A Personal Statement: How Good Intentions Can Produce Harmful Effects

Over the past weekend, I have been trying to address a bruising controversy brought about by choices I made regarding this blog. In the process, I have caused emotional and reputational harm to several female BIPOC scholars.  What started with the best of intentions has had negative impacts on multiple fronts. More care should have been taken at every stage of the process.

Here’s what happened:

Billy Proctor and I had been discussing plans for the blog this fall. When I did a series of Zoom book clubs over the summer, many had expressed interest in learning more about Black comics. I had been hearing about a wave of new titles released over the past year. Due to the lockdown and some current transportation issues, I had not been able to go to my local comic shop since March and I wanted to know, myself, what I should make sure to read from this new and emerging work. As always, I wanted to use this blog to amplify emerging voices in the field -- in this case, especially Black comic scholars. So, we decided to try to pull together a series. I only briefly discussed the mechanisms for doing so, figuring we would dig into those questions more fully later. But from the first, I had vaguely signaled that we would need a diverse group of editors to make this project viable.

After our initial discussion, my attention was drawn elsewhere leaving Proctor to act on these plans. He was only vaguely reporting what was happening and I was distractedly waving him forward, trying, as always, to do too many things at once. I own my failure to oversee this properly. But I also want to make clear the disconnects in the process. Proctor drafted a call for papers which he posted on several comic studies listservs. I did not review or even know about the CFP before it was posted and not being a subscriber to these lists, I was not aware of what was happening until there was significant pushback against these plans. I also did not read or even know about the reframing of the project, though I had been consulted about expanding the remit to allow other BIPOC participants. When I learned of the criticisms on Friday afternoon, I was sympathetic with many of the critiques of what had happened. The initial approach was deeply flawed and the hasty response to the criticism had only made things worse.

I started working behind the scenes to find a way to substantively address the concerns. Specifically, there was a call for Black scholars to be the curators for such a project, which I acknowledge should have been the case from the start. As I heard of the pushback, I reached out to try to identify some early career Black scholars who might want to take ownership over this project, offering them complete control over the content and contributors and asking them to totally reframe the series to reflect their own perspectives. For technical reasons, I would need to facilitate the actual posting. Otherwise, I was ceding my platform to them. When Billy had told me he had heard from other BIPOC scholars who wondered if the blog might also provide space for them to write about comics by, for and about their communities,. I wanted to also facilitate their participation, but again, I was only vaguely following how he was going to do so. After some false steps, Billy identified someone who volunteered to take ownership over this second series.  As of now, my plan has been to run two series, first one under Black editorship on Black comics, and a second under BIPOC leadership dealing with “multicultural” comics.

In the midst of coming up with these plans, Billy Proctor accidentally posted one email from a back and forth exchange around these topics onto a Comic Studies list-serve. Proctor inappropriately characterized Samira Nadkarni who had been a leading critic (among others) of the original plans and further evoked Rukmini Pande, who has been a key figure critiquing racism in fandom studies. There has been an outpouring of outrage over what Billy said and the fact that he felt comfortable using such a negative characterization in my presence. I am deeply sorry for my role in this exchange. I have publicly apologized on the comic studies list where the email was posted and I also personally apologized to the women involved.  Billy Proctor has since stepped down as Associate Editor of this blog and will have no involvement with any future series we may launch, behind the scenes or otherwise. 

Let me be clear where I stand. I admire Rukmini Pande's contributions to the field enormously. She has transformed fan studies (and to a degree, fandom) by her willingness to challenge orthodoxies, to question our historic silence about race, to model what transformative scholarship might look like, and to call out normalized practices that reflect white supremacist logics that have gone unexamined and unquestioned for two long. I am just getting to know Samira Nadkarni through this exchange but I also deeply appreciate her critical voice in raising questions around the initial framing of this project.  I appreciate her willingness to call me out, even though her critiques have not always been easy to hear. Both women have suffered previous harm as a consequence of other public discussions over racism in fandom studies, and I am sorry that my poor choices may have contributed to further wounding them.

There is very little I can say -- the email in its tone and in its substance was inappropriate. I am horrified that this email was distributed on a public list -- not because it is embarrassing to me but because it did public damage to the women referenced in the exchange. I try to promote the work of younger scholars in my field and even where this is not possible, to above all, do no harm. And in this exchange, I failed at that basic expectation. 

I have read various assumptions being made on Twitter about what I did or did not say to Billy Proctor in response to that email. One of the ways whiteness reasserts itself is through what gets said amongst white people in private conversation. Our mutual support for each other shores up the existing conditions of systemic and structural racism and misogyny. When things get said in our presence and we remain silent or we offer words of encouragement, we become complicit in those attitudes. We say things in private we would NEVER say in public and doing so makes them impossible to combat or challenge the casual racism and sexism that run through everyday conversations even among well-meaning people who are otherwise working for social justice.  I have seen people read Billy’s email as suggesting we were circling the wagons against the BIPOC women. For my part, I was seeking out advice from senior BIPOC women so I could get insights on the best way to de-escalate this situation and figure out how to shift the editorship around this project to empower younger BIPOC scholars. Aware of some of the history, I was trying to find ways to avoid harm to the people involved.

As I was working to quickly address the core concerns that had been raised, I also allowed a sense of defensiveness to enter our exchange without fully realizing it myself. I work hard to hear, respect, and act on criticism, but I do have some feelings to work through when I am publicly called out. I should have slowed down to process those feelings. Instead, a certain degree of distrust entered my language and it enabled Proctor to write what he did. Systemic racism runs deep, it can reassert itself in unexpected ways, it transmits itself through unexamined assumptions and we need to correct each other when racist modes of thought enter our conversations.  We need to guard against our raw emotional responses which often surface unprocessed assumptions. I let everyone down by not making the right choices in the moment as I was trying to resolve a complex and tangled set of concerns. For this, I am really and truly sorry. I will do better.

Structural racism enters the conversation in other ways also. Because of structural racism,  Billy Proctor was already in my social circle and Samira Nadkarni was not. Because we knew each other, Proctor volunteered to help me with the grunt work on the blog, when others — for a multitude of reasons — would not have felt comfortable doing so. Because we were both white men, I felt comfortable in my interactions with him. Because I knew him, I did not want to harm him even as it was clear that his mistakes were making it impossible to continue to stand behind what he had done.  The social patterns created by structural racism also mean that I was more likely to respond defensively to Samira Nadkarni criticizing our project because I did not already know her. I recognize that such an impulse is wrong, because it contributes to those lacking access and power not being taken seriously when they risk speaking out. As a personal blog rather than a publication with an organization behind it, I have been personally trying to identify younger scholars to promote. But this means that, again, those people already inside or adjacent to my circles have structural advantages in getting asked to contribute. One reason I wanted us to have a call for papers was because I recognize this issue and wanted to expand access and identify new contributors not already in my network. As a consequence, I feel even worse that these efforts to reach out were so badly handled.   Again, I want to do better.

I owe this apology not simply to the women who were unfairly evoked in this specific incident but more broadly to young women, especially women of color, in the academic world, who so often are struggling to find their own voice as scholars, who are so often mischaracterized and dismissed when they pose important critiques of institutional, systemic and structural racism and misogyny. I admire these women’s courage in calling out senior scholars and entrenched assumptions in their fields. I would hate if anything I have done here has the effect of discouraging them from full throated participation in the core debates of their chosen fields. We need your contributions, even if it can be sometimes hard for older white male scholars, myself among them, to hear and process your critiques.  We all need to do better.

Where does this leave the two series? I honestly do not know. I am still working with some younger scholars who wanted to participate in overseeing them and still hoping to develop a framework under which they might move forward. I still believe something positive can come from this, but I want to go slow and find the most constructive way that this blog might address these topics. Whatever happens, I will be as open as possible in soliciting participation so that involvement goes beyond my pre-existing networks. I welcome any and all constructive feedback on the best way to proceed.

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (3 of 3)

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (3 of 3)

Olivia González

For Whom is Embodying a Cultural Bridge a Mechanism of Oppression and Liberation? 

Cummins’ reported motivations for authoring American Dirt further highlight the privileged position from which her novel was written and read. In explaining her decision to write American Dirt, Cummins has repeatedly claimed that she aimed to act as a “bridge,” presumably between Mexican migrants and an Anglo-American readership. For example, in the author’s note of American Dirt, Cummins claimed that she was “worried that, as a non-migrant and non-Mexican, I had no business writing a book set almost entirely in Mexico, set entirely among migrants”; however, she ultimately chose to write the book because “I thought, ‘If you’re a person who has the capacity to be a bridge, why not be a bridge?’” (p. 382). Additionally, in interviews addressing the controversy around American Dirt, Cummins has rearticulated this rhetoric, sharing that she wrote the novel with the hope that it “would be a bridge” (cited in Boyagoda, 2020). While Cummins’ efforts to serve as a cultural bridge have been commended by some of her supporters, putting her rhetoric in conversation with Moraga & Anzaldúa’s (1981; 1983) Bridge highlights the damaging effects and distance from which Cummins wrote about and aimed to “bridge” her subjects and readers.  

As the anthology’s title signals, Bridge (1981; 1983) interrogates and reimagines the bridges that have historically been built along the backs of women of color by those with varying levels of privilege and power (including, but not limited to, white men and women) in their attempts to explore and understand those situated as “Other.” Presented in the opening of the anthology, “The Bridge Poem”—penned by acclaimed Black poet Kate Rushin—highlights the burdens that embodying a bridge imposes on Black women as they are expected to connect, educate, and translate across difference.Through this work, Rushin expresses her fatigue and frustrations as a bridge, declaring: “I've had enough / I'm sick of seeing and touching / Both sides of things / Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody / …I'm sick of filling in your gaps / Sick of being your insurance against / The isolation of your self-imposed limitations” (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983, p. xxi). Bridge (1981; 1983) explores interventions in the building of these bridges, highlighting the liberatory power deployed when women of color develop their own bridges to one another: “bridges of consciousness” connecting them in solidarity (Moraga, 2015, p. xvi). As Moraga (2015) shares in the preface to the fourth edition of Bridge, the first edition (1981) of this anthology was the product of “women of color, who had been historically denied a shared political voice, endeavor[ing] to create bridges of consciousness through the exploration, in print, of their diverse classes, cultures and sexualities” (p. xvi). Thus, as Moraga & Anzaldúa (1983) claim, constructing these bridges of solidarity emerges through women of color “naming our selves and by telling our stories in our own words” (p. 23). 

I argue that in authoring American Dirt—a work that is not rooted in her personal experiences with oppression or liberation, and a work not designed to connect herself to women of color in solidarity—Cummins, and her rhetoric around “bridging,” are ultimately, like the book itself, hollow and harmful. In authoring an apolitical and impersonal work, Cummins not only fails to construct the bridge of consciousness envisioned in Bridge, but reproduces the toxic notion that bridges between those with oppressive power and women of color must be constructed in order for the former to learn and comprehend the humanity of the latter. Further, Cummins appears unaware of where the burdens of her attempts to be or build a bridge fall. As Cummins (2020) reveals in American Dirt’s afterword, her novel was made possible by migrants and deportation victims who “patiently” taught her about things “I never would’ve understood without their insight” (p. 385). Therefore, while Cummins’ attempts to be a bridge may reflect a “social justice” ethos (Markowicz, 2020), she failed to build a bridge along her own back; instead, (re)constructing them on the backs of those who “patiently” taught, and translated for, her.

For Whom are Borderlands Stories Profitable? 

Lastly, as many American Dirt critics have highlighted, Cummins’ success in selling American Dirt represents the inequities embedded within mainstream cultural production structures in the U.S. For example, responding to Cummins’ lamenting that “I wished someone slightly browner than me would write it,” other writers have reminded her that authors who are “browner” than her have written stories about their experiences (Grady, 2020a).However, many of those stories have not received the same visibility or capital; “authentic stories by Mexicanas and Chicanas are either passed over or published to significantly less fanfare (and for much less money)” than American Dirt (Bowles, 2020). Thus, as her critics suggest, Cummins’ early acclaim epitomizes the lack of equitable opportunities for Mexicanas and Chicanas to tell and sell their own stories within present publishing structures in the U.S.

Indeed, as many writers of color have discussed, the U.S. publishing industry has sustained a “historic and systemic whiteness” (Ho, 2016), with industry gatekeeping positions dominated by cis-het, able-bodied white women. As a survey by Lee & Low Books (2020) revealed, as of 2019, 76% of literary agents and publishing and review journal employees working in the U.S. were white, while only 6% identified as “Hispanic/Latino/Mexican.” Further, the majority of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) folks represented in publishing houses hold positions with little to no gatekeeping power, constituting nearly half of interns (49%), while remaining chiefly excluded from executive (22%), editorial (15%), and marketing and publicity (26%) positions (Lee & Low Books, 2020). 

These substantial inequities in publishing power consistently produce a lack of opportunities for authors of color to publish and sell their work. As established publishing industry professionals have asserted, addressing inequities within the industry requires addressing representation in all gatekeeping positions, not simply seeking out “diverse” authors (Ho, 2016). For example, according to accomplished editor Sulay Hernandez, “the majority of books that are published in the US are not by people of color. The majority of high-profile authors are not people of color,” but changes need to be made to not only ensure that “more voices of color [are] being published” but that “more voices of color [are] being published well. And, very importantly, selling well” (cited in Masad, 2016). Thus, disrupting publishing industry inequities requires addressing the dearth of employees of color in all gatekeeping positions, with a particular focus on marketing and publicity, as these divisions substantially determine authors’ ability to sell their work (Ho, 2016).

Thus, with Latinxs and Mexicans occupying only 5% of marketing and publicity positions in the U.S. (Lee & Low Books, 2020), Mexican, Latinx, and Chicanx writers must fight to market themselves, and get stores to sell, and readers to buy, stories that may be considered marginal or “niche.” As Marcela Landres claims, the lack of Latinxs in “key” publishing positions is a primary contributor to the “paucity of published books written by Latinos” (cited in Cubias, 2015). And as Bowles (2020) shares, he has “seen my Chicana and Mexicana colleagues struggle to get their stories told, to get their manuscripts into the hands of agents and past the publishing industry’s gatekeepers;” thus, they remain “horribly underpaid” and “suffer marginalization in the US market.” 

Meanwhile, Cummins received a million-dollar advance from Flatiron Books for the rights to American Dirt, a film production deal with Imperative Entertainment, and enjoyed substantially effective pre-release publicity and marketing. Despite the widespread backlash that the novel received after its publication, American Dirt’s sales continued to grow to over 362,000 copies by July of 2020 (Milliot, 2020), and maintained a place on the New York Timesbest-sellers list for twenty-six weeks straight. I argue that this success further demonstrates the privileges that Cummins was afforded in telling and selling this story. Unlike so many women of color striving to publish their own stories, Cummins was not rejected or silenced by dominant publishing structures, was not “horribly underpaid,” and did not struggle to have the story she told marketed and sold well. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, I posit that critiques of American Dirt must be guided by a politics of authorship that recognizes the inequities represented by, and reproduced through, Cummins’success in telling and selling this story. Engaging with work fromMoraga (1983; 2015), Anzaldúa (1983; 1987), Moraga & Anzaldúa (1983), and Hurtado (2020), and examining the broader sociocultural and political economic contexts in which American Dirt was produced and published, reminds us that women writers of color contend with mechanisms that silence and delegitimize their storytelling, have historically been tasked with serving as cultural bridges, and are consistently denied opportunities to tell and sell their own stories in the U.S. publishing industry. Thus, while Cummins has now publicly claimed her identity as a Latina, I argue that as the author of American Dirt, she was ultimately read and afforded the same privileges as a white writer. 

But American Dirt as a phenomenon speaks beyond one particular story and storyteller; it reflects, and has helped reify, a publishing system that privileges and perpetuates whiteness. This is particularly evinced by the success with which Cummins was able to tell and sell a story filled with harmful, stereotypical portrayals of Mexicans and migrants, whichwere unquestioned by publishers but quickly recognized and critiqued by Mexican and Chicanx writers and readers. Further, as reflected in Cummins’ representations of, and rhetoric around, “brownness,” Black and Afro-Latinx writers and immigrants are erased from Cummins’ conceptions of authorship and immigration respectively—contributing to the continued exclusion of Black immigrants from narratives about the United States’ southern border and the atrocities afflicted by its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Thus, Cummins not only benefits from the whiteness of the U.S. publishing industry, but simultaneously reinforces the anti-black racism and nativism pervading narratives about immigration in the United States writ large. 

So what does this mean for other authors and scholars writing in the U.S. publishing industries or academia? To address (note: not answer) this question requires that I interrogate my own power and privilege. While I am highly critical of Cummins, hearing her trepidations about authoring American Dirt—“I don’t know if I’m the right person to tell this story” (Alter, 2020)—sunk like a rock in my own chest; I know these fears, they flood my mind with every research project that I pursue. Like Moraga (1983) in her piece “La Güera,” I find myself asking: as a white Chicana, “what is my responsibility to my roots—both white and brown, Spanish-speaking and English?” (p. 34), and what does it mean for me to claim the label of woman of color? Like Moraga, I recognize that I have to “look critically at my claim to color” and “must acknowledge the fact that, physically, I have had a choice about making that claim, in contrast to women who have not had such a choice, and have been abused for their color” (p. 33–34). Thus, I offer the following considerations:

To writers who are looking to tell stories with or about communities of color, but have—like myself—benefited from whiteness: Interrogate your power and privileges, and situate this in your own work; rejecthetero-masculinist tendencies to feign objectivity through distance.Seek out silenced storytellers—versus stories—and give them your ears, your heart, and your platform. Listen to, celebrate, and honor them. And ask not just “who am I to tell these stories?” but “who am I to hear them?” We are not entitled to their knowledge, their stories, their perspectives; they are not yours, nor mine to hold in my güera hands or heart.

And so I write this for the mujeres de color

escribiendo sobre su esperanza y su enojo, su alegría y su dolor

Proclaiming with tongue and heart, key and pen

voces que otras no quieren oír, realidades que no ven.

Olivia González is a doctoral student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a former Ronald E. McNair scholar. Working at the intersections of critical media industry studies and education studies, Olivia’s research examines the politics of race and gender within contemporary structures of media education and production. Her current work and dissertation center on the storytelling practices and professional socialization of aspiring film and television creators of color.

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oprahsbookclub. (2020, January 21). Our next book club selection is “American 

Dirt” by @jeaningcummins. It’s a heart-wrenching page-turner, and you won’t be abel to put it down. Download your copy on @applebooks and #ReadWithUs: apple.co/americandirt #AmericanDirt @Glatiron Books @Oprah. [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/oprahsbookclub/status/1219620561086631937?lang=en

Oprah Magazine. (2020, March 4). Oprah discusses American dirt controversy with 

author Jeanine Cummins. Oprah Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/books/a31227918/oprah-american-dirt-jeanine-cummins-controversy-video/

Pablo. (2020, January 22). Re: Pendeja, you ain’t Steinbeck: My bronca with fake-ass 

social justice literature [Blog comment]. Retrieved from https://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/#comment-53524

Pineda, D. (2020a, January 29). As the ‘American Dirt’ backlash ramps up, Sandra Cisneros 

doubles down on her support. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-01-29/sandra-cisneros-breaks-silence-american-dirt

Pineda, D. (2020b, February 12). #DignidadLiteraria invites Oprah ‘on a mission to repair’ after 

‘American Dirt’ fracas. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-02-12/dignidadliteraria-pens-a-letter-to-oprah-winfrey

Reichard, R. (2020, January 30). Sandra Cisneroes calls critics of highly controversial ‘American 

Dirt’ novel “exeagerados.” Remezcla. Retrieved from https://remezcla.com/culture/sandra-cisneros-calls-critics-american-dirt-exagerados/

Rodriguez, J. (2020). Why American Dirt matters to all of us. Lunch Ticket. Retrieved from  

https://lunchticket.org/why-american-dirt-matters-to-all-of-us/

Sehgal, P. (2020, January 17). A mother and son, fleeing for their lives over treacherous terrain. 

The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/books/review-american-dirt-jeanine-cummins.html

Toto, C. (2020, February 30). American Dirt: 'Cancel culture' embraces book burning in 

the digital age. The Hill. Retrieved from https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/481147-american-dirt-cancel-culture-embraces-book-burning-in-the-digital-age

Tyrer, J. (2020, February 28).Re: Pendeja, you ain’t Steinbeck: My bronca with fake-ass 

social justice literature [Blog comment]. Retrieved fromhttps://tropicsofmeta.com/2019/12/12/pendeja-you-aint-steinbeck-my-bronca-with-fake-ass-social-justice-literature/#comment-53524

Varela, J. R. (2020, February 2). 'American Dirt' is a bestseller because it reflects guilty liberals' 

quiet beliefs about migrants. NBC News. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/american-dirt-bestseller-because-it-reflects-guilty-liberals-quiet-beliefs-ncna1127366

Von Essen, L. R. [reading_while]. (2020, January 21). This is disappointing given how much of 

the book community has spoken out against this novel's disingenuous portrayal of the immigrant experience. There are so many marginalized voices you could be lifting instead. [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/reading_while/status/1219657189641662464

Winfrey, O. [Oprah]. (2020, January 21). Like so many of us, I’ve read newspaper articles and 

watched television news stories and seen movies about the plight of families looking for a better life, but this story changed the way I see what it means to be a migrant in a whole new way. [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Oprah/status/1219618257411493890

Wood, J. (2019, January 28). Writingabout writing about the border crisis. The New Yorker. 

retrieved fromhttps://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/04/writing-about-writing-about-the-border-crisis

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (2 of 3)

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (2 of 3)

Olivia González

Silencing, Censorship, and Identity “Policing”?: Interrogating Cummins’ Concerns

Like several of her supporters, Cummins has suggested that identity politics, silencing, and censorship are responsible for the backlash that American Dirt has received. For example, Cummins has maligned critiques of American Dirt that are centered upon her identity, claiming that while she is a privileged, white, U.S. citizen, “I am also Puerto Rican” and “that fact has been attacked and sidelined by people who, frankly, are attempting to police my identity” (Martin, 2020). Additionally, Cummins has expressed concerns over cultural appropriation conversations that go “too far toward silencing people” (Alter, 2020, para. 17–18), and suggested that“telling people what stories they are allowed to write” is a “dangerous sort of slippery fascist slope” (Conroy, 2020).However, through engaging with Chicana feminist scholarship, I argue that these claims are not only unfounded but also—communicated from Cummins’ now substantial platform—mislead the public about which writers are prevented from telling their own stories. As work by Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Aída Hurtado reveals—contrary to claims about contemporary “cancel culture”—efforts to silence and censor storytelling are not new phenomena, and it is women of color whose stories and storytelling have consistently been silenced and censored, and for whom writing is a powerful tool in the pursuit of liberation.

While first created in considerably different social and political contexts, Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1981) widely acclaimed anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (hereafter referred to as Bridge) embodies a powerful work through which the controversy surrounding American Dirt can be productively read. As discussed and demonstrated in Bridge, writing can play a powerful role in mujeres of color’s development and expression of a feminist politic that is shaped by their embodied experiences. Specifically, as Moraga (2015) suggests, Bridge presents U.S. women of color’s “theory in the flesh”—a politic formed through exploring, recording, and honoring their complex, even contradictory, lived experiences as women at the “crossroads” of multiple, intersecting identities (p. xxii). And according to Moraga (2015), it is through writing about these experiences—“telling our stories in our own words” (p. 19)—that women of color can “bring into consciousness what only the body knows to be true” and pursue the liberatory potential of their “theory incarnate” (p. xxiv). Thus, as Moraga & Anzaldúa (1983) discuss in the anthology’s second edition, Bridge—comprised of art, essays, poems, and other writings by women of color—contains “non-rhetorical, highly personal chronicles that present a political analysis in everyday terms" (p.xxiv). 

Similarly, in her text Intersectional Chicana Feminisms, Aída Hurtado (2020) asserts that Chicanas “use writing as the most powerful weapon at their disposal to voice their feminisms, to fight injustice” (p. 93). And as discussed and demonstrated in Bridge, Hurtado (2020) affirms that this writing can take many forms, voices, and tongues. According to Hurtado (2020), Chicana feminist writers insist that “we use everything,” from poetry to social science, “whatever it takes to voice a reality that has never been properly addressed” (p. 59). Additionally, Hurtado (2020) cites Chicana poet Elba Sánchez, who claims that her tongue is “‘a gift, my power,’” through which she “‘names injustices I witness, a veces en voz de poeta, a veces en mi native lengua pocha, from my pocha perspective’” (p. 93). 

Moreover, in her work “Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers,” Anzaldúa (1983) claims that writing is a mechanism through which mujeres de color “reclaim” their voices and tongues, and negotiate their survival and selfhood. In particular, according to both Moraga & Anzaldúa (1983), Third World women—a term used by U.S. women of color to “align ourselves with countries bearing colonial histories and still suffering their effects” (Moraga, 2015, p. xxv)—"wield a pen as a tool, a weapon, a means of survival, a magic wand that will attract power, that will draw self-love into our bodies” (p. 163). Thus, Anzaldúa (1983) shares that she herself writes to “record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you…To discover myself, to preserve myself, to achieve autonomy” (p. 169). 

However, Anzaldúa (1983) also emphasizes that mujeres of color must contend with mechanisms that silence them and delegitimize their voices and tongues, revealing that the difficulties and “dangers we face as women writers of color are not the same as those of white women” (p. 165). For example, through her work Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Anzaldúa (1987) decries the “tradition of silence” that suppresses her many voices as a queer Chicana: “my voice: Indian, Spanish, white” and “my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice” (p. 59). Additionally, Anzaldúa (1987) describes the burdens of translation that she endures when speaking in her “‘home’ tongues,” such as “Standard Mexican Spanish” and “Spanglish” (p. 56)—a process that renders her multilingual tongue “illegitimate” (p. 59). 

Drawing from these works, and examining the sociocultural and political contexts in which American Dirtwas authored and acclaimed, I argue that identity “policing” and “cancel culture” are not the driving forces behind the novel’s negative reception. Instead, I posit that American Dirt must be critiqued through a politics of authorship that is guided by three critical questions: For whom are stories about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands political and personal? For whom is embodying a cultural bridge a mechanism of oppression and liberation? And for whom are borderlands stories profitable?

 For whom are stories about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands political and personal?

Despite its engagement with topics bearing highly politicized tenor in current U.S. discourses—including the “norteño president” and his rhetoric about “bad hombres” (Cummins, 2020, p. 235)—many reviewers have characterized American Dirt as apolitical. Some have criticized American Dirt for being “determinedly apolitical,” decrying Cummins’ failure to address the political factors fueling the “forced migrations ” she depicts (Sehgal, 2020, para. 15), and her attempts to separate “‘policy issues’” from “‘moral and humanitarian concerns’” (Arce, 2020). However, other reviewers, such as John Grisham (n.d.), have praised American Dirt for being apolitical, applauding that “its message is important and timely, but not political.” Similarly, some positive reviews of American Dirt have alluded to the novel’s political implications while refraining from labeling it a political piece. For example, Sarah Blake (n.d.) claimed the book is “urgent and unforgettable, [it] leaps the borders of the page and demands attention, especially now,” while Stephen King (n.d.) deemed American Dirt “an important voice in the discussion about immigration and los migrantes… put[ing] the lie to the idea that we are being besieged by ‘bad hombres.’” 

I argue that reviews praising American Dirt as an apolitical work highlight the privileged position from which Cummins wrote—and was read and reviewed—compared to mujeres of color writing about and from the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Specifically, through juxtaposing responses to American Dirt with responses to recent writing by Chicana and Mexicana authors, and drawing from Moraga (1983; 2015), Anzaldúa (1983; 1987),Moraga & Anzaldúa (1983),  and Hurtado’s (2020) claims about both the power and difficulties that women writers of color navigate, I highlight the distance from which Cummins authored American Dirt, and the dangers posed by the novel’s positive reception as an “apolitical” piece. 

For example, like American Dirt, Mexican immigrant writer Valeria Luiselli’s (2019) Lost Children Archive—a novel tracing a woman’s journey as she embarks on a road trip from New York to Arizona with her family and documents the child refugee crisis along the southern U.S border—explores issues tied to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands through a fictional narrative. However, unlike American Dirt, Lost Children Archive was substantially shaped by Luiselli’s personal experiences, including Luiselli’s own road trip from New York to Arizona with her family, and her work as an interpreter for child migrants in federal immigration court (Wood, 2019). And in further contrast with American Dirt, Luiselli’s work has been repeatedly deemed “political.” In particular, reviewers have called Lost Children Archive a work that “drifts almost dreamlike between the personal and political” (Greenblatt, n.d.), is “both personal and global, familial and political” (McGinty, n.d.), and is “political without being propagandistic” (Malone, n.d.).

While Lost Children Archive does address the political forces fueling the injustices it depicts, these reviews highlight that even as a work of fiction, Lost Children Archive is a powerful reminder that for women writers of color, “the political is profoundly personal” (Moraga, 2015, p. xxi). Juxtaposing these reviews with those celebrating American Dirt for being “apolitical” thus illustrates the privileged distance from which Cummins wrote her work, including her limited personal stakes in the discourses and policies shaping the lives of the migrants she aimed to portray. Thus, I argue that praising American Dirt as “apolitical” does more than address Cummins’ lack of engagement with policies or partisan politics; this label reveals—and rewards—Cummins’ distance from the subjects of her story. 

Further, like Lost Children Archive, Myriam Gurba’s critique of American Dirt was intimately shaped by her personal experiences, and received responses that deviated substantially from American Dirt. Throughout her review, Gurba grounds her critiques of the novelin her personal experiences and affective responses as a Chicana “living en el Norte.”Forexample, Gurba compares Cummins to a college roommate who wore Gurba’s clothes as an “ill-fitting Mexican costume,” and describes her visceral reactions to Cummins’ reported efforts to give a face to the “‘faceless brown mass’” at the southern border, which “pissed me off so bad my blood became carbonated.” While Gurba has been praised by many readers for her incisive and personal writing, others have criticized the personal nature, as well as the language and tone, of her critique.

For example, as Gurba shares in the opening of her work, she originally wrote her review of American Dirt at the request of Ms., a feminist magazine.However, Ms. later denied Gurba (2019) the opportunity to publish her finished critique, as its editors suggested that she “lacked the fame to pen something so ‘negative.’” Gurba subsequently published her review online via the academic blog Tropics of Meta, where several readers similarly critiqued Gurba’s tone, as well as her use of language and personal stories. For example, readers suggested that Gurba was 

“negative,” “mean,” “vulgar,” and “whin[y].” As one reader stated, Gurba is “mean y harsh,” and her writing is “an over-worked exercise in meanness,” and “pierde fuerza in being so vehemente, y sobre todo in being so vulgar” (Moreno, 2019).

Some readers also criticized Gurba’s use of Spanglish in her review, asserting that it was unimpressive, “poorly-used” (Pablo, 2020), and that “Spanglish es solo un inglés malo y un castellano peor…” (Leftbanker, 2020), Further, according to several readers, through grounding her review in her personal experiences, Gurba diminished the credibility of her arguments. As one reader claimed, the “worst” parts of Gurba’s review are “about Gurba,” and not truly “about the book” (Tyrer, 2020). And others “challenge[d]” Gurba to write a new, positive and impersonal critique: “to take yourself out of the picture…and find something, anything positive about this book from another person’s perspective” (Julia, 2020). 

These responses to Gurba’s work thus illustrate the silencing, delegitimizing mechanisms and dangers with which contemporary women writers of color penning personal, multi-lingual works (Anzaldúa, 1983; 1987) must still contend. Using what some of her critics seem to suggest is her “lengua pocha” and “pocha perspective,” Gurba wields her writing as a “weapon” to fight the injustices she sees reflected in, and reproduced by, American Dirt (Hurtado, 2020, p. 93); to “rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you” (Anzaldúa, 1983, p. 169). However, in doing so, Gurba and her voice and tongue were deemed illegitimate by many readers, as well as threatened by others—Gurba received death threats in response to her piece (Grady, 2020b).

Thus, I argue that juxtaposing responses to Gurba’s review, as well as to Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive, with those celebrating American Dirt for being “apolitical” suggests that, while Cummins has now publicly claimed her identity as a Latina, she was read and reviewed as—and held the privileges of—a white woman writer. Cummins was not only able to tell and sell a story about highly polarizing, politicized topics without being considered political in the process, but was rewarded for doing so in a system that continues to discourage mujeres of color from telling their own stories and speaking in their many voices and tongues.And I posit that reviews celebrating American Dirt for being “apolitical” help sustain this system, as they suggest that stories about immigration and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands can, and should be, told from a “neutral,” impersonal perspective; a dangerous precedent that heightens women of color writers’ risk of being deemed “mean,” “negative,” “whiny,” or “propagandistic” in drawing from their personal experiences and writing “our stories in our own words” (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983, p. 23).

Olivia González is a doctoral student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a former Ronald E. McNair scholar. Working at the intersections of critical media industry studies and education studies, Olivia’s research examines the politics of race and gender within contemporary structures of media education and production. Her current work and dissertation center on the storytelling practices and professional socialization of aspiring film and television creators of color.

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (1 of 3)

Identity, Power, and Soiled Storytelling: Examining the Contemporary Politics of Authorship through American Dirt (1 of 3)

Olivia González

Who am I to tell their stories, if I cannot tell my own?

Of uncertainty, ambiguity—what are you? Where do you call home? 

I straddle the line between neighboring worlds, un pie plantado en cada lado. 

Soy Mexicana like my papá. And like my mama, I am Anglo. 

But blurring the borders of these worlds is unacceptable. I am pushed out and in. 

Painted with the labels of others, I am “Gringa.” “Pocha.” “Exotic.” “Foreign.”

My tongue twists to speak their languages, but theirs only twist to spit:

“You’re a Hispanic, aren’t you? You don’t look white.”

“No eres una Mexicana auténtica. Eres gringa. You’re not a real Mexican. You’re a white chick.”

But in these discursive borderlands, my güera hands hold privilege and power. 

And through my access to higher education, my own voice can be made even louder. 

So I take up this platform and pass it to las mujeres: Chicana, Latina, y Mexicana.

To amplify the stories of those seeking la liberación, justicia, y esperanza.

—"¿quíen soy yo?”, Olivia González

Introduction

As I leaf through the pages of Jeanine Cummins’ American Dirt, I oscillate between feeling engrossed and repelled; navigating a simultaneous sense of intimate closeness with, yet distance from, the characters. Published in January 2020, American Dirt traces the fictional journey of Lydia, a Mexican bookstore owner, and her young son, Luca, as they flee cartel-bred and led violence in their hometown of Acapulco, Mexico, and attempt to emigrate to the United States. In a multitude of jarring moments, I find myself rubbing my eyes and cheeks to remove the saline stains that have appeared there—tears that fell as Luca’s formed atop a dusty northbound train passing a town near Jalisco.

I am shocked and angered by every moment of my own sorrow. These feel like the tears of a traitor, of a woman transfixed by a spectacle of suffering about those in Mexico and the borderlands—about those like her own familia. I feel a deep part of me ache, struggling to process the haphazard similarities: of the journey that my own papá made around the same age as Luca’s character, traveling from a town in Jalisco across the border into an unfamiliar and unwelcoming land. But as I swallow the lingering sting of sorrow in the back of my throat, I recall that this isn’t my papá’s story. Nor is it my own. In fact, according to myriad critics, it isn’t anyone’s story. As critics have suggested, Luca and Lydia’s narrative is a “hollow, harmful” fiction (Bermudez, 2020a), soiled by its non-Mexican and non-migrant author’s telling and selling of a story that—not rooted in her own experiences, and inaccurately depicting the experiences of her subjects—does not belong to anyone.  

Since its publication, American Dirt has garnered considerable attention and controversy, landing squarely in the center of debates about authorship and appropriation. American Dirt initially received substantial pre-release acclaim from various critics and creatives, such as authors Stephen King and Sandra Cisneros, and actresses Salma Hayek and Yalitza Aparicio. However, criticisms of the noveland of Cummins have since surged and widely circulated, with audiences and authors alike decrying American Dirt as an exemplar of cultural appropriation, and a formidable reminder of extant inequities in the U.S. publishing industries. Some early supporters of the book have thus rescinded their praises, while others have sustained their support—joining Cummins in defending her work, and critiquing the role that “cancel culture” and identity politics have purportedly played in fueling the backlash the book has received. 

As many of those caught in, or reporting on, this controversy have acknowledged, these diverging responses to American Dirt revolve around an increasingly contested question in contemporary discourses: who gets to tell and sell what stories? As a doctoral student researching the storytelling practices of minoritized filmmakers, this question permeates my own writing and reckonings with my power and positionality. Thus, I find myself tangled in complicated ties to Cummins. While I agree with the aforementioned criticisms of American Dirt, I see some of my own anxieties about identity, power, and authorship reflected in a key question that Cummins has repeatedly raised: who am I to tell their stories?

Simultaneously, as a white Chicana born to an Anglo-American mother and a Mexican immigrant father, I have also struggled to make sense of my authority as a critic of Cummins’ work. My childhood was filled with my papá’s stories of his own childhood in Mexico where his family made do with little means, of his journey to the U.S., his experiences teaching himself English to survive an Anglo-American school system, and his forced internalization of the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” narrative. These stories are not my own; I was born in the U.S. and raised in a California suburb, I had the luxury of learning English at a very young age, and I have spent the past seven years in higher-education classrooms where my time has been spent critiquing ideologies like the “bootstraps” narrative, rather than living them for hope and survival. However, as celebrated Chicana feminist scholar Cherríe Moraga (1983) describes in reference to her Chicana mother, my papá’s stories “crept under my ‘güera’ skin” and his life “into my heart” (p. 28), shaping who I am and how I engage with other stories about immigrants and the U.S.-Mexico border. And yet, contending with the norms of the academic spaces that I inhabit—in which the autobiographical may be considered illegitimate for straying from norms of “neutrality” or objectivity—I find myself questioning what role my güera heart, skin, and voice can and should play in my analyses ofAmerican Dirt. I question: who, and how, am I to critique this story?

Through this work, I take up these questions, and embrace my angry, aching güera heart and pocha tongue to examine American Dirt and what it tells us about the contemporary politics of authorship. Specifically, I examine discourses around American Dirt—including arguments posed by Cummins and her critics and supporters, and my own reactions to the novel and the controversy surrounding it. I inquire: What do the debates about American Dirt tell us about identity, power, and literary production and reception in the United States? What do these debates reveal about the current politics of authorship in the U.S.? And what implications do the creation, reception, and critiques of American Dirt have for audiences and authors, and for students and scholars, such as myself?

 “Timely” Page-Turner or “Trauma Porn?”: Debating American Dirt

Before its official release, American Dirt garnered substantial acclaim and anticipation. With waves of positive pre-release reviews and reports of a “bidding war” ending in a million-dollar publishing deal, critics deemed American Dirt one of, if not the, “most anticipated release of 2020” (Varela, 2020, para. 2). In the months leading up to the book’s publication, handfuls of writers produced glowing advance reviews, calling American Dirt “extraordinary”(Stephen King, n.d.), “important and timely…rich in authenticity” (John Grisham, n.d.), and“relevant, powerful, extraordinary” (Kristin Hannah, n.d.). Additionally, renowned media executive Oprah Winfrey selected American Dirt to join Oprah’s Book Club—a “coveted and exclusive fraternity” known for bolstering attention and sales for the books inducted as its members (Nielsen, 2011, para. 1). Transmitting the decision via Twitter, Winfrey described American Dirt as “a heart-wrenching page-turner” (oprahsbookclub, 2020) that “changed the way I see what it means to be a migrant in a whole new way” (Winfrey, 2020).  

However, following American Dirt’s release and its selection for Oprah’s Book Club, both Cummins and Winfrey were quickly met with backlash and a widespread call to boycott the book. Twitter users, many of whom identified as Mexicans and immigrants, critiqued the novel’s inaccurate and stereotypical portrayal of its subjects—calling American Dirt, and Winfrey’s decision to promote it, “disappointing” (von Essen, 2020). Others claimed that through this book, Cummins—who had primarily publicly identified herself as white and her family as “mostly” white “in every practical way” (Cummins, 2015) prior to publishing American Dirt—was engaging in cultural appropriation and “brown-face” (Rodriguez, 2020, para. 2). And many Twitter users critiqued the book and the praise it was receiving in relation to the realities of a publishing industry dominated by white authors and critics—an industry that is “so out of touch—that so rarely supports immigrants to tell our own stories—eager to make money off of our suffering with a cheap, stereotypical thrill” (Bermudez, 2020b). 

Additionally, Mexican, Latinx, and Chicanx writers’ critiques of American Dirt—many of which had been published before the novel’s release, but were buried beneath a mountain of positive pre-release publicity—began widely circulating among this ever-expanding chorus of critiques on Twitter. For example, Chicana writer Myriam Gurba’s review of American Dirt, which was originally published in December of 2019, came to the fore of the debates. In a piece titled “Pendeja, You Ain’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature,” Gurba (2019) describes American Dirt as a “trauma porn that wears a social justice fig leaf,” and critiques Cummins’ decision to write it—highlighting that while Cummins herself acknowledged that she “lacked the qualifications to write Dirt…she did it anyways. For a seven-figure sum.” And as Gurba claims, Cummins’ lack of qualifications is evident in the book, which reads like it was written by someone who is neither Mexican nor an immigrant. According to Gurba (2019), this is particularly evinced by the novel’s protagonist, Lydia, in whom readers see Mexico “through the eyes of a pearl-clutching American tourist.” 

Similarly, Mexican American author David Bowles (2020) penned a lengthy critique of American Dirt, calling ita “harmful, appropriating, inaccurate, trauma-porn melodrama.” Like Gurba, Bowles published his piece online before American Dirt’s official release, and highlighted the various ways in which Cummins’ perspective as a non-Mexican and non-migrant author lead to inaccurate and stereotypical portrayals of Mexico. Additionally, as Gurba and Bowles’ critiques circulated in the months following American Dirt’s release, they collaborated with immigration journalist and writer Robert Lovato to create a movement named #DignidadLiteraria. Announced on January 26thvia Twitter, #DignidadLiteraria called on the U.S. publishing industry to interrogate and bolster its support for Latinx stories and storytellers. The movement also penned a letter, signed by 142 writers, to Oprah Winfrey, imploring her to remove American Dirt from her book club (Pineda, 2020b). 

However, Winfrey and other early supporters, such as Sandra Cisneros, have “doubled down” on their support for American Dirt (Pineda, 2020a, para. 3), questioning or critiquing the backlash the book has received. For example, Cisneros has reaffirmed her belief that American Dirt is “the great novel of las Americas,” and called critics of the work “exagerados” (cited in Reichard, 2020). Additionally, Winfrey has denied #DignidadLiteraria’s request to remove American Dirt from her book club, claiming that doing so would suggest that “anybody is subject to being rescinded, silenced, erased” (cited in Associated Press, 2020, para. 6). 

Some conservative columnists have also defended Cummins, deeming her avictim of “cancel culture.” For example, in an article titled “American Dirt: ‘Cancel culture’ embraces book burning in the digital age,” Christian Toto (2020) claims that “identity politics” helped fuel the “fury” toward Cummins and American Dirt, and critiques the notion that “only Latino artists can tell stories from their community from a pre-set narrative.” Similarly, New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz (2020) has attributed what she described as “frothing-at-the-mouth criticism” of American Dirt to issues of “political correctness” and “cancel culture.”  Markowicz (2020) suggests that critiques related to Cummins’ identity as a white woman who “wrote about something other than her own lived experience” represents “something strange and ugly,” and asserts that efforts to “cancel” Cummins are fueled by a “trial-by-mob culture.”

Olivia González is a doctoral student at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and a former Ronald E. McNair scholar. Working at the intersections of critical media industry studies and education studies, Olivia’s research examines the politics of race and gender within contemporary structures of media education and production. Her current work and dissertation center on the storytelling practices and professional socialization of aspiring film and television creators of color.



Desert Island Comics (Issue 2) Andrew Edwards

It would be easy to choose five comics written by Alan Moore to fill this list. After all, I decided to do my PhD on his work, but it feels a lot like cheating to just rattle of what I think are his five best works (From Hell, Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Miracleman and Swamp Thing, if you’re interested). So I thought it would a bit fairer, and more interesting, to choose my top five single issue comics instead (mostly), and focus on some obscure choices to throw into the mix too. 

Sandman #14

My first experience of reading Sandmanwas buying #1 and #2 when they were first published. I bought them on a school trip to London, along with Black Orchid#1-3 and the trade paperback of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. I religiously bought Sandmanas a monthly comics throughout its entire run, but it’s some of the early issues that stay in my memory the most clearly, and none more so than #14’s ‘Collectors’. I was disturbed by the concept – a serial killer convention – and various moments that have imprinted themselves on my memory ever since. It’s the contextualisation of the serial killer within the quotidian convention that disturbed me then, and still does now. It feel like an uncomfortable possibility. I re-read it a few days ago, for the first time lord-knows-how-many years, and it’s power remains undimmed. I’d place it in Gaiman’s top 10 works easily.

Ghosts #107

Sticking with horror, this issue is one from childhood that I randomly bought from a newsagents in, I think, Bala in North Wales, sometime in the early 80s. Trips to places were my opportunity to call in to random newsagents who often had piles of older American comics cluttering up their shelves, although I distinctly remember this comic being on a spinner rack, probably the first one I ever saw.

I was a reader of British humour comics The Dandy and The Beano, alongside the occasional American comic that I could find on trips (DC dominated my finds). Ghosts#107 was the first non-humour, non-superhero comic I’d ever read and, boy, did it make its mark on me. It was a three part tale of a medieval crown that made its way through history causing tragedy for those who wore it. The stories were scripted by Robert Kanigher, with art by Howard Bender, Rodin Rodriguez and Adrian Gonzales. For a kid used to the slapstick comedy of humour comics, and superhero battles, this comic introduced me to the way that the sweep of history, and historical artefacts, can profoundly influence and change lives. It’s worth checking out the back issue bins for.

Watchmen #4

OK, so an Alan Moore-scripted comic has made it on to my list despite my self-imposed restrictions, but I’ve limited myself to a single issue. And what an issue it was! I first read Watchmenin single issue form, in one sitting, in the late eighties, and #4 really brought home to me just how different this series was going to be. I would have been around 13 or 14 when I read it, and it was the first time that I became consciously aware of how narrative and structure can be used for effect. I showed me that narratives didn’t have to start at point A and move chronologically through B, C, D etc. You could skip, repeat, move backwards and forwards, and experience the use of time in comics in new and exciting ways. All these years later, it is still my favourite issue of the series.

Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars #2 (UK Edition)

Ok, ok – I can almost hear some of you sniggering at the back… For its time, and for an 11 year old boy like I was, this was incredible. My only previous exposure to superhero comics was the odd DC I randomly found on trips from home. I’m not referring to the US version either, but the Marvel UK version. Here I discovered the X-Men, Avengers, Dr Doom, Magneto and more. I loved the bizarre portraits of Marvel heroes created by the Secret Artist, and enjoyed the reprints of John Byrne’s Alpha Flighttoo; both first appeared in #2, which is why I’ve chosen this particular issue. This was the gateway to American super heroes, and American comics, and for that I’ll always be grateful.

Brief Interlude

It’s clear that nostalgia is currently dominating my thinking. Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older, and perhaps its heightened by the new changes we are all experiencing in real life. I do also love modern comics, but it’s the comfort that memories of childhood and comics that have influenced my choices. Even then, another day may have seen me choose something by Harvey Pekar, or Art Spiegelman’s Maus, or even the Giffen - Dematteis Justice League. It was hard to narrow this list down to five, let me tell you. However, in breaking all previous conventions in this list, here’s my final choice.

Black Hammer

I’ve only recently read (binged) all of these comics by Jeff Lemire and artist Dean Ormston, and while I haven’t processed my thoughts on them in any intellectual or critical way, I can say that I loved them on the level of my gut reaction. I found them captivating because it tickles the parts of me that love superhero comic history, alternative worlds in science fiction, Twin Peaks level weirdness, and older and disillusioned heroes struggling to make meaning for their lives and their world. It’s a stone cold contemporary classic that you are compelled to keep reading to find out what happens next.

Dr Andrew Edwards is a writer and scholar. His research interests include comics and graphic novels, science fiction, horror, intertextuality, and representations of gender. He is currently working on a number of writing projects. He is also an Academic Skills Tutor at Wrexham Glyndwr University. He can be followed on Twitter: @AndrewEdwards88