REVIEW: Yudori, “Raging Clouds”
Cover, Raging Clouds by Yudori. Image Courtesy Fantagraphics.
REVIEW
Raging Clouds
By Yudori
Hardback ($34.99)
Fantagraphics
By Ryan Rothman
Raging Clouds is not a lesbian love story. It’s not meant to be.
Masterfully challenging Western notions of queer liberation, the debut graphic novel of South Korean comic artist Yudori seems anything but introductory. At the center of the period piece lies a Dutch housewife, Amélie, shackled by a loveless marriage and 16th-century patriarchal norms. Fascinated by physics and the mechanics of flight, she forms an unlikely partnership with her husband’s enslaved mistress, Sahara, as they attempt to design a hot air balloon capable of carrying them both to freedom.
Raging Clouds begins with a classic formula: smart female protagonist in a time when women aren’t supposed to be smart. Yudori delivers the expected amount of feminist one-liners for such a story, satisfying despite the fact that rich white women lamenting married life stopped being revolutionary about ten years ago. “You leave me alone with my own vice, as I leave you to do whatever you like with your slave,” Amélie responds to her husband’s upteenth attempt to quell her scientific experimentation (or as he calls it, sorcery). “See you in hell, my husband.” Equally expected yet satisfying is the result of his later appropriation of her and Sahara’s balloon.
Image Courtesy Fantagraphics.
Yudori moves beyond typical feminist narratives, however, in Sahara and the ambiguous nature of her and Amélie’s relationship. With the two characters embracing tenderly on the cover, one expects a highly unrealistic but feel-good narrative of love transcending the racism, classism, and homophobia of the time. But Raging Clouds is not that, leaving readers to interpret Amélie’s longing glances and masturbatory fantasies as they wish. Sahara’s perspective and desire are pointedly absent, logical for a character from whom sex is a commodity forcefully taken.
In an era of backlash against queerbaiting — superficial portrayals that capitalize on the desire for queer representation — Yudori addressed this potentially frustrating ambiguity herself. “If you were expecting a story that ends with queer girls holding hands and riding into the sunset together … you might be disappointed,” she said on Instagram. Explaining the cultural normalcy of platonic and same-sex intimacy in Korea, she rejects the Western notion that queer empowerment relies on overt labels, on being loud and proud.
She reflects on her teen years in Korea, the friendships and gestures forever floating in what Yudori calls the “beautiful chaos” between straight and queerness. The negative connotation of queerbaiting prompts us to view that sexual ambiguity as a lack of pride, a life stuck hiding one’s truth. “But,” Yudori asks, “can you call entire lives sad just because their choices don’t fit nicely with your categorization of the world?” Can we impose unsolicited pity on Amélie and Sahara for not fulfilling the hand-holding, sunset-tinted narrative we’d prefer to read?
Juxtaposing Amélie’s (beautifully illustrated) Orientalist perceptions with Sahara’s blunt, powerful dialogue, Yudori subverts both her protagonist’s and viewers’ expectations of the character. “I’m here. I breathe the same air you breathe. Yet you don’t know my name,” Sahara says of the power imbalance only Amélie can’t seem to see. “We make it together. Yet you don’t know I have name.”
Image Courtesy Fantagraphics.
Raging Clouds ends just as it starts, only seven years later: “She looked at the land. It was taken by men. She looked at the sea. It was also taken by men.” Amélie remains in the Netherlands, Sahara still enslaved. It’s disappointing, maybe. But as Yudori explains, “Raging Clouds is, above all, a story of failed attempts — the beauty of not succeeding, not owning, not defining.”
Like what you’re reading? Consider donating a few dollars to our writer’s fund and help us keep publishing every Monday.
