Commentary: Taproot: A Story About a Gardener and a Ghost by Keezy Young
I read Keezy Young’s graphic novel, Taproot: A Story About a Gardener and a Ghost, in one sitting on a delightful summer evening with a joint in my hand. It felt like the perfect story world to slip into for a quick romp, especially after a tense week.
Taproot is delightfully playful and even a bit corny. It also exhibits a wisdom specific to youth— an openness and a desire to understand. On the surface, it’s a ghost story. It’s a romance rooted in adolescence. But, at its heart, Taproot is about being real with those you love— being vulnerable.
Hamal works at Takashi Flowers. He is a nurturer— not just with plants but with ghosts too. All around Hamal is a world of ghosts, unseen by everyone else. But Hamal is special; he lives with one foot in the world of the living— interacting with customers and his boss— and one foot in the world of the dead— joking, laughing, playing, flirting with and ultimately validating the experiences of the ghosts around him. Both worlds exist at once all in the same space. We meet the ghosts: April, the clumsy one; Joey, a little kid; and Blue, a sarcastic, sad-boy ghost with a huge crush on Hamal, though he dares not admit it. Strange things start happening in Blue’s afterlife. He keeps disappearing into what Joey calls “the scary place”— a dark forest, where a Reaper dwells. The Reaper tells Blue that illegal necromancy is happening in the town and she needs Blue’s help to find out who the necromancer is. As Blue cycles between the world of the living and the forest, he has to choose between being with Hamal and protecting him from the Reaper.
From the beginning, we witness Blue’s insecurity about loving Hamal. Blue frequently makes jokes about cute girls that come into the flower shop, suggesting Hamal is attracted to them. As one such customer walks out of the shop with her plant, Blue makes his snide remarks but all Hamal sees is the plant.
“I saw you eyeing that one earlier,” Blue smirks.
“It would look so nice on the windowsill,” Hamal beams.
Throughout the story, we see Blue strike the same chord over and over, trying to get Hamal a girlfriend or to admit he likes someone. This, of course, ties in with sexuality and queerness. Hamal’s queerness places him at an intersection that many find awkward— being attracted to men and womxn. At one point, Blue mentions that Hamal “likes boobs” and Hamal agrees, but that’s not the point. The point is that Hamal is attempting to tell Blue how he feels about him— no one else matters. It is Blue’s insecurity that places a wall between them. This tension doesn’t just stem from Blue wanting Hamal to like him back (rather than some other girl); Blue’s tension has to do with identity— being dead. How can Blue be with a living person? Better yet, Blue wonders, how could Hamal even want to be with him? The tension grows between them as the main conflict of the story mounts. It’s up to Blue to communicate, to be vulnerable, and to sacrifice what he knows to bridge their two worlds so that love can meet in the middle.
I won’t spoil anything further.
What I appreciated about this story was the Brown, queer love at its center and how Keezy explored some of the trying dynamics behind gender, identity, and sexuality. Jealousy, insecurity, worthlessness. They are barriers between ourselves and others. How do we cross those barriers?
If Taproot is about being vulnerable, then that posits the question: What happens when you’re vulnerable? Taproot answers: you give others a means of honoring you.
When someone we love dies, we have ways of honoring them and their spirit. Ideally, if that person was honest and vulnerable with you in life, then you can imagine meaningful ways to honor them in death as an individual. But without such knowledge, we can’t acknowledge the person and we can’t honor them wholly. Throughout Taproot, we encounter the dead and sometimes the curses that linger after traumatic experiences. We witness how crucial vulnerability is to understanding those curses. As we strive to understand and as we share vulnerability, we can better honor one another.
In many ways, queerness is about being honored. Pronouns, names, how we present ourselves in clothing, how we invite others to see us— these things are all means of honoring. I feel honored when someone refers to me as “they”. Others feel honored when I remember to call them by their name— the name they have chosen.
Queerness, to me, is about unraveling the assumptions of our world for the purpose of excavating the individual, the non-binary, the unseen, the shunned, the forgotten, the rekindled, the soft-spoken, the hidden, the lost forever, and the found. Honoring one another for the unique individuals that we are is in itself an act of justice. And, as far as I’m concerned, it’s graphic novels like Taproot that are honoring readers like me and like so many others. Writers and artists like Keezy Young are creating spaces for us and with us.
Honoring is a reciprocal act— like tending a garden.