Decodependence: A Romantic Tragicomic

Join author and New Yorker cartoonist Lila Ash and illustrator and cartoonist Jeremy Nguyen for a conversation about Ash’s new book Decodependence: A Romantic Tragicomic, a vulnerable and funny graphic memoir about her attempts to decode her life’s relationships through the lens of her recovering codependency.

Through her skillful, charming illustrations and a voice that is sardonic, vulnerable, and completely relatable, Lila Ash shares the all-too-well-known moments that she’s experienced navigating the world of family, love, and sex through the lens of codependency. 

In her late twenties, Ash found herself reliving the relationship traumas of her past. She’d tried everything to help herself move on from painful memories, from therapy to drugs and more, before entering Codependents Anonymous (CoDA), where she discovered the characteristics of codependency-and checked off every box. Ash began drawing her way through her experiences, allowing herself to recognize the codependent behaviors that ruled her life, including:

• How her desperation to get a boyfriend propelled her to be sexually active at summer camp as a young teenager (codependents often confuse sexual attention for approval or acceptance).
• Having a crush on her guitar teacher only to later realize that he had ulterior motives (codependents struggle with setting and maintaining boundaries).
• Accepting the role of personal assistant rather than girlfriend in her recent long-term relationship (codependents have trouble accepting when prospective love interests are unavailable).
• And much more

Through unflinchingly honest (and sometimes sad or harrowing) stories, a wry sense of humor, and illustrations that masterfully set the book’s tone, Decodependence: A Romantic Tragicomic will resonate with readers who are looking to better understand their own potential codependent relationship behaviors, followers of Ash’s popular Instagram account, or fans of graphic novelists and cartoonists like Liana Finck, Aline Crumb, Emily Flake, Katy Fishell, Malaka Gharib, and Olivia de Recat.

About the speakers

Lila Ash is an award-winning illustrator and cartoonist for The New Yorker Magazine. She has been a regular contributor to the magazine in print and online since 2018. She has been published in outlets including Mad Magazine, The Washington Post, Lenny Letter, Wired Magazine and more. Lila was a creative resident for Adobe in 2021. She has received several grants from the City of Los Angeles. Lila also works as a storyboard and concept artist for clients including Beyoncé and Reverie Content. Photo courtesy of Lila Ash.

Jeremy Nguyen has been a regularly published New Yorker cartoonist since 2017, as well as in Wired, The Nib, and Airmail Weekly. His clients include HBO, Netflix, Bottega Veneta, The Strand, and many others. Jeremy is an educator and has lectured at some of the most renowned art colleges in the country. Photo courtesy of Jeremy Nguyen.