Research + Personal Experience + Creative

Excerpt from "A Bad Start" with inks by Monica Gallagher and colors by Matt Beaugrand

 

In my class "Diasporas and Migrations" I was struck at two mentions of Saint Louis in Jacob Lawrence's series of paintings about the Great Migration. I'd known about the Great Migration, but has primarily associated it with New York and Chicago. I've been something of a history buff and I've lived in Saint Louis in the early 90s and again in the early 00s. My memory is hardly perfect, but still I was surprised that I had no serious connection with the migration and the Lou.

This pointed me to craft my term paper,  "Saint Louis and the Great Migration" which tracked migration, and the reaction of white people to it. Coupled with post-war anxiety, fear, and optimism, reaction on reaction on reaction created the climate of the city today, and the city as I first moved to it. In my preamble, I stated:

In the three months after finishing my undergraduate degree, I worked at a sandwich shop in downtown Saint Louis. Aside from the manager, who was often at the other locations of the small chain, I was the only white person on the team...

This was, of course, a huge driver of my motivation. As I researched the paper, I found so many simple oddities and complex problems built on the reaction on reaction on reaction, rooted in the Great Migration (and racism itself, of course).

After the course ended, I decided to write a series of vignettes in comic form, as an attempt to engage people who didn't want to talk about racism in the topic of racism. I discussed the project and my drafts with a classmate, who agreed to be my sensitivity reader. Especially important, because the stories aren't really about me per se. The me character plays a supporting role, as I tried to keep the story about the climate and the underpinnings and not about my personal journey.

For the first vignette, I was fortunate to also enlist the help of Monica Gallagher as inker, and Matt Beaugrand as colorist, both of whom supported what I was trying to do. The first vignette was published by the peer-review journal Clamantis and I have submitted the second vignette, just approved for the next upcoming issue. I've drafted a third vignette as well.

This is working as I'd hoped. Idea, research, personal perspective, creative narrative. It's the model I hope future projects can follow!