Cannon: A Queer Chef Pushed to the Limit

Cannon is actually Lucy, and she is the opposite of a cannon: reserved, stoic, and passive. In the restaurant kitchen, where she works as a chef, she’s known for never losing her composure. Yet her outer calm masks how hard she fights with her mental health.

She seeks comfort in jogging to mindfulness podcasts. At the same time, she must look after her ailing, tyrannical grandfather. Her relationship with her emotionally distant mother also weighs on her. Her own needs repeatedly take a back seat.

A Friendship Loses Its Hold

Setting boundaries proves hard for Cannon. This is evident in her budding romance with Charlotte and in her tense friendship with the self-important Trish. In high school, the two queer Chinese outsiders were each other’s lifeline. In the meantime, that mutual support has dwindled.

The weekly meetups largely serve as an outlet for Trish to unload gossip and tales of her sexual escapades. The idea that someone might actually listen to Cannon slips from view. Moreover, Trish secretly uses her friend’s family drama as material for her own writing. What once offered protection now becomes a burden.

Lee Lai portrays the sensibilities of two queer twenty-somethings and how hard it can be to question familiar bonds. Her razor-sharp humor sits alongside a precise gaze at loneliness and overwhelm. Thus, “Cannon” (Amazon Affiliate Link) unfolds as a delicate, tension-filled story about closeness and the absence of boundaries, which also hurts.

Lee Lai was born in 1993 in Naarm (Melbourne). The Australian cartoonist with Asian roots lives in Tio’tia (Montréal). Her debut graphic novel “Stone Fruit” (title translated from the German “Steinfrucht”), published by avant, won two Ignatz Awards and a Lambda Literary Award and was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. For the book, the National Book Foundation also honored Lai with the “5 Under 35” award. (dd/pm)