Precious Rubbish

A landmark graphic novel debut and groundbreaking work of trauma recollection told in the style of post-war children’s comics.

2025 Ignatz Award WINNER Outstanding Graphic Novel

2025 International Latino Book Awards Honorable Mention

A New York Public Library's Top Ten Comic and Graphic Novel of 2025

Booklist Top 10 Graphic Biographies & Memoirs of 2025

Cartoonist Studio Prize for Long-Form Comics 2026 NOMINEE

Shortlisted for the Graphic Medicine International Collective Award for Long Form Comics, 2026

“If an exorcism can ever be slow and quiet, then every panel I’ve finished has felt something like an exorcism. The gutters give me space to make sense of things: to connect dots and close gaps. To remember.” Kayla E.’s Precious Rubbish is an experimental graphic memoir drawn in a style that references the aesthetics of mid-century children’s comics and tells the story of a childhood shaped by maternal emotional dysregulation, rural poverty, and incest. The author’s childhood is portrayed as a collection of short-form comics and gag panels punctuated by interactive elements like paper dolls, satirical advertisements, games, and puzzles.

While the work is concerned with violence and a particularly Texan brand of Pentecostal fanaticism, it is presented in a playful visual language with a deadpan humor that elevates the material beyond mere graphic memoir. Precious Rubbish is a landmark work of comics storytelling and graphic medicine.

The debut graphic novel from artist Kayla E., Precious Rubbish asks the reader to do the extratextual work of filling out narrative gaps, which mirrors the challenge of trauma recollection. The reader is invited to co-labor in the meaning-making process, an exercise that facilitates an intimacy (between the author, the subject, and the reader) that is at once horrifying and hilarious.