Lai often includes panels with no dialogue. Otherwise, the book follows them and their families through grounded moments of slice-of-life frustration. Ray and Bron turn into these happy monsters once when having sex. These are the rare moments we see the characters with mouths turned up into something like a smile. They look like monsters, a cross between a cat and a frog, moving with the pulsing fluidity of water rushing down a hill. When Ray and Bron play with Nessie, Lai draws all three in their imaginations. Ray re-entered her sister’s life, and the playdates with Nessie began. But the bubble of familial distance popped when Amanda’s husband left her. Ray rescued Bron from her parents’ house, and they started to build a life together, a new family, just the two of them. Ray and Bron felt judged by their families for their queerness, their transness, their relationship, and so they cut ties. And Bron has a complicated relationship with her parents and her own sister, 16-year-old Grace.

Bron has a complicated relationship with herself. She has a complicated relationship with Bron. Ray has a complicated relationship with her sister and Nessie’s mom, Amanda. It’s the story of Ray and Bron, two trans people in a relationship who find their greatest peace when playing monster with Ray’s niece Nessie. This dedication at the beginning provides the book a happy ending. But this dedication to her sister soothes the melancholy. It’s a melancholy work about family, childhood, play, depression, and the limits that exist between people. Lee Lai’s debut graphic novel Stone Fruit is dedicated to her sister. And then, as the years passed, as our tennis lessons stopped, as our family gatherings lessened, I wondered if what he’d really been providing was a warning.

Something felt wrong about what my uncle had said. My parents would say, “We’re seeing grandma on Sunday.” And then I would see my grandma that Sunday. And I’d never considered whether or not I wanted to visit with family. I’d never heard this sentiment expressed before. If I didn’t want to spend time with, talk to, or care about someone, I should feel no guilt about that. He told me that family, like any other person we encounter in life, was optional. One day, driving home from the court, he told me I should never feel obligated toward family. I wasn’t very good, and it wasn’t my favorite sport - in part because I wasn’t very good - but it was nice to spend a day with my uncle who was more intellectual and more interested in art than anyone else in my family. Once a week, he started taking me to play tennis.

We had a brief period of closeness when I was about ten. I learned about the concept of chosen family from a heterosexual uncle I don’t talk to anymore.

The Autostraddle Encyclopedia of Lesbian Cinema.

LGBTQ Television Guide: What To Watch Now.

Stone fruit by lee lai