Embracing Honesty Through Comics: An Interview With Christine Mari

Mixed Asian Media - July 22, 2022

By Maya Weaver

In a social media world permeated with highly edited photos, flashing advertisements, and heated discourse, the comics of Christine Mari, a half-Japanese artist and writer who shares her work on Instagram, feel like a breath of fresh air. Through black-and-white drawings, Mari gently explores everyday moments and her experiences with mental illness and navigating life as a mixed-race individual. I had the pleasure of talking to Christine over Zoom to discuss her artistic journey and motivations, life in Japan, and a graphic novel in the works.

For readers new to your work, how would you describe your style?

My name is Christine Mari, which is my pen name, and I'm known for drawing comics and sharing them on Instagram. They're mostly autobiographical or “slice of life comics” about all kinds of topics ranging from my struggles with mental health to navigating my mixed-race identity as a Japanese American. I like to draw about my life!

You’ve been publishing your work since you were a teenager, and your comics have reached many since you started sharing them on Instagram. What was the initial motivation behind sharing your art?

I did a book about Tokyo when I was a teenager, which was an amazing opportunity and experience. But after that, I started college, and I didn't really have time to draw and wasn't drawing for a while after that initial book. My motivation to begin sharing my art online and what got me back into drawing was my journey with mental health. When I first started posting on Instagram it was supposed to be a travel account, but I didn't post much. I had started drawing comics at the time to work out my emotions and the experiences that I was dealing with. I just had a “Why not?” moment to post it on Instagram for my friends and family to see. Because of how social media is built, naturally when you share something online it allows other people to find it, and it started growing into something bigger.

I think that social media can be criticized as a place where people put up a certain image. People say that the things that you see on social media don't depict the full story of a person's life or what they're going through. I would also say that another reason for posting on social media, especially with the kind of content that I draw about, was to make social media a place for myself where I could do the opposite of that and where I could be completely honest about myself and my feelings. We're seeing that more people are realizing that social media can be unhealthy when you're only putting out certain experiences or images. I wanted to be — I don't like this word, but — authentic or honest.

It’s refreshing to see that kind of honesty on social media. It's interesting that you originally planned to use Instagram as a travel blog because a major theme of your art is exploring your heritage by traveling and living in Japan. You speak to this tension faced by many mixed-race people of not feeling connected enough to our heritage but especially when we visit the “homeland” or family. Could you speak more about the experience of navigating Japan as a mixed-race Japanese woman?

I grew up in the U.S. with a certain understanding of my identity based on how others perceived me. The majority of people where I lived were white. I was naturally an obvious minority and grew up with that sense of feeling “other,” as people often say, and not completely belonging. When I went to Japan, I came with an expectation or hope based on my understanding of myself as someone who was always perceived as East Asian that I would fit in better. When I began living in Tokyo, I hoped that my identity wouldn't be something that was questioned or something that was defined by other people asking me what I am. It didn't take long for me to quickly realize that that wasn't going to be the case. In Japan, there is a term for mixed-race people called hafu. I began meeting people and they would quickly point out, “Oh, you must be hafu.” I wasn't going to be able to blend in like I hoped. There is a distinction between being mixed race and fully Japanese. I think coming to terms with that was a bit of a shock initially because I didn't have experience living in Tokyo as an adult, and there was a lot of the same kind of attention and scrutiny on being mixed race. It's strange because it never felt like the connotation of being hafu was negative, but I think the experience of people making assumptions about you or having certain expectations based on this one idea of being mixed race is harmful to a lot of mixed people.

Many of your comics are about sweet moments shared with figures like your grandmother or experiences navigating day to day life. You have this beautiful ability to transform these everyday moments into profound explorations of cultural identity and self-image. What is your process of choosing particular moments and translating them to the page?

I draw a lot of different kinds of comics, and I have lighter, simple, everyday moment comics. I also have a lot of heavy, dark feelings and emotions. Something I became more conscious of during my journey with mental health is that when you're struggling with something as big as depression, you're not able to appreciate those small moments in life. You're just overwhelmed. Or at least in my personal experience, I felt overwhelmed by the depth of what I was feeling. It's almost like I could not see the world around me because I was too in my head and just struggling with what I felt. Those comics helped me recognize these moments, especially with my grandmother, for example, and to reflect on them. It's important, not just in an artistic sense but in general. My comics are not these very big complex stories. I used to always think that my life was not very interesting to draw about or write about. I don't have anything going on. But why does everything have to be exciting? Is it only worth telling a story if it has certain things? I don't think that's the case. I think that every kind of story or experience has beauty in it, even if it's small and simple. That became very important to me.

Bringing attention to those moments can be very healing for readers, and at the same time, your comics about struggling with mental illness are powerful because they help readers to feel seen. Seeking help for mental illness is stigmatized in many Asian communities, and there are anxieties and insecurities specific to mixed-race people. Do these cultural experiences influence how you decide to share and write about your mental health journey?

For one, I can definitely say that in Japan there's a very large stigma surrounding mental health. It's a society where people don't share what they're feeling on the inside. Even things that aren't negative per say. So I can only imagine if you're struggling with something, it would feel very difficult to be open about that. There are issues that are prevalent in society that are directly linked to the stigma against mental health. A pretty extreme but well-known example is hikikomori. People voluntarily choose to shut themselves off from the world, and their families carry a lot of shame about somebody in their family dealing with that. In some cases they enable it instead of helping them because they don't want this problem to be known by anybody else. It all circles back to this shame surrounding mental health, not just in Japanese society. For a lot of people, there is a sense of shame in admitting to oneself or to somebody else that you're struggling with mental health. I felt that very deeply when I was living in Tokyo and was struggling with depression. It didn't feel like it was something that I could talk to my family about, especially not my mother’s side of the family who is Japanese. I didn't want to tell my grandmother, for example, especially because there was also a language barrier. I couldn’t express to her in Japanese the way I was feeling, which made it a lot more complex to deal with because I couldn't voice it properly.

My art became a way for me to undo that shame that I felt because I really needed a safe space to voice my thoughts and my feelings. Drawing ever since I was small was always one of the ways I expressed myself, so it felt pretty natural to use art. If it's just you and a piece of paper, it's not so scary to get those things out. It's a little bit scary to share them online afterwards, but I think that the act of actually getting it out was really helpful in that sense and giving me a place to do it and not have to feel ashamed.

The idea of a language barrier is so relevant for members of the Asian diaspora and can be so painful. In that sense, drawings are a perfect medium as a universal language. Now that you've had a lot of experience in publishing and sharing your art on Instagram, do you have advice for other artists and specifically AAPI and mixed-race artists who are interested in sharing their art?

I feel the need to preface this by saying I'm flattered because you say I have a lot of experience, but sometimes I still tell myself I don't know what I'm doing. I'm working on a new graphic novel right now, so it's a really exciting experience. But sometimes I think, “I don't know how I got here.” I would say that sharing your art online or in a public space can be daunting for a lot of people. Other people have asked me in a similar vein, how do you not be afraid to share something very honest? It can be very vulnerable- you're putting yourself into your artwork and giving that out to the world. The most important thing about making art is you want to be honest and true to yourself, and you don't need to worry about what other people might think or wonder if other people can relate to it.

Initially, when I began drawing, I was just sharing a story. But after sharing that online, one of the things that I learned from the experience is that there are people out there not from the same background as me. But if they can identify with something in the story that you tell or like the art that you create and connect with it, you don't have to worry about the kind of art you make. It's almost guaranteed that if you're being honest with yourself and your art, that there's somebody out there who will also be able to connect with that honesty and to identify with that piece that you're sharing.

Those are great words of encouragement. Out of curiosity, if you had to explore a new medium, what would it be?

I've always felt most comfortable drawing comics like the ones on Instagram. I tend to draw on a very simple black-and-white medium. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm working on a new graphic novel, and it's a memoir about being mixed-race Japanese. It is still technically a comic, but it's very different visually and stylistically. I'm free of the ten slide limit. With this graphic novel, it's a very new medium in the sense that I have almost an unlimited amount of pages to tell this story, so it's exciting.

That's so exciting! I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for that. Thank you so much! It’s been a pleasure.

Thank you!

Click on the title or image below to read Christine’s full comics!

You can check out Christine Mari’s work on Instagram @christinemaricomics.

Maya Weaver (she/her) is a student at the University of Delaware studying anthropology, Spanish, and genetics. A Pittsburgh native, she enjoys learning to cook Indian food, taking excessively long walks around the city, and reading or writing poetry.