About the Until I Love Myself Manga Volume 1 The Journey of A Nonbinary Artist

A bravely blunt autobiography about confronting the tangled traumas of gender dysphoria and workplace sexual harassment.

Nonbinary manga artist Poppy Pesuyama is excited when forms offer the option to choose “neither” for gender and thrilled about their new job working as an assistant for mangaka X! But then he sexually harasses them, treating them first like a girl and then like something less than human. It only lasts a few months, but in some ways it never ends.

Born into a body they hate and still reeling from the abuse they faced seven years ago, Pesuyama begins to rail at their past, their friends, and even their mother as they try to come to terms with who they are and what happened to them. Poppy Pesuyama is a transgender (xgender, nonbinary) manga creator who feels safe when the gender/sex category on forms includes the option “neither.” Their debut work is Jitsuroku Nakumade Bokorarete Hajimete Koi ni Ochimashita (Being Hit till I Cried Was the First Time I Fell in Love: A True Story).