Precious Rubbish
Cartoonist: Kayla E.
Publisher: Fantagraphics
Publication Date: April 2025
Kayla E.’s debut full-length graphic novel, Precious Rubbish, is one of the most inventive books I’ve ever read. It reels its audience in quickly with an aesthetic that feels like post-war era Pop Art, plus a bit of print advertising and sudden dashes of Highlights magazine. In this way, it almost lulls you into a false sense of security, using its pristine linework and sharp sense of visual design to make you feel as if you’re entering into something predictable or familiar. Soon after cracking the book, however, it becomes apparent that this is far from a comfortable read.
The inventiveness that flows throughout Precious Rubbish is empowered by a deep commitment to unpacking the author’s childhood traumas, and doing so in a way that readers have almost certainly never seen before. There is essentially a content warning near the start conveyed by a word search game. There are paper doll cutouts that drop hints of specific instances of emotional and physical abuse. There is a recurrent side profile for the lead character — the author analog, Young Kayla — that conveys how the author feels when she thinks of herself as a child. Like the book itself, the feeling of stolen innocence is palpable.
What I also found impressive about the storytelling was how precise it felt without ever being linear. It’s such a clean comic that every panel feels deliberate and labored upon, yet the way the stories in the book are told feel almost as if they are coming out of a stream of consciousness. In this way, Precious Rubbish washes over you, and I think that’s key to addressing such dark material, including alcoholism, sexual assault, and neglect. There’s a real possibility that the darkness inherent to the memories conveyed here could overwhelm, but the non-linear storytelling makes it feel so essential and almost earnest, that it transcends that risk. This is an inherently sympathetic book, but the way the story is told makes it feel even more so.
All that said, Precious Rubbish is not an easy read, not in the slightest. It’s even-handed and calm, which is quite impressive, but if you’re reading it all in one sitting, you’re likely to get up from your chair a total emotional wreck. This is intense and tragic subject matter. You may think you are prepared to hear about someone’s difficult childhood, but I’m telling you, with Precious Rubbish, you are not. The book does a great job of tapering the darkness, but make no mistake — this is a reading experience that will definitely challenge you, perhaps even making you reconsider your views on humanity’s inherent goodness.
Still, if I haven’t yet made it clear, Precious Rubbish is a landmark comics achievement and an early book of the year contender. It’s also a major artistic statement from a new comics voice, one I hope to see much more work from in the years to come. It’s also a book that I think joins a lineage of classic memoirs about unbelievably difficult childhoods. What clearly sets it apart is the way it uses comics storytelling in unique ways that I’ve never seen before and am not sure I’ll ever see again.
There’s not much triumph to be had within the memories conveyed in these pages. There’s no movie-of-the-week moment where the author is driving and listening to her favorite song and realizing she’s going to be fine and perhaps even stronger, that it was all for the best or something. But we don’t need that. Precious Rubbish is such a striking artistic achievement that it speaks for itself as the author’s moment of overcoming all that she’s been through.
Precious Rubbish is available now via Fantagraphics or a local bookseller near you
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