ABOUT
@bu_graphicdesign
@bostonpainting
@pmp.bu
@bostonsculpture
@buvisualnarrative
she/her
Lafleche Giasson
HEARTWASHED
Lafleche Giasson is an artist and graphic novelist living in Boston. At age 17, she escaped a cult and is now doing the real work of healing from it. Her narrative work explores intergenerational trauma and complex post-traumatic stress disorder through compassionate visual storytelling. Lafleche’s oil paintings in portraiture and landscape have been on display in art galleries and sold to private clients by commission.
Heartwashed is a graphic memoir about a girl born in the fourth generation of a cult, a close-knit community of families bound together by the tenets of faith, loyalty, and obedience. To believe is to obey. To obey is to belong. To belong is to be loved.
When Lafleche’s father is suddenly and mysteriously excommunicated, Lafleche, her siblings, and her mother are moved across the continent to restart life without him in the name of God. To survive in the cult, young Lafleche must detach herself from her love for her father. In a generations-old culture of psychological and emotional abuse, Lafleche is challenged to find a safe source of love and struggles to develop her individual identity without betraying her family. When her father returns seven years later to uncover the truth of his disappearance, Lafleche must choose between belonging and freedom.
A tender coming-of-age story, Heartwashed illuminates the heartache of loving and forgiving those who hurt us. This book does not take revenge; it offers compassion, and propounds that real love begins in honesty.
Digital drawing, 8½ × 11 in.
Digital drawing, 8 ½ × 11 in.
Digital drawing, 8 ½ × 11 in.