On Loving Women is a book of short comics focused on sexual identity and first instances of love as told through the lens of animator Diane Obomsawin.
Using simple storytelling, the book explores significant moments in queer women's lives; from holding a girl's hand for the first time to a drunken one-night-stand.
Here is Diane, alongside her self portrait:
The collection of stories actually stems from Diane's personal experiences with that strange "Aha!" moment of finally understanding your own sexuality.
The inspiration for my comic novel came from a book I read by Michel Tremblay (a famous Quebecois author). The young protagonist of this book had a revelation at the age of 16 when he realized that he always unconsciously identified himself with the woman when he saw a kiss in a magazine or in a movie. It was a sudden revelation of his sexual identity. It made me thing of my first semi-conscious attraction to other girls when i was 6 or 7 years old. I changed school 14 times and the first thing I did when I started in each school was choose a girl with whom I wanted to fall in love. I focused almost all my attention to that girl until the day I moved to another school. I put my own stories about my first experience of feeling attracted to women under my name in my book and then I realized I wanted to hear the voices of my friends about their first love or desire too ... all the chapters are named after the person whose story they tell.
Each individual chapter feels like peeking into someone's personal diary, each story more entrancing than the last.
The book will be in stores February 18th, but you can pre-order a copy here.
