Lee Lai is an Australian-born cartoonist who has been living in Tio’tia:ke (aka Montreal) for the past decade. At the time of our interview with the talented illustrator and storyteller, Lai had just hit the road on an eight-stop book tour in support of their newly published sophomore graphic novel, Cannon (Drawn & Quarterly), which revolves around the titular character.

From the intricacies of adult friendship and romantic relationships, to cultural and gender expectations in the work and family spheres; from queerness to mental health; from anger to workplace harassment, sexism and racism – and their various intersections – Lai’s new graphic novel covers a lot of different themes. However, where Scout and Cannon most obviously converge is the subject of food. Protagonist Cannon works as a cook in an imaginary Montreal restaurant kitchen, which sets the background for much of the book’s plot, and (unsurprisingly) provides no shortage of tension…

Read on for our new food-focussed interview with Lai below:

First of all, book tour aside, what’s generally keeping you busy these days?

I’m keeping busy making comics, they really take an embarrassing amount of time to make. The rest of the time is made up with a bit of community organizing, tinkering with bicycles, spending time with friends, and making soups now that the weather is getting cold.

Right off the bat, I can’t ignore the restaurant/food angle in Cannon. Tell me, what’s your restaurant background? And how did you incorporate that first-hand experience into your depiction of Cannon’s Montreal kitchen? (For instance, the frenetic, overlapping/cut-off speech bubbles…)

One of the goals I set myself with this book was to ground the story more solidly in a place, and try to make that place as much of a character as the people. I chose the restaurant because I worked in the service industry through my late teens into my early 20s — they’re the only jobs I’ve really had outside of freelancing as a cartoonist. I’d say most of the details of the restaurant in the book are a haphazard collage of the various workplaces I’ve been in, for better or worse: the camaraderie between staff, the pace and the chaos, the high tempers when under pressure, and the dubious overfamiliarity of bosses to their employees…

The titular character, Cannon, and her longtime/best friend, Trish, have a ritual of meeting up for food and horror movies – which begs the question: what’s your favourite film snack? And what are we watching while we’re noshing on it?

What a delightful question. I’m a fidgeter so having food that’s tactile is nice — I love a pomegranate (all that fiddling and shelling for the good stuff). My roommates and I all have a shared love of salt, so any bag of chips will get destroyed if we sit down to watch something together. One nice film and food pairing for me is eating anything with a fried egg on it while watching Howl’s Moving Castle, because there’s a particularly decadent eggs & bacon scene that makes you immediately crave it.

Food/cooking is clearly integral to Cannon’s story, and protagonist Cannon’s identity, but it’s difficult to surmise what her relationship with food is, exactly. We understand that she’s gone to cooking school, and that people appreciate her cooking skills…although her boss, Guy, has some racist misconceptions about exactly what she’s capable of. Cannon also cooks for her Gung Gung, as part of her caretaking of him; but that seems more out of duty than pleasure. And, one of the final scenes, Cannon plans on reconnecting with her mother over dinner. In a nutshell: it’s complicated. What if anything does Cannon’s relationship with food tell us about her personality?

I see Cannon as someone oriented around service, perhaps to a fault. This facet of her character is a bit of a self-insert: food and acts of service as expressions of care and love were very much imparted upon me by both the white and the Chinese sides of my family. I think we encounter Cannon at a moment in her life where the sensual pleasure and creativity around food has waned — unsurprising, maybe, seeing as a majority of her relationships are plagued by fatigue and non-reciprocity.

Although you don’t go into much detail about specific ingredients/recipes in the book, Cannon regularly gets praised for their staff lunches and cooking in general, and is often solicited to whip something up for her colleagues/friends. In your imagination, what’s she whipping up?

Hmm… I imagine Cannon as a cook that has a deft hand when it comes to hitting multiple taste profiles. Montreal was colonized by the French and the Brits, and so that’s reflected in the food culture (great with the fat, salt, and dairy use, but a bit homogenous in the spices and herbs). So it’s noticeable when someone brings some acid, spice or sweetness to liven up a dish, and I think Cannon would bring that.

If you had to describe Cannon as a food/recipe, what would it be and why?

If I could describe Cannon as a food… perhaps she’d be this nice brown rice bowl we made at a ramen restaurant I used to work at. Pretty wholesome and full of fresh vegetables and quick pickles, but then also a nice slab of creamy twice-cooked pork belly and a marinated egg in there as well.

“I’m extremely aware of the ways that my identities are consumed: the queer, trans, and mixed-race experiences all end up being angles that are ‘worked’ regardless of whether I’m volunteering that, or not. The upside is that I get to reach certain readers with experiences similar to my own, and that part is a joy.”

What’s your relationship with food like? Are you a good cook? What’s your signature dish, if you have one, i.e. the go-to dish you whip up for yourself, friends, and/or someone special?

I’m alright, but sadly I’m not a great cook — I’d award that title to many other people around me. I’ve forgotten a lot of the recipes and skills I used to flex when I was younger and more proactive about cooking, but I will give myself this: I’m still fast with a knife and very good at remembering people’s likes, dislikes, and intolerances. In summer I love to make rice paper rolls with shrimp, Thai basil, avocado and mango. In winter, I’ve been really enjoying making beef brisket noodles with doubanjiang [fermented and preserved fava bean paste, used in Sichuan cooking].

In the final scene of Cannon, Trish comforts her best friend with leftover spaghetti from a Lennoxville, Quebec diner, Jerry’s (a real place, I just discovered!), where they ate during the course of their road trip back home. What’s your favourite road trip diner food/destination? What’s your go-to pick-me-up comfort food?

Living in Quebec has made me come to deeply appreciate a good casse-croute. I love a hotdog, a basic cheeseburger and a good poutine. Especially the poutine — it’s the main thing I’ll crave when the weather is cold, or if I’ve just helped somebody move apartments. The diner near my place used to have a mean poutine avec chou: a creamy, acidic ‘slaw on top to balance out all that brown sauce and cheese. Blissful.

Although Trish and Cannon have very different work, both are queer Asian women who are regularly exoticized and told that their gender and ethnicity are their most valuable assets/the only things they can capitalize on. (And when Trish listens to this advice – albeit well-meaning and from a queer professor mentor of hers – she goes so far as to jeopardize her and Cannon’s friendship.) As a queer artist yourself, how do you experience external and internal pressures to ‘represent’ and leverage your identity? How do you navigate the balance of using your voice as a megaphone for underrepresented/misrepresented voices and staying true to your self, art, and creative vision?

The difficulty of managing that tension with integrity was a big motivation to write that facet of Trish and Cannon’s relationship in the first place! I’m extremely aware of the ways that my identities are consumed: the queer, trans, and mixed-race experiences all end up being angles that are ‘worked’ regardless of whether I’m volunteering that, or not. The upside is that I get to reach certain readers with experiences similar to my own, and that part is a joy.

The way I try to stay true to my own intentions is by writing characters that aren’t explaining themselves or their experiences. From a writing perspective, I think it makes for a genuinely more interesting character, but it also makes me feel like I’m not exploiting my characters (or myself, in the moments when their experiences intersect with my own). Some people are really skilled at using their art to platform certain marginalized experiences for social change and education purposes, but I don’t really ever want to use my work in that way. Primarily I want to tell a good and interesting story. Cool if that prompts change or growth in a reader, but I prefer to do the ‘work’ of social change in more practical, non-cultural-sector ways.

At the same time as I read Cannon, I’ve been working my way through the new compilation of essays/comics/recipes, Queers at the Table – so I’ve had queer food on the brain, lately. What does queer food mean to you? Imagine an alternative/parallel storyline where Cannon’s kitchen is queer. How would her experiences/story be different?

I can’t even imagine what a kitchen environment would be like if it was all queer! Embarrassingly, my mind immediately jumps to visions of passive aggression, abundant gossip (not necessarily a bad thing) and a lot of workplace dating. On a more tender note, queer food to me brings to mind community gatherings, especially potlucks. I think queers are particularly conscientious about labour and care, and rarely want one person to host on their own. The result is a lot of delicious, mismatched food and a hoard of people clamouring to do the dishes afterwards.

Menu-writing can be a kind of story-telling of its own…So, with that in mind, I’d love it if you can please describe your life so far in terms of menu courses – one dish for each stage of life.

Cannon is your second graphic novel, following Stone Fruit in 2021. How was the process of creating this story/book a progression/different from your first? How was it easier, and how was it newly challenging?

The major difference between my process for Stone Fruit and Cannon was how quickly I launched into the latter, having felt emboldened by my capacity to start and finish a long project. I was more silly and sloppy with Cannon; I wanted to have fun and throw things and the wall and see what stuck. As a result, I ended up penciling out and cutting a lot of scenes from the final version, and I learned a lot.

What can we expect from you next?

I’m working now on a series of short stories, two of which are in collaboration with wonderful Montreal writers Felix Chau Bradley (Personal Attention Roleplay, 2021) and francesca ekwuyasi (Butter Honey Pig Bread, 2020, an excellent piece of fiction if you want to read sensuous depictions of food).

In addition to being available to order directly from Drawn & Quarterly, Cannon is also available to purchase from such local independent bookstores as Massy Books, Iron Dog Books, Upstart & Crow, and Lucky’s.*