Drawing the Adult Child: U.S. Graphic Memoir and the Anthropologies of Kinship and Personhood

Abstract

Summary This article argues the usefulness of the culturally pervasive and impactful genre of graphic memoir for addressing gaps in the anthropologies of kinship and personhood. It identifies a key figure in some sections of U.S. society: the “adult child.” Adult childness emerges from the graphic memoirs discussed here as when a person finds themselves particularly conscious of having (or having had) parents. To the perennially debated question of what connects kin in a U.S. context the article proposes: the past. Key facets of U.S. personhood and kinship are founded on the tenet that what happens in the lives of one’s parents and one’s childhood go a long way to explaining who an adult is.