Laurie Halse Andersen’s speak

In 2018, Laurie Halse Andersen’s groundbreaking novel Speak (1999) was adapted into a graphic novel, a form that effectively combines visual and verbal storytelling techniques. In stories about sexual assault, it is common for authors and illustrators to employ aesthetic distancing in children’s and YA literature. Aesthetic distancing includes the use of both visual and verbal techniques to provide a sense of what Jacqueline F. Eastman calls ‘controlled danger’ where the narrative becomes ‘comfortably exciting rather than overwhelming’ (75). By drawing on art and visual design theory and principles, this article will analyse where Speak: The Graphic Novel (2018) uses aesthetic distancing, but more importantly, where it is rejected as a mode of representation. I suggest that Andersen and the illustrator Emily Carroll take a middle ground approach, by which I refer to the fact that although aesthetic distancing is used, the narrative still presents threatening text and images to demonstrate that healing from sexual violence is an on-going process. Specifically, I analyse the jaggedness of the artistic style, vague pronoun usage and language, power relations, intertextuality, and the symbol of the mouth. I conclude by considering the ethical ramifications of employing aesthetic distancing in stories about sexual assault

Aesthetics · Art · Criminology · Distancing · Psychoanalysis · Sexual violence · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Digital Games and Media · Medicine · Psychology · Themes in Literature Analysis

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