Short Reports: Kris Mukai vs. The Letters.
August 31, 2010 at 9:18 am meg Leave a comment
“I often crouched down and watched with bated breath as a scrap of paper or a leaf writhed and changed its shape within the flames. The bonfire reminded me of when I had seen my father’s bones at the crematorium, and as the sight had not alarmed me, I began to think about his bones every time we burned the leaves, rerunning the memory over and over again in my mine until my father’s bones gradually became divorced from other memories and simply remained a close and familiar thought.”
The book I picked was Kazumi Yumoto’s The Letters, a book about a young girl, Chiaki, and her life following her father’s death. The scene I chose to illustrate is a passage describing an autumn bonfire, and I think it a perfectly describes a transition in which Chiaki comes to terms with a part of her father’s death. The comparison of the bonfire’s burning leaves and her father’s bones also relates to the book’s overall theme of memory, since the story is told from adult Chiaki’s perspective looking back at the years of her girlhood.
My name is Kris Mukai and I’m an illustrator and comic artist living in Brooklyn, NY. You can view more of my work on my blog (http://hellokbear.blogspot.com) or my flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/krismukai/)
Entry filed under: Short Reports. Tags: krismukai, theletters.
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