I Thought YOU Hated ME

By MariNaomi. Published by Retrofit. 

Softcover, 64 pages, B&W, 2016.

When MariNaomi first meets Mirabai in grade school, Mirabai seems to be more of a bully than a friend. But over the course of time, their relationship shifts from tense to friendly, to drifting apart, to reconnecting and finding something much deeper.

I Thought YOU Hated ME is a comics memoir about female friendship, a story that doesn't involve stale tropes like acrimonious competition or fighting over boys. It explores the complexity and depth of this particular friendship through snapshot-vignettes of relevant moments over thirty years, painting a portrait of something unique but relatable, common but extraordinary.

"MariNaomi's I Thought YOU Hated ME is engaging, entertaining, well-written, tightly drawn and revealing. What more could you want?" - Noah Van Sciver

"MariNaomi's I Thought YOU Hated ME is a pitch-perfect account of the ways in which girls, teens and women create bonds, fight feelings of jealousy and ultimately find ways to connect and reconnect over time. While her ear for dialogue has always been sharp, it's the clarity and directness of her drawings that make this such a distinctive and moving story about the fragility and strength of friendship." - Rob Clough

MariNaomi's comics and essays have been featured in over sixty print anthologies as well as on The Rumpus, The Weeklings, Truth-out, The Comics Journal, XOJane, Midnight Breakfast, BuzzFeed, Bitch Magazine, Virginia Quarterly and more. Her artwork has been featured in such venues as the De Young Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Cartoon Art Museum, San Francisco's Asian American Museum and the Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles.

In 2011, MariNaomi toured with the literary roadshow Sister Spit.

She is the creator and curator of the Cartoonists of Color and Queer Cartoonists Databases.

64 black and white pages, 9.5x7 inches (241x178 mm) perfect bound softcover graphic novel