Precious Rubbish

by Kevin Wolf

Content Advisory: This book contains a fictional suicide, self-injury, alcohol use. The crisis Lifeline number in the U.S. and Canada is 988, in the U.K. it’s 999; and for elsewhere go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines.

Content Advisory: This book includes domestic violence, rape, incest. National Domestic Violence Hotline in the United States is 800-799-7233; text 988; or use this weblink, https://www.thehotline.org/

Precious Rubbish is full of bad taste, out-of-place cartoony drawings seemingly from old comics, and a real-life horror story. This is a difficult review to write, because I’m not going to leave out (only) some horrors of the author’s life. That’s why there are two content advisories. It’s full of a kind-of-coping with lighthearted, but bloody imagery; otherwise, the nightmare that is the author’s life would be painfully on display and harder to fathom. Allowing distance, the author draws big-nosed, cartoony Li’l Kayla as her stand-in, as if only happy things might happen. However, Li’l Kayla is the anti-Little Dot an adorable character who loved polka dots and who was a friend of Richie Rich; both from Harvey Comics’(“Harvey Comics are happy comics”). But nothing happy happens to Li’l Kayla. Precious Rubbish shows many forms of comics media: a monthly calendar, puzzles, games (e.g., Battered Baby Bingo, pg. 154 – 155), single-panel comic strips, multi-panel strips, short stories, fake advertisements in orange or yellow, quotations, notes to her mother, vegan recipes, and some imagery first appearing elsewhere (documented at the end of Precious Rubbish). I can’t exactly recommend Precious Rubbish because you might find it distasteful, but isn’t that what should be expected after living through the events of Li’l Kayla’s life? There are some apocryphal moments … at least I hope so (e.g., Li’l Kayla being punished for stabbing herself (26)).

I’ll only give two visuals from the book, because they’re very difficult to absorb; and these examples are among the tamer images. Here’s a one-page comic strip with misplaced but somewhat explanatory dialogue of the feeling generated:

Precious Rubbish, Page 7.

And here’s an advertisement.

Precious Rubbish, Page 14.

There’s a lot of gallows humor—though humor may be the wrong word; perhaps gallows pain is more appropriate—in Precious Rubbish. Page 1 provides a Word Search puzzle (e.g., abuse, alcoholism, crucifixion, depression, dissociation, incest, PTSD, rape, trauma, and so on); and the puzzle could be considered a content advisory. There’s a jumble letter puzzle (83) whose solution is upsetting. You’ll likely eventually get nowhere in the House Arrest board game (84 – 85).

We never see Li’l Kayla’s mom’s face. She’s shown turned away in three-quarter profile, as if her mother never wants to look at Li’l Kayla or she’s in the process of always leaving. They live in a trailer park. Li’l Kayla’s parents divorced when she was three-years-old. When Li’l Kayla visits her father, she fears coming home to her mom dead by suicide. And we’re only on page 18. Her mom has mental health issues, “… my mom got really upset and was screaming while rolling around on the floor. She kept asking me why I didn’t love her, which was very confusing because I love her more than anything …” (from Li’l Kayla’s May 2001 calendar (pg. 20)).

Religion provides no comfort. “For Halloween, my dad took us to church to see Hell House, and I’ve never been so scared … [October 2001, 20]” Li’l Kayla was literally beaten with religious overtones “Repent for your sins [111].” Li’l Kayla has “to attend to the emotional needs of both parents [28].” Alcohol is often used to dissociate from reality.

The reader can care for a “Paper Kayla” “we’d wager it’s more than she got [45].” We see a version of the Little Red Riding Hood’s horror tale in a new light with a drunk LRRH, where the words come from Li’l Kayla’s recalled abuse at the hands of her father. Li’l Kayla does some childish abusing by killing pregnant “doodlebugs” (47 – 52).

We learn about some talking therapy (e.g., 98 – 104); at least it starts with therapy and escalates quickly to her brother’s incestuous abuse of Li’l Kayla. “I didn’t come to terms with the abuse until my mid-twenties [99].” “When I drank enough, I could stand still for a very long time [104].” Li’l Kayla’s grandmother was kind to Kayla but mistreated her own daughter, Li’l Kayla’s mother. In adulthood, often the “Li’l” is dropped.

In an advertisement for okra, we learn “Kayla is white and Mexican. She grew up in the Deep South, and at the tender age of twelve (much to the dismay of her parents), she decided to stop eating animals. … The recipes throughout this book are feeble attempts to reconcile her Southern roots, Mexican heritage, and vegan diet [59].” She includes a recipe for Vegan Southern Fried Okra at this point. There are three other recipes in Precious Rubbish.

Precious Rubbish closes with sources of various images—though all are redrawn in the author’s style. Terminology is defined and sourced where they occur. I hope some of the stories are untrue, but I fear that that hope is what’s untrue. I’m hopeful—there’s that word again—that this book provided some catharsis and put a healing distance between the author’s horrible childhood and her life, especially after having received a Harvard University award, scholarship and Bachelor of Arts degree, getting married, and working as the creative director at Fantagraphics. Precious Rubbish is the winner of 2025 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel, 2025 International Latino Award honorable mention (unconfirmed on ILA website).