Pages from Kathy MacLeod’s YA graphic memoir, “Continental Drifter.” Courtesy of Macmillan Kathy MacLeod has a vision of herself stuck in her mind. She keeps it with her, as she does with all her memories.
The half-Thai, half-American illustrator is an obsessive diarist, and she chronicles the complexities and anxieties of her life as a thirtysomething biracial woman in Bangkok in daily illustrations, many of which feature her visions of her younger self. MacLeod lovingly refers to this character as “Little Kathy.” Little Kathy has always been a useful narrative device for MacLeod’s comics.
Where she often presents her adult self as brooding and longing, struggling to process things like death, depression, substance abuse and social media addiction, Little Kathy emerges as her hopeful, benevolent counterpart. She is a ghost, disappearing soon after she appears, but in “Continental Drifter,” MacLeod’s debut graphic novel, Little Kathy finally becomes the protagonist. “It’s sort of a gift (to her),” MacLeod says.
“The gift of not criticizing Little Kathy all the time, and giving her some love and happiness and care.” “Continental Drifter,” published in April by First Second Books (an imprint of Macmillan), introduces us to Little Kathy in her present of 1995. Like her older self, Little Kathy lives her life inside her head.
She begins the young adult graphic novel as a precocious 10-year-old student at an international school in Bangkok. She spen.