Rosena Fung has been drawing and making comics since as early as she can remember – Grade 1, to be precise. She read the Archie Comics she inherited from her mom voraciously and knew immediately that “this is all I want to read and do.” In fact, it was her dream to be an artist for Archie Comics.

But Fung’s path wasn’t linear. Social and family expectations coupled with personal pressures had Fung second-guess the viability of being an artist. It wasn’t until a few years after graduating from art school and creating illustrations that things changed. “I finally decided I wanted to focus on comics again because, truly, that is the only thing I keep returning to throughout my life,” she says.

This month, Fung releases her sophomore graphic novel Age 16 (Annick Press, May 28). Like her award-winning debut Living with Viola (Annick Press, 2021), the pages of Age 16 are saturated with lush colours and maximalist detail, which Fung confesses infiltrates everything she does. 

Inspired by her mom, who was raised in Hong Kong by a single mother, Age 16 is both a work of fiction and a generational memoir that explores three generations of mothers and 16-year-old daughters: in Guangdong in 1954, Hong Kong in 1972, and Toronto in 2000. “I had these bits of stories about [my mom], and I don’t know if it was a light-bulb moment or a slow, gradual realization, but I really wanted to tell this story,” Fung says. “Writing it drew me closer to both of them; I knew there was something interesting about women’s stories, women and girls, which are often not told.”

Age 16 grapples with the intergenerational trauma caused by both passing down and rebelling against cultural standards of beauty, gender, race, size, and worth. Fung’s experience has led her on a continuous journey of unlearning.

Illustration: Rosena Fung.

The damaging belief that a woman is incomplete without a man was so prevalent in Fung’s life that she felt there was something fundamentally wrong with her for not having one. “My mom and my grandmother prioritized having a male partner: a lot of that did come from the need to survive, so I can see why they would teach their daughters this,” she says. “But I wanted to highlight the patriarchy involved. You don’t need a boyfriend. You’re a full, complete person with complexity and nuance just by existing.”

Fung has also struggled with body image, specifically, how she perceives herself and how others perceive her. “Realizing it has its roots in misogyny and racism, I’m able to dismantle it a bit more,” she says, although, “on a personal level, that’s a lot harder.” Fung has found listening to podcasts, reading books, and talking with others tremendously helpful. But, she admits, sometimes she needs to do something else. This is when she turns to her passion and creates comic journals to tease out the emotions.

Fung knows her personal story of intergenerational conflict, sadly, isn’t uncommon. “Writing this book has made me empathetic to [my mom’s] choices, which were sometimes choices she made to survive, and the context in which she and my grandmother, and other women, grew up was often constrictive and very narrow,” Fung says. “I think about how much I love her and that everything she does is usually informed by her love for me. That being said, it doesn’t mean they can’t be held accountable for harm they may cause.”  

In the same way that Living with Viola is the book Fung wishes she had at 11 years old, Age 16 is the book she needed as a 16-year-old. Looking back, she knows her path has been wayward at times. “Ultimately, my younger self was right all along,” Fung says about her career. “That six-year-old kid, this was her dream, and it’s what I’m doing now.”

Photo Credit: Mark Medeiros