This essay argues that Maggie Thrash’s Honor Girl navigates a multiliminal
space allowing it to participate in and expand upon traditions that already
exist within children’s literature, graphic memoirs, the comics medium, and the
history of girl camps as homosocial spaces. By discussing graphic memoirists for
adults (such as Alison Bechdel and Phoebe Gloeckner) and children (such as Raina
Telgemeier and Cece Bell), the paper establishes that Thrash adopts practices of
representing sexual desire from both traditions in order to establish new territory for
adolescents. Turning then to camp environments, the essay examines how camp
becomes a space for campers to experiment and come to be true versions of
themselves, with the all-girls camping environment being particularly suited for
young lesbians. Finally, this paper looks at how Thrash utilizes the medium of
comics to draw Erin and Maggie together (both literally and figuratively), illuminating
how this relationship, while certainly not subtextual, is also not presented as
explicitly as heterosexual romance for a younger audience. By operating both within
and outside traditions, Honor Girl allows for the possibility for queer content within

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• You Are My [Camp]fire’’: Tradition and Structure in Maggie Thrash’s Graphic Memoir Honor Girl