I broke down a week after getting back from the Cartoonist Retreat in Oregon and my visit with my friend in San Diego. I went from feeling warm, fuzzy, and connected to feeling cold. It made me realize how much I need community, wherever I am. Now that I have my license, that feels within reach for me. Last week, I drove alone without having to turn around because I made a mistake for the first time. My destination was a grocery store close to my house. Getting there and back safely made me feel more secure somehow, more adult. The threshold I was so afraid of crossing by getting my license, the rite of passage into adulthood, I didn’t feel it.
I think that’s what broke my heart. I’m still me, just me with a driver’s license. I wanted to finally feel sure. Anyway, there have been some lovely developments since last month. Preorders for a charity artist zine I am in close on Friday! This is the first artist zine that accepted me, so I’m grateful I had the chance to develop an illustration for Fat Craft Zine: Volume 3, especially around the theme of Death and the Divine! Death is so curious and hard to grasp, but it also affects everything and reaches everyone somehow. The symbols we recognize as death are often black, and black tends to mean evil and dangerous. I’m too aware of how others read dark skin as a symbol for danger that erases our personhood. All this to say, I see death as a friend.
It reminds me that I’m alive now, so I need to take opportunities while I can. You may know GA just passed SB 140, which denies trans youth access to medical care. It also is vague and strange and just shows how fake “freedom” is here. They argue that they are protecting confused (and autistic) kids from regretting gender reassignment surgery, never mind that surgery isn’t a medical intervention for kids in the first place. They are so uneducated about trans issues and so far removed from the lives of trans people, but have the authority to dictate what happens to children who challenge easy, static understandings of gender. I’m livid and devastated and so so tired. Which means it’s time to make the queerest, kindest, most liberatory art possible.
….infinite love + peace… Tulani Kiara
The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman – I finally started reading Maus! I found it at the library where I volunteer. It’s a graphic memoir abt the author’s father’s experience during the Holocaust. So far, it’s managed to be surprisingly light and funny. I’m working through it slowly since I know I am going to be emotionally overwhelmed by the end, but I am eager to keep reading.
Genderqueer by Maia Kobabe – This is the second time I’ve read this book!! Maia has such a natural way of visually representing complicated feelings about gender and sexuality. I’ve felt similarly to em many times. I remember feeling so seen when I first read it in 2019, reassured. Anyway, I’m so glad this book exists and people who eschew the gender binary exist.
Felicity (1998-2002)– A college romance show!!! I think we need more of them. I don’t wanna see high schoolers hook up (even if the actors are really 30). Felicity is an artist and nerd (sound familiar??) who chases her crush to NYU and might wanna be an artist but is on the pre-med track. I’m almost through the first season and she’s had the most eventful freshman year ever, in more ways than one.
<3