find it here: http://yomedan-chii.jp/
