I Thought You Loved Me — Marinaomi

This graphic Gen X memoir, which is told in prose, collage, and sequential art, explores queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and the flawed nature of memory as Mari works to uncover a long-lost best friend that she can no longer remember but can’t let go. Jodie was Mari’s best friend through their teens and twenties. As young Mari began to explore her identity as a bisexual, biracial outsider in a rich, white town, Jodie was her constant confidant, even kissing Mari out of the closet. The two were inseparable as they sought to gain a foothold in life and love as young feminists, Jodie an entrepreneurial sex worker, and Mari working in the boys’ club of video game development in the late ‘90s. Then, suddenly and mysteriously, Jodie ends their friendship. Years later, Mari is stunned when she discovers why. Now much older, Mari is ready to forgive, but her memories of Jodie seem to have vanished. Through journal excerpts, letters, conversations with friends, and cross-country travel, she pieces together lost memories from a lost friendship, in an attempt at catharsis. The reader follows in real-time as the author unravels her own mystery, examining the expectations of friendship, the unreliability of memory, and the struggle to let go.