Mariko Tamaki
| Mariko Tamaki | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1975 Toronto, Ontario |
| Occupation | Graphic novel writer, performance artist |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Period | 2000s–present |
| Notable works | Skim, This One Summer |
Mariko Tamaki (born 1975) is a Canadian artist and writer. She is known for her graphic novels Skim, Emiko Superstar, and This One Summer, and for several prose works of fiction and non-fiction. In 2016 she began writing for both Marvel and DC Comics.
Mariko Tamaki was born in Toronto, Ontario. She is of mixed Japanese Canadian and Jewish Canadian descent. Mariko attended Havergal College, an all girls' secondary school. She studied English literature at McGill University, graduating in 1994.
Tamaki has worked as a writer and performance artist in Toronto, including with Keith Cole's Cheap Queers and in the performance group Pretty Porky & Pissed Off with Joanne Huffa, Allyson Mitchell, Abi Slone, Tracy Tidgwell and Zoe Whittall.
Tamaki published the novel Cover Me in 2000. It is a "poignant story about an adolescent coping with depression". Told in a series of flashbacks, it is about a teenager dealing with cutting and feeling like an outsider in school.
Skim, a collaboration with her cousin Jillian Tamaki, published in 2008 by Groundwood Books, is a graphic novel about a teenage girl and her romantic feelings towards her female teacher; the reciprocity of those feelings remains unclear in the text. The other central story is about the suicide of a classmate's ex-boyfriend who may have been gay. The text is fundamentally "about living in the moments of wrenching transition ...[and] the conflicting need to belong and desire to resist". Tamaki says she did not set out to "make a statement about queerness and youth": "Skim's in love, and kisses a woman, but heck, she's just a kid. She could go on to kiss many people in her future - some of them might be dudes, who knows? I think Skim is more a statement about youth, and the variety of strange experiences that can encapsulate." According to one reviewer, "the expressionistic fluidity of the black and white illustrations serves the purpose of pages of prose"; there is little plot and spare dialogue. Tamaki writes that artists such as Hergé, Igort and Vittorio Giardino as well as Asian art had an influence on her style but her storytelling was rooted in American comics like Daniel Clowes, Chester Brown, and Will Eisner.Skim was originally developed as a short play for Nightwood Theatre.
...
Wikipedia