Intimacy In Tina's Mouth

Customary among coming of age stories, Tina’s Mouth follows the life of young adult trying to discover her own identity within the construct of the world. Along her journey of self discovery, there are key themes that help to shape Tina’s understanding of herself and the world around her, which become evident due to her perceptions, thoughts, and reactions to different events. Perhaps two of the most influential of these themes are intimacy within relationships, as well as the concept of individuality. Throughout the course of the graphic novel, Tina’s perception of intimacy is clear to the reader: Intimacy is one of the most precious things in this world to have between individuals. This becomes clear almost immediately, as on page 27, Tina

One pages 18 and 19, the reader gets a sense of Tina’s witty nature as she states “I’m an alien (but my parents are Indian)” in response to the question, “What are you, really” (Kashyap 17). Her answer also signifies that part of Tina’s sense of individuality stems from her feeling of being an outsider. This continues on as Tina explains how she herself does not belong to any of the cliques that make up her divided school, rather, her “clique” is her friendship with Alex. Her sense of individual at this time is defined by the friendship, as they are “different and the same,” ergo Tina defines her individuality with another individual (Kashyap 35). However, once Alex terminates their friendship, Tina struggles with keeping her identity now that a large component of it is no longer intact. This is not the end of her nature, however, as Tina continually identifies herself with who she is close to throughout the story (after Alex, Su Ming, eventually Hollis, and of course, Neil), which in turn leads to a broken identity as she sits alone on her bench. However, after the conflict with Neil has concluded and she has given herself time to self reflect, as well as begin to make amends with Alex, we see Tina make development on her identity, as for the first time, she allows herself to exist with her friends without containing herself to