Maguire, Emma (2019) Self-help: Yumi Sakugawa’s Instagram account. European Journal of Life Writing, 8.

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Abstract

Yumi Sakugawa is an illustrator and comics artist based in Los Angeles and she has been using her Instagram account to experiment with digital self-help. These experiments build on Sakugawa’s previous work in print comics and her millennial guides to improving the self, such as Your Illustrated Guide to Becoming One with the Universe (2014) and the Little Book of Life Hacks (2017). She uses smartphone tools like note-taking and messaging apps to create mindfulness and meditation exercises, delivered on the platform of Instagram. One of them, presented as a series of screenshot images (see Figure 1), reads, “iPhone Meditation: 1. Open the Notes app. 2. Type out your deepest fear. Example: I will die unloved and alone. 3. Now place emoji characters between every letter.” Several images show more and more emojis between the letters, until the screen is filled with emojis rather than the fear. I’m fascinated by the ways in which Sakugawa is adapting the self-help genre to digital tools and interfaces.

Item ID:	58973
Item Type:	Article (Short Note)
ISSN:	2211-243X
Copyright Information:	Copyright (c) 2019 Emma Maguire. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Date Deposited:	02 Oct 2019 00:00
FoR Codes:	20 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 2005 Literary Studies > 200599 Literary Studies not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes:	95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9502 Communication > 950204 The Media @ 100%
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