Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings focuses on Ben Tanaka, a movie theater manager in Berkeley, California who rejects the racialized identity that America proscribes for him. As a result of this, Ben never quite feels that he fits in with white America nor does he feel himself in spaces created by Asian-Americans and those of the Asian diaspora in the U.S. He grows increasingly hostile toward those around him, dismissing his girlfriend Miko Hayashi’s political art based on Asian-American identity and ignoring her both emotionally and sexually. Instead, he stares at white women, fetishizing them and spending his nights with pornography focused on white women. At the same time, he reacts violently when he sees white men dating Asian women, viewing them as sexual colonizers. Ben’s only friend, Alice, also struggles with identity as a queer Asian-American woman in grad school, trying to balance her own identity against that her parents, colleagues, and community expect of her. Though all three characters struggle to find a balance between internal and external pressures of identity, Ben fails to reach any form of comfort and catharsis while Miko and Alice find a way to move forward for themselves amid the uncertainty of the future.

The visual medium works particularly well as it requires seeing. Ben refuses to see race, but Tomine’s art shows how Ben is always observing the people around him and where they fit. He uses a security camera to watch a woman employee at the movie theater that he later tries to date. He watches pornography featuring white women, often of white women with other white women. He feels hostile when he overhears Alice with another woman since their activities are not for his consumption. Ben becomes hostile after Miko leaves when he finds out that she posed for another art student’s photography, so the she was seen by another man in the form of the photographer and subsequent men who viewed the picture. The visual style of comics and graphic novels render races differently based on visual cues, even using Japanese and Korean text for some of the word balloons, drawing the reader into the act of “seeing” race. Tomine’s graphic novel encourages the reader to sit with the discomfort of how we “see” race in the U.S. ( )

I believe this book is essentially about a man who is angry because he has a small penis. ( )

Ben Tanaka is a lapsed film studies grad student who runs a cinema on campus. He is anxious, angry, a bit self-hating, and conflicted about his desires, personal and sexual. Ben’s girlfriend, Miko, puts up with his unsupportive contribution to their relationship but her patience is wearing thin. His best friend, Alice Kim, is a grad student (they met as undergrads). She has her own issues. Her friendship with Ben is frank and, mostly, honest. She tells him when he is being an idiot, and he does his best to return the favour. Despite the ups and downs of their separate amorous relations, it is the friendship of Ben and Alice that persists.

This short graphic novel is both acerbic and sentimental. Ben is a difficult protagonist. Although he longs for love and sympathy, he seems, despite his age, emotionally stunted and immature. If it weren’t for Alice, who clearly sees something worthy of friendship in Ben, we might be inclined to give up on him. And it will take some serious growth for him also to not give up on himself.

Tomine’s graphic style is spare and patient but it is his characters’ self-scrutiny that stands out.

Gently recommended. ( )

Tomine has the great, let's say cinematographic ability to create with small details in his drawings - and maybe even more in the dialogues - a powerful flow of events and evolving characters. Here the mixture of relationships, sex and cultural differences builds-up a very compelling - and American, and contemporary - story. ( )

I thought it was an interesting character study, with good, believable characters. I found it a little depressing on the whole, but quite engaging. ( )