New York city and its (dis)contents
#Scurf219: On Sohini Kay's debut graphic memoir 'This Beautiful, Ridiculous City'
Sohini Kay’s compelling debut graphic memoir This Beautiful, Ridiculous City offers an inspiring, entirely agreeable perspective on New York City as a crucible for female self-discovery. Kay, an Indian PhD student writes about navigating the city in the last decade, and using New York as a backdrop for personal transformation.
The city of New York has been written about by numerous writers, artists, painters. With her debut This Beautiful, Ridiculous City Kay ventures to write alongside her illustrations about the storied city in the league of works like Lauren Elkin's Flaneuse, Bill Hayes' Insomniac City and Olivia Laing's Lonely City. Written as a memoir, This Beautiful, Ridiculous City creates a vision for a liveable city for a woman from India who looks to the US to build a new home, while in exile.
Kay's memoir spills out a raw, visceral narrative that, coupled with her dexterous, detailed illustrations, makes for a compulsive modern day reading experience. In a way, the memoir also harks back to the famed graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Sartrapi. Much like her, Kay strives to sketch out her struggles in a prior relationship, finding herself all over again in the diaspora and simultaneously writing about her early years in the US. She writes rather poetically about the cafes, boulevards and streets of her beloved New York City where many of her literary idols had also found themselves at some point or the other. There’s a nervous, young energy pulsing through Kay’s drawings and her writing.
Throughout the memoir Kay’s writing holds that child-like wonder many of us feel in the face of something as big as a dream come true, stretch itself out in the form of the Brooklyn Bridge. In a way it also helped me connect with the stories of various women like Kay who have ventured out of their homes, far away, to find, remake and redefine themselves in the situations, understandings and spaces of a new, adopted homeland. A kind of visual narrative of the beginnigs of some of Jhumpa Lahiri’s earlier works. There’s strength in this venture, even bravery, as much in living through it as in being able to flesh it out in the form of a graphic memoir. And this strength is the beating heart of Kay’s debut.
She reflects on her Bengali heritage, waxing poetic about Bengali cuisine, culture and her family’s roots. I don’t want to give away too much (it’s a crushingly short read), but the pages where Kay details her relationship with her grandfather and how he was a friend to her growing up, felt so dear, precious. In the parts where she writes and draws about her family, we get to know her exact person as a writer, thinker. The details draw out a clearer visage of the person behind the drawings and words. Kay shines in these sections, a sense of self-assuredness screaming through the illustrations, jumping out at the reader, making you hold the book close, dear.
I read the book as if possessed, in a reverie, stretching myself past bedtime that night as the book had a hold over me. This Beautiful, Ridiculous City* feels at once intensely personal to her and also immensely relatable for anyone in the world. Kay’s illustrations and prose also captures the rhapsodic essence of life in New York city detailed down to those specifics like the experience of first snow, the first walk in the Central Park, the joy that spring brings.
Portions where she reflects on how NYC first imprinted itself into her memory — through American movies, Hindi movies, sitcoms, widely read novels — are a delight. I come from a similar background, and felt those places click right in. But it also goes to show how even though I grew up on the fodder of this exact same pop-culture diet, I didn’t really ever feel the pull towards the Big Apple. Perhaps that’s also why I felt so piqued by Kay’s narrative, pulled in to understand the magnetic charm of the city (all over again).
In the way Kay writes about some of her sufferings, losses and grief, the books also feels like a cathartic release for her to finally be able to fully express her relationships with some specific personal attachments. The visual design, is just exceptional, just like the vast glossy city she writes about! Almost as if there’s no other way to draw out a city as storied and magnificently important as NYC on the page.
I have far too many favourite pages and even more screenshots and photos of this book and I will be recommending it as a visual treat to anyone and everyone who wants to read a (new) book about NYC in 2025 and beyond! I also took a special liking to the title of the book — This Beautiful, Ridiculous City — because of its specific allure to the city life for a woman. The memoir all the more makes for a compelling 2025 read because it easily helps the reader decompress on the page after a hectic, all-screen day, while also giving the dual pleasures of reading text and browsing through the slick, beautiful illustrations. The book also makes for a great conversation starter and a gorgeous coffee table set (and present) given the city it talks about. Everyone, anyone really, would love to read and talk more about the city and more so from the lens of a woman!
In the tradition of Alison Bechdel, Fran Lebowitz’s Pretend Its a City (I wrote about it for LARB in 2021 here) and Olivia Laing, This Beautiful, Ridiculous City portrays New York as more than just a setting. It shows how the city, despite its inherent, ceaseless challenges, endless chaos, becomes a space where women can still actively claim their place, seeking meaning and identity amidst these dense, urban, seemingly hostile landscape. Kay's work details the experience of building a new home in exile, while carving a name and space for herself, highlighting New York City's enduring allure, even in 2025, as a place where women can find themselves, even amidst its “discontents”.