Bea Lema does not shy away from the vulnerability of autobiography. The moving new book by the Galician artist and writer The Body of Christ (The Body of Christ) parallels his own life growing up with a mother who suffered from severe mental illness. Illustrated with marker and thread, the book follows young Vera, who desperately wants to protect her mother Adela from the demons that torment her and even threaten to end her life. Although focused on the pain of a single family, The Body of Christ is also the story of women’s experiences across three generations in Galicia, Spain, offering a more universal meditation on trauma, caretaking, and shame.
Stories like Lema’s are often repressed by society, but The Body of Christ suggests that society is often what contributes to illness in the first place. The narrative shifts between Vera’s youth in the bustling port city of La Coruña in the 1980s and 1990s and her mother’s small village on the Costa da Morte during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Vera’s life is drawn with pastel marker, while flashbacks to her mother’s past are stitched with black thread, the latter echoing the late painter. castlerepresentations of rural Galicia from the beginning of the 20th century. Vera’s mother is dominated by her violent and alcoholic father. Later, married and living in the city, she limited herself to raising children, cleaning and sewing. Adela’s debilitating illness is met with an ineffective medical system, where a series of doctors – all men – continually ease and manage her pain. Faced with a lack of clear solutions, Adela turns to religion for relief.
Lema presents aspects of her native country’s culture through the book’s rich illustrations, including nods to Galician mainstays like Sargadelos porcelain and Bonilla the view chips – but Adela’s religious fervor gives readers insight into the region’s particularly unique spiritual life. Galicia was a place of religious pilgrimage for centuries, and its deep pagan and Celtic roots have imbued its Catholicism with a sense of mysticism, especially in rural areas. Vera visits a traditional healer and assists the procession of Santa Marta de Ribartemewhere those who miraculously avoided death were paraded in open coffins (the ritual was recently stopped). In another scene, the mother tries to exorcise her demons Sanctuary of Our Lady of O Corpiñoin vain.
Although most of The Body of Christ is rendered in marker, Lema embroiders passages that deal with the mother’s heartbreaking past and the most intense points of psychosis. These are often the most tragic moments in the book, but the stitching imbues each page with a sense of ongoing care: after all, the embroidery process requires touch, time, and tenderness.
Even though she is just a child, Vera bears the enormous emotional weight of her mother’s illness. After yet another outburst, this time because Adela has started drinking to combat her condition, Lema depicts little Vera among her toys, cradling her doll-sized mother in her arms. The heartbreaking role reversal is captured only by this image and simple text on the page: “Yo te cuido, Mamá” (“I will take care of you, mom”). Years pass and Vera is still her mother’s primary caretaker while her older brother and father remain painfully disconnected. Lema devotes the last part of her book to the difficulties linked to caregiving, both to the imbalances between the demands of men and women and to the difficulty of taking care of oneself while caring for others.
In September, The Body of Christ was named winner of the Spanish Championship National Comics Award. I attended a panel discussion featuring Lema during a library in La Coruña a month later, and was struck when one of the spectators pointed out that the author was only the second woman to win this award. Founded by the country’s Ministry of Culture in 2007, the prestigious prize was awarded to Ana Penyas in 2018 for her work We are all fine (We are all fine). At that time, according to an investigation Among the major comics prizes in Spain, more than 90% of the awards since the 1980s have historically been awarded to men.
Both authors were recognized for their work highlighting often overlooked women’s stories: Penyas on the generation of women who survived the Spanish Civil War and the sexism that followed, and Lema on the complexities of mental illness, family life and healing. The Body of Christ tells a story we don’t often hear, and does so in the unconventional and very personal language of ink and thread. Like Vera in the story, Lema learned to sew from her mother, who in turn learned it from her own mother. Although often referred to as “women’s work,” sewing is both an art and an essential tool for mending, repairing and embellishing. In this way, it is a meditative form of caring that prolongs the life of something dear, while providing its creator with a space of mental peace.
The Body of Christ (2024) by Bea Lema is published by Astiberri Ediciones and is available online and from independent booksellers. A French version of the book was published by Éditions Sarbacane under the title Bad things to say.
