Let's Not Talk Anymore
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A five-generation family history told through what is seen and heard, if not said
Let's Not Talk Anymore weaves together five generations of women from Weng Pixin's family, each at age fifteen. Her lineage is full of breakages--her great grandmother Kuan is sent away from her family in South China, her grandmother Mèi is adopted by a neighbor to help with housework, and her mother, Bing, is heartbroken by her father's estrangement. Pixin's own story centers on her feelings of isolation and her rebellion from her mother. She extends the line by envisioning a fictional future daughter, Rita, who questions her family's legacy. While spanning one hundred years, Pixin moves back and forth in time seamlessly, as each woman experiences loneliness and kinship, hope and longing.
As each story develops, generational traumas are revealed and fraught relationships passed on from mother to daughter. Creative impulses are stifled or nurtured. They struggle with poverty and neglect. And at some point each woman begins to separate herself from her situation and understand the woman she will become.
Pixin's bold, vibrant paintings fill the aching silences between generations with beauty and emotion. Her paintings conjure complete worlds that these women inhabit. Let's Not Talk Anymore is a family history filled with tender moments as these women find connection with plants, animals, and their own creative pursuits, while struggling to connect with one another.
About this Author
Weng Pixin (or Pix for short) was born and raised in sunny Singapore. She loves to draw, sew, make comics, tell stories, paint, create and construct using found objects. Pixin grew up listening to stories from her father, who was curious about the way the world works. In turn, when it comes to her art, Pixin loves to create semi-autobiographical comics that reflect her curious nature too.
Reviews
"In this vibrant graphic novel, Weng Pixin journeys through five generations of her family's women, all when they were aged 15 years, as she reflects on family, trauma, silence and connection."--Ms. Magazine
"What makes Let's Not Talk Anymore so fascinating is that the comic pages are paintings... This shift in style and representation marks a quiet but important intervention for the art of comics."--The Brooklyn Rail
"This meditation on 'the women who made us' will resonate with any reader who's pored over old family photographs in search of themselves."--Publishers Weekly
"What makes her book a standout.. is her inventive, dazzling art."--Shelf Awareness, Starred Review
"Weng Pixin's comics are tender... In Let's Not Talk Anymore, [her] paintings haunt with the aching silences that hang between generations."--Los Angeles Review of Books Blog
"The slow care [Weng Pixin] puts into each page, enlivening it with floods and washes of bright color, suggests a sunrise rather than the same old merry-go-round. Rather than thinking the pain of the past should keep on being passed from back to back, she gently suggests that talking about it might eventually cause it to dissipate."
--The Comics Journal
"Weng is exploring rich and timeless thematic ground, and she fully does it justice."--Montreal Review of Books
"Blending history with autobiography with speculative fiction, Pixin's narrative spans 100 years while remaining timeless in its depiction of how family bonds are formed and broken."--Winnipeg Free Press
"Her brushstrokes are beautiful, her color palette is unafraid, and her understanding of the relationships between generations of women is subtle and emotionally intelligent."--Hillary Brown, The Comics Journal
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