Welcome to our collective short graphic novel, a part of the cluster “Unstable identities in Search for Home”. This graphic novel was written and edited by women from immigrant origins who, over a single or many generations, have made their home in Mexico. Our collective work showcases some of the diverse perceptions and experiences of Mexicans, who fall either within or outside the mestizo paradigm: that is, the Spanish and Indigenous racial admixture, which underlies dominant understandings of national identity. With this, we aim to cultivate a shared understanding and accountability about our positions in the logics of mestizaje. This graphic novel is entirely digital, and in addition to this introduction, it includes a set of six short graphic novels, and biographies of the contributors.
The first piece is an anonymous work that focuses on shifting notions of beauty that shape the sense of (self) worth of Asians, and particularly Japanese descendants, in Mexico. Yael Weiss interrogates narratives about Jewish Mexicans that circulate across public, familiar and intimate domains. Miho Hagino expresses the sense of loneliness away from your community, calm and anguish. Jessica A. Fernández de Lara Harada tackles the æffects of intergenerational experiences of ethno-racial exclusion of Mexican Japanese. Olin Moctezuma-Burns, in a search for a sense of belonging, explores her place in a complex, winding past and the limits of language in conveying her experiences of mestizo identity. Lastly, Daniela Sclavo offers a reflexive account of being positioned as güerita, whiteness and privilege in Mexico.
This collection explores displacement, estrangement and belonging. It shows shifts in identity construction due to social processes of differentiation across ghostly, imagined and bodily boundaries. By engaging with the normalisation of practices of inclusion and exclusion, it brings to the fore the historical formation of mestizaje. There is a transformative power in experiencing a conceptual shift through writing and reading. Our stories encourage readers to question assumptions about migration, race, nation, ethnicity, class and religion. They reflect on our positionality, and how we can challenge inequalities based on these markers of difference. In sum, these pieces aim to contribute to expanding repertoires of (self) recognition, mutual acknowledgement and belonging in Mexico and elsewhere.
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This is one of five pieces in the cluster Unstable Identities in Search of Home. The series is edited by Jessica A. Fernández de Lara Harada. In collaboration with academics, artists and practitioners working across diverse interdisciplinary fields, it explores how identities that do not fit established paradigms can be given expression, and how our experiences and creativity can shape this process. Explore the other pieces for this series here.
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