Perdida, La

(Fantagraphics, 2004-2006)
™ and © Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

Jessica Abel continues the travelogue of Carla, a 20-something Mexican-American in search of her roots south of the border. Living on her own, learning Spanish, shacking up with an aimless teen-ager named Oscar, Carla finds that forging a new identity by going native is neither as easy nor as simple as she’d like it to be.

First, she encounters the humdrum chores of everyday life, such as working to pay the rent, in contrast to Oscar’s slacker lifestyle. Meanwhile, Liliana, her new roommate, is hopelessly infatuated with Carla’s friend Memo, a notoriously unabashed womanizer. Finally, Memo bursts Carla’s bubble by criticizing her attempt to pass as a local and ignore her bourgeois American upbringing.

Good timing with the movie on the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (Carla’s erstwhile heroine), this sequel captures the episodic, roller-coaster moments of daily life. Starting with mundane chores and idle conversation to the occasional moments of interpersonal conflict and high anxiety — shifting from bohemian banter to cultural critique — as easily as from English to Spanish, Abel creates a multidimensional commentary that sounds all too painfully real.

— Oliver Chin

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