Episode 102: The Unique Power of Cartoons

Photo by Tony Rinaldo

EPISODE 102: The Unique Power of Cartoons, with Ebony Flowers

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On This Episode

Cartoons have evolved since their Sunday-edition comic strip days. With the popularity of graphic novels on the rise, visual storytelling is becoming ever more sophisticated. In this episode, our hosts talk with the cartoonist Ebony Flowers about her journey, motivation, and process as she marries drawing with the written word.

This episode was recorded on June 22, 2023.
Released on September 21, 2023.

Guest

Ebony Flowers is a cartoonist and ethnographer who earned a PhD in curriculum and instruction. Her most recent book, Hot Comb (Drawn and Quarterly, 2019), is a collection of stories about Black women’s hair, and her creative fiction and nonfiction have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Paris Review. She is currently editing her second book, tentatively titled Baltimore Brownfield (Drawn and Quarterly, forthcoming). As a Radcliffe fellow, Flowers worked on a multimodal graphic novel that will be read through both sight and touch.

Credits

Ivelisse Estrada is your cohost and the editorial lead at Harvard Radcliffe Institute (HRI), where she edits Radcliffe Magazine.

Alan Catello Grazioso is the executive producer of BornCurious and the senior multimedia manager at HRI.

Jeff Hayash is a freelance sound engineer and recordist.

Marcus Knoke is a multimedia intern at HRI, a Harvard College student, and the general manager of Harvard Radio Broadcasting.

Heather Min is your cohost and the senior manager of digital strategy at HRI.

Anna Soong is the production assistant at HRI.

Special thanks to Cabin 3 Media for their invaluable contributions to the editing of this podcast episode.

Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ivelisse Estrada:
Welcome back to BornCurious, a new podcast from Harvard Radcliffe Institute. I’m your cohost Ivelisse Estrada.

Heather Min:
And I’m Heather Min.

Ivelisse Estrada:
And here we are, episode 102.

Heather Min:
And today, we are thrilled to welcome Ebony Flowers, cartoonist, storyteller, ethnographer, revealer of cultures and characters and stories that may be new to all of us. So welcome.

Ebony Flowers:
Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Heather Min:
OK. I’m diving right in. So graphic novels, cartoons, comics. Here’s the thing: growing up, cartoons were always associated with Saturday morning cartoons, animated features, half-hour stories. And back in the day, we always spent the money to get that fat Sunday newspaper where there was the comic section.

And there was Calvin and Hobbes, and Peanuts, and Garfield. So those I knew were comic strips. And of course, there were all the superheroes. Could you sort of explain for people who are new to the medium what is it that being a cartoonist as you define it?

Ebony Flowers:
So I am a cartoonist. And I love calling myself that. Because usually when I do, people look at me like I’m a clown, and...

Ivelisse Estrada:
[Laughs]

Ebony Flowers:
That’s kind of how I like to present myself. [LAUGHS] And so I take the definition of a cartoonist and what a cartoonist is from another cartoonist, Ivan Brunetti. And he defines cartoons as a dark line drawn on sturdy paper.

And so that is primarily what I spend my hours doing is drawing dark lines on sturdy paper. Those lines take some sort of form—so people, objects, places. I arrange them in a way that tells a story. So that’s what a cartoonist is.

Heather Min:
And you don’t wonder or spend a lot of time agonizing over how that is different from graphic novels or comics?

Ebony Flowers:
No, not at all. Because the term—all those different terms like comics, cartoons, graphic novels, graphic memoir, I find them all to be like semantics. Sometimes the word comics or cartoon seems a little childish and childlike.

And so people who—I call them the literary people—want to move away from that. And they use the term graphic novels to make it kind of sound on the same level as fiction and creative nonfiction is. But I think most cartoonists are flexible. We just want our work to be shared and known. So if you want to call it a graphic novel, by all means.

Ivelisse Estrada:
And did you or have you always drawn? Was this always your medium?

Ebony Flowers:
No. So not at all. It was never—so in elementary school and high school, you know how there’s always the person in your classroom who’s known as the person who can draw really well. And you go to them if you want a self-portrait done or if you want a drawing done of, let’s say, Calvin and Hobbes. You go to that person.

No one ever went to me. And I never saw myself as the person who could draw. I was actually more into the sciences, specifically like biology and chemistry. And I got into anthropology in college. And it wasn’t until I went to grad school that I really got into making comics.

And that was because I was looking for an alternative way to represent my—at the time, I was getting my master’s degree in education. And I had done some field work in Angola. I had gathered a lot of interviews and narratives and was looking for alternative ways to present that work.

And so I came across a class that a cartoonist, Lynda Barry, was teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was the artist in residence there. And it was called What It Is: Shifting the Manual Image, and it was about storytelling and also about drawing.

I did not know that she was a cartoonist. I didn’t know who she was. And it wasn’t until the end of the course where I was like, Oh, we’re making comics.

All:
[LAUGHTER]

Ebony Flowers:
And I kind of like this. And so, yeah, it was about 30, maybe 31 when I really started drawing every day.

Ivelisse Estrada:
So that was unexpected. So what was it about her, about having her as an instructor that really just hit a nerve for you and made you think This is the way?

Ebony Flowers:
Yeah. So it was, so I am a former educator. I used to teach high school biology and environmental science. I taught middle school math for a few years. My super big goal was to work for the State Department.

Heather Min:
In what?

Ebony Flowers:
In education [laughs] and stuff around education.

And what really gravitated me towards her was her pedagogical approach to teaching. And I stayed on. My own plan was just to get my master’s and then leave. But I stayed on because I wanted to learn more about her way of thinking about education and the use of drawing in education because it really doesn’t exist.

Drawing as an educational tool doesn’t really exist beyond like I would say preschool, kindergarten, and then after that, it kind of gets compartmentalized into something called the arts. Yeah. So I was curious about that.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Right. And it is such a tool because you can really bring people into a story in such a different way, in such a personal way.

Heather Min:
And you’re creating worlds really. And listening to you, it also strikes me that it’s sort of pre-literate. You can engage people with pictures before they have to actually read the letters or the words.

Ebony Flowers:
Well, I see drawing as a kind of literacy, like in the same way people will say science literacy or math literacy. I do think that there is a literacy in drawing. And that drawing is a way of thinking. And when I teach making comics, I try to teach it in a way where people understand it, my students understand it as more than just a way to illustrate a preexisting thought, but drawing as a way of thinking that can bring about new ideas and new insights that weren’t available to them prior to drawing.

Heather Min:
So you were a student of Lynda Barry. Now, you’re teaching. I guess I would appreciate us taking a side step. And I encourage you to put on your more scientific and biology teacher hat. Talk about your process. What goes into you telling the story with words and pictures.

Ebony Flowers:
My process as a cartoonist right now is that I have an almost daily cartooning practice where I do short drawing and writing exercises almost every day. And they last from about 5 minutes to 20 minutes. And then something that I like to do is on a little index card, I draw a little frame. And then I spend a quick 5 minutes listening to a song, drawing a self-portrait of myself. And so, I’ll draw myself in different situations.

For example, I’ve drawn myself lost at sea, a centaur, an octopus. I’ve drawn myself walking down the street. I’ve drawn myself surfing, skateboarding, just whatever.

Heather Min:
And these are all things that you do in real life.

Ebony Flowers:
[Laughs] No. It’s just the first thing that pops up in my head. And I’ll just draw that. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m drawing until I put pen to paper. And I start moving my hand around. I’m like, Oh OK. I’m a centaur today, whatever. OK. Five minutes later, it’s like I put it to the side. And then the next thing I do, it depends on the project and where I am in that process.

And so I’m editing my second book now. And for that, I look at a lot of archival images to tweak some of my characters and to redraw them. Or to get some of the scenery the way I want it in terms of world building. I do a quick writing exercises. So I’ll put a timer on, and I’ll write for 15- or 20-minute increments. Sometimes as short as four minutes if I really don’t feel like drawing or writing.

I’ll just go with that until something pops up, like an image pops up or maybe some dialogue pops up. And it keeps coming back to me. Then I’ll spend some more time with it either drawing, redrawing those images on an index card or expanding the dialogue on a bigger sheet of paper and then breaking them up on index cards. And then moving those images and dialogue around until I can see a story emerge.

Then from there, I’ll go to slightly better paper and just pencil out. This time, I’ll use a ruler. And I’ll draw a frame and then individual panels maybe. And then start drawing in the images and go from there.

Ivelisse Estrada:
One thing that I thought was really interesting from reading Hot Comb is that your stories are both fiction and autobiography. And you’ve talked about you’re just trying to get at an emotional truth through them. But I thought that was unique. Because I feel like when I’ve read graphic novels before, they’re either one or the other, not both at the same time. And it really—

Ebony Flowers:
I didn’t know.

All:
[LAUGHTER]

Ivelisse Estrada:
No. But it really kept me on my toes. But how do you decide which mode you’re going to work in to get at that emotional truth?

Ebony Flowers:
I try to let the story and the images kind of guide me. And so, yes, Hot Comb is a mixture of fiction and creative nonfiction. And what I tell people when they ask me that question—because you’re not the first person to ask me about that—the stories that have actual songs from real artists mentioned in there are true.

And the ones where if you try to Google that lyric and you can’t find anything, that’s because I made up the lyrics. And that’s not a fiction story. And so I think that guideline is still pretty accurate. So if anyone’s curious about what’s true and what’s not, that’s the way.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Until someone decides that lyric is really good and decides to use it.

All:
[LAUGHTER]

Ebony Flowers:
Yeah. Well I’ve been trying my songwriter chops ever since becoming a cartoonist. What’s the emotional truth aspect to it? I don’t think too much about it until the end of the story, until I finished the story, and then maybe even years afterwards. And oftentimes, what I see is reaching a certain kind of emotional truth will change or transform when someone else reads it. And they see or experience a different kind of emotional truth after they read it. And then they share it with me.

For example, in one story—I think it was “Big Ma”—there’s a sequence where the girl puts on her grandmother’s wig. And she starts playing a record. And I didn’t think too much about the record playing until someone came up to me and talked to me about how much that scene transported him back to his childhood and listening to his mother’s records.

And then the very next person came up to me. And they talked about the same story. And they talked about how that hit a chord with them in their own experiences, family experiences around drug abuse. It’s always interesting for me to see after I put my story out there and in some ways, I feel like it’s no longer mine. What kind of different experiences people have and share with me.

Heather Min:
And as you’ve both noted, especially in you mentioning songs in your work, I was struck by the magic in the lines. It’s black and white. And it’s words and drawings. But I was fully transported to the world in which each of those stories were taking place, much like reading fiction, right? Effective ones where your mind and therefore the rest of you, including your heart, is fully there.

One of your earlier stories has Salt-N-Pepa.* [Laughs] And that took me back to junior high and how precocious young girls were. And this totally reminded me of being 13 and in junior high. There’s magic in your work.

Going back to your process where you describe it in a way where it’s organic. You let the muse take you where it will. How do you know when something is something you will run with and commit to ink?

Ebony Flowers:
So as I’m working, I see the initial sketches or pencil marks that I make as a time when I really sit with the story. And I’m really kind of deep into it. That’s the time when I need everything to be quiet. When I work from home, I put a scarf around my office door so people know that this is a time that I’m really deep into my work. And it’s usually a time when I’m penciling.

And so I kind of compare it to—unfortunately, I compare it to exercise and running. [Laughs] When you’re initially working out and you’re like, Oh, I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. And then if you stick with it long enough—or anything, really—but if you stick with something long enough, you kind of get into it. Maybe 5 or 10 minutes later, you’re into it.

Once you get really into it, there’s this flow that happens. And if it’s disrupted and you try to get back into it, you’re like, Oh kind of thing. And it takes a bit of time. And so I see the time when I’m penciling the story out in that way. Because I don’t work off of a script. And so I really—I sit with an image or a dialogue and try to expand it out based on what my characters are trying to tell me as I’m drawing.

And, yes, I know I’m talking as if my characters are real. But in that moment, they feel super real to me. That’s how penciling feels for me. It’s super deep concentration. But then when I switch over to inking: I’ll watch TV when I’m inking, that kind of thing. Because the penciling part is really where the storytelling happens. And then the inking is more—I use a brush and sumi ink. Usually, I work with a round number 2 brush, if there are any artists out there, or a round number 4 brush depending on the paper size.

And then my sumi ink is semipermanent. And so there is—I can do a wash on it if I want to. But at that point, I don’t need to go super deep in my concentration because I’m not really listening to my characters so much. I think if there’s any kind of emotional truth, it begins to happen, I think, with the line work I do with my brush. I have to be open to whatever happens with the brush.

And people who have worked with brushes before, ink and brush, they know how there’s really no turning back once that mark is made. It’s just like, OK, it’s there. And there’s this kind of acceptance that happens or surrendering to the brush and the kind of emotions that show up as I’m moving my hand. I find the two to be totally different experiences.

Heather Min:
Because first, it’s more inviting inspiration and fully concentrating to be in a creative mode. And the latter sounds like you’re in production mode. And you’re just fleshing it out and birthing it and making it into being. But the conception has already happened.

Ebony Flowers:
It’s already happened. And I don’t need to listen to my characters as much. Sometimes—

Heather Min:
Do they keep talking to you?

All:
[LAUGHTER]

Ebony Flowers:
They do. It’s funny. I was working with one of my characters and I kept drawing her outfit in a certain way. And whenever I got to the inking part, it was always this kind of I don’t look like this. I would never wear this shirt kind of thing. And so after inking her a few times, I just gave up and said, OK, let’s start again.

All:
[LAUGHTER]

Ebony Flowers:
And please tell me what to wear. So she ended up wearing cowboy boots. It was more her thing.

I still have to listen to my characters. But when I’m inking, there is a physicality to it that doesn’t necessarily exist when I’m penciling. So there’s a kind of endurance of making the line. And because I do lots of lines and different kinds of brush strokes, I’m kind of there for a while. And so it is nice to have something in the background to keep me there as I’m drawing, as I’m inking one line after another after another.

Ivelisse Estrada:
I think what’s interesting to me is that you’re just so—you really give yourself over to it. It doesn’t sound any way from here like there’s any sort of outlining process or any conscious deciding of this is where the story is going to go. It just unfolds.

Ebony Flowers:
It unfolds. I do document. I do document where my characters are going, especially with now I’m editing a much longer book. So it’s not a collection of short stories. And so I have to keep track of where the story is going and what’s happening to my characters. And I use a spreadsheet, like an Excel spreadsheet.

I’m lucky enough to have a publisher with great editors who will do that for me. Because it takes a long time to keep track of where your characters are going and how they’re growing over time, and whatever character flaws might emerge, and conflicts that they have, and how they are resolved or if they’re ever resolved, et cetera. And so I do keep track of it.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Let’s talk about this longer book that you’re working on. What is it? Is it the project that you're working on here? Or is it something entirely different?

Ebony Flowers:
No. It’s something entirely different.

Ivelisse Estrada:
OK.

Ebony Flowers:
Thanks to the pandemic, production has been slow on my second book. That’s tentatively titled Baltimore Brownfield. And it’s a fiction piece that will be probably between 350 and 400 pages. And it takes place in a fictional neighborhood in Baltimore that’s zoned for mixed industrial use.

And it looks at the degradation, destruction of a community through the city’s negligence and industrial mismanagement over time. And it focuses around three women and their lives in this place and their relationship to this place.

Ivelisse Estrada:
What was researching that like?

Ebony Flowers:
It was fun and also super intense. The story is very, very loosely inspired by where my grandmother and my mother lived. They lived in a place called Fairfield, a neighborhood called Fairfield, which is in southeast Baltimore. And it’s a neighborhood that no longer exists. And it was a neighborhood zoned for mixed industrial use. And I believe in the late ’80s or early ’90s, the city just decided to make it all industry.

And then also the stories are loosely inspired by where my father grew up. He grew up in a place called Sollers Point, which was a neighborhood specifically for Black World War II vets, housing for Black World War II vets. And it was considered dilapidated housing. And eventually, the city destroyed the entire neighborhood and pushed those people out to disperse them into other parts of the city.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Sounds like another feel-down story, Ebony.

All:
[LAUGHTER]

Ebony Flowers:
Yeah.

Ivelisse Estrada:
I love that you referred to your stories that way—feel-down rather than feel-good story.

Ebony Flowers:
Someone pointed out to me that my stories kind of begin in a certain way of feeling. And there’s some laughter and nostalgia in there. And then it kind of ends with this like, Oh—this subtle pain that revolves around racism, sexism, and classism. And I don’t sit down and intend for my stories to evolve that way.

But I do believe that people, poor people, Black people, women have a whole range of experiences just like everyone else. And that includes lots of laughter, romance, sadness, deep friendships, conflict. And I hope that my stories show that kind of wide range. And so, yes, sometimes—not sometimes, often—my stories do have this kind of feel down however you call it.

Heather Min:
With that said, though, there are so many characters and community and family, and going to the beauty shop, hanging out with your grandma. I love the closeness and the emotional richness of your stories. With that said, the story about Lena just ripped me apart. Oh my god!

Ivelisse Estrada:
Oh my god, me too.

Heather Min:
Oh my god!

Ivelisse Estrada:
Then that was fiction, right?

Ebony Flowers:
Yes. That’s fiction.

Heather Min:
Lena, a young woman.

Ivelisse Estrada:
My sister Lena, or Lena.

Heather Min:
Yeah.

Ebony Flowers:
My Lil Sister—

Heather Min:
“My Lil Sister Lena” who is an athlete and a phenom and so happy to use her body and the power of it. Nonetheless just sort of crumples into herself when her different-textured hair becomes such an object of curiosity. And she gets objectified. She’s unable to distance her own personhood at a young age from their rapacious curiosity. And she just quits. The reader processes them in intellectual, emotional, physical level. And it’s magic!

Ebony Flowers:
Thank you for saying that. Lena—so that story was inspired by a couple of things. So I wrote that when I was getting my PhD. And I was hanging out with another PhD person who was getting her PhD. She had just gotten her law degree. And she was getting her PhD in education policy.

And her research revolved around Division 1 athletes, Black women athletes, who competed in what she called recreation sports. So sports that were not predominantly played by Black women—so swimming, gymnastics, softball. And she herself did Division 1 softball.

And so she interviewed Black women athletes about their experiences on and off the field. And one thing that she told me that was part of every single interview she did was this concern and anxiety over their hair. A concern over how to do their hair not only impacted their ability to play on the field, but also their academic performance. And so it was that.

And then also there is this concern, this national concern over Gabby Douglas, the gymnast in the 2012 London Olympics, and then also again in the 2016 Rio Olympics when she competed in gymnastics there. And I think she won. I don’t know if she won both times. But I think she medaled at least once, if not more.

But there’s so much commentary, social commentary about her hair coming from other Black women, just from everyone about how unkempt her hair looked. And I was just like, how awful is it that here is this elite athlete at the top of her game doing something that very few people do. And the thing that people talk about is not how great she is but her hair.

And that’s the conversation. And it’s infuriating in a way that I couldn’t express it with words. And so I just drew this story. I think I drew it all within maybe a week, 10 days. And I didn’t do any kind of preliminary sketching or use index cards or anything. I just started drawing on good paper. And that’s how it came out.

And I used to play softball. I have not experienced the experiences of Lena, of my character Lena. But I used softball as the sport to go into this experience because actually, I have a lot of nostalgia for playing softball. And there’s this kind of singsongy, team-spirited cohesion that happens in women’s and girls’ softball.

And so I tried to incorporate that kind of singsongy, rhythmic feeling into the story that kind of feels good in the beginning. And then you don’t really know where it’s going to go into until, I don’t know, somewhere in the middle or towards the end where the singsongyness feels more of a haunting and has a cryptic kind of feeling.

Heather Min:
That’s a loss.

Ebony Flowers:
Yeah.

Ivelisse Estrada:
I want to talk about mental-health issues. Because you’ve used your drawing to help people work through emotions. And that story Lena had a mental health aspect. She basically develops a condition where she pulls out her hair because she is so stressed out. Why is that important to you?

Ebony Flowers:
I don’t think about it ahead of time when I’m drawing and making my comics. And so I never saw “My Lil Sister Lena” as a mental health issue as I was working on it. And it wasn’t until other people pointed it out. I was just like, Oh, OK—this is definitely a mental health issue and revolves around issues with anxiety and probably some depression around that as well. So I do think it is important to have those aspects of a person’s life in a story.

Heather Min:
We’d be remiss if we let you go without asking you about your fellowship year.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Yeah. Did it contribute in any of your breakthroughs?

Ebony Flowers:
It did. So I would not have been able to really think deeply about tactile comics without being here at Radcliffe and especially with my research partners and having them be part of the experimentation process. Because it really is—tactile comics is really an underexplored aspect to making comics and cartooning. And I think that it will just get bigger.

So there are folks here and there who are also working on tactile comics and adapting comics for blind and low-vision readers. So there’s Nick Sousanis out at San Francisco State University. And he’s working with the Longmore Institute. And they have a lot of work around adapting comics. And that also includes tactile comics. And then there’s also, again, Anne Cunningham, who is constantly working on tactile picture making and storytelling.

And so, for me, here at Radcliffe, there’s been a ton of resources that I’ve used like on campus and then off campus. There’s the Bennett School. It’s more of a vocational scene. But they do a lot of book arts, which is totally awesome for me, especially once I realized I wanted to manipulate the page and also how books are made as I’m working on this idea of tactile comics.

Yeah. My Radcliffe year has been awesome in that sense. And I think I’ve made enough moves and advances on tactile comics that I feel totally comfortable with the initial teaching of that moving forward.

Ivelisse Estrada:
I was just going to say that the papers of the North Bennet School are actually at the Schlesinger Library.

Ebony Flowers:
Yeah. There you go.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Little plug there for our Library.

Ebony Flowers:
My Radcliffe project is for my third book, "Awake Overnight.” And it’s a collection of short stories, fiction, all fiction, that revolves around caregivers and direct-care workers and their lives. Mostly it revolves around their lives outside of care work. And so with those stories, I’m trying to tell their stories in a way that shows them as fully realized people.

Oftentimes, and this is particular to comics, when there are any characters who are also direct-care workers or nurse’s aides, they’re just there. They’re kind of magical people who show up in this story or a memoir to help out. And then they disappear. And you don’t really know anything else about them besides that they’re there to do a certain job. And then they do it. They do it well and helps out the family and the person who needs the care.

And those kind of stories bothered me. One, because I did a lot of direct-care work when I was an undergrad. And my father was a direct-care worker. And he also worked at this place called Crownsville Hospital, which no longer is running. But it used to be a state-run mental health hospital in Crownsville, Maryland. And it used to be predominantly for Black patients. And then they integrated it in the ’60s maybe or the ’70s. And I worked there too.

It's funny when I was sketching out ideas for this. I was like, Wow, I’ve been in direct-care work for my whole life. And so I used to work summers there in the purchasing department. And then also my stepmother was a direct-care worker. She just retired. And she was a direct-care worker for about 50 years.

And just being around direct-care workers and doing it myself, I know that we have full lives. [Laughs] And it doesn’t necessarily revolve around patient care. And though a lot of us find our jobs very important, we also have our own concerns, and issues, and wants, and hopes, and needs. And some of us have our own disabilities too. And I don’t think that it gets talked about in a way that makes people feel real.

Especially during the pandemic, there was a lot of hero talk especially around healthcare workers and specifically like nurse’s aides and direct-care workers. And that was also, for me, that discourse felt dehumanizing. Because, again, it’s seeing people in this field as this one-dimensional magical people who can go in, do their job, work long hours with little pay and then with little sleep, and come back and do it all over again.

And so that’s what inspired me to create these stories. And in the process of thinking about how to tell these stories, one thing I wanted to show was how much touch was a prominent part of direct-care work.

And by touch, I mean specifically in my memories of the work and the work that my father and stepmother did, a lot of the people we cared for couldn’t speak or couldn’t speak in a way where they could be fully understood. And so I had to rely on touch a lot to make sure that their needs were met.

Like for the work I did, it included everything—so helping people get dressed and undressed, helping them with eating, using the bathroom, showering, going about their day, engaging in social activities. It was very much a hands-on experience. And so I had to calibrate touching in that kind of work so that I knew the person was comfortable.

It’s hard to explain. But I would like to tell my stories in a way that centers touch more so than I’ve seen other stories do it. Because it’s such an important part of direct-care work.

Heather Min:
And how are you doing that in your work? Because I understand you want the reader of this new collection to palpably get that sense of this mode in your storytelling as well. What have you figured out in terms of getting that across?

Ebony Flowers:
So that’s why I’m here. I was here at Radcliffe to figure that part out because I really had no idea how to start that out. And so prior to coming to Radcliffe, I worked a little bit with an artist named Anne Cunningham. So I’m based out in Denver. And she is based in Golden, Colorado, which is very close to Denver.

So we were able to meet up a few times. And so she does a lot of bas-relief sculpture. And she also was the art teacher for the Colorado School for the Blind. And so she’s done a lot of tactile art making with them. And then also she’s constructed a lot of picture books specifically for blind and low-vision readers.

And so I was lucky enough to have someone like Anne 20 minutes away. [Laughs] She’s super open and responsive. And so we met up a few times to talk about tactile picture making and the possibilities in comics with that. And so I had a kind of a seed of an idea of how to begin that and flying over to Radcliffe to do this work.

And so I’ve focused mainly on how I could manipulate the page to incorporate tactile images into the storytelling. And for comics, I think it’s uniquely positioned to handle the weight of tactile storytelling because storytelling through comics involves both pictures and words. There’s a manipulation of the page that doesn’t necessarily happen when you’re writing straight prose or in poetry.

And by manipulating the page, I mean that when you look at a page of comics, you don’t necessarily read from left to right, top down. It really depends on how the cartoonist has designed a page to guide you through the storytelling that happens.

And so I was just like, well, if you can manipulate the page in that way and how the reader will look at the page, I think you can also do it with how the reader can touch the page. And so for folks out there who do artwork on a regular basis, what I’ve been experimenting with is linocuts and running them through a push press. So what printmakers use to do their printmaking, I’ve been using it to emboss pages.

And then also I’ve been incorporating aspects of the book arts—so paper folding and trying to manipulate the page in a way where folding the page will give you another sense of how a story unfolds. And I know this is super abstract. And this is a podcast. Actually, it’s hard to probably envision what this means. But I want to incorporate page foldings and embossing so that it opens up storytelling in a more three-dimensional way.

Ivelisse Estrada:
So like a pop-up book that’s embossed?

Heather Min:
Yes.

Ebony Flowers:
In a way, yes. A pop-up book that’s embossed. So that’s aspects of it. And then also how the book opens up unto itself. And so the panels are not necessarily on one page or on one plane. That they’re on multiple planes.

Heather Min:
I can’t wait.

Ebony Flowers:
Neither can I. [Laughs] I’ve been lucky enough to be here at Radcliffe with my research partners thinking about this deeply and making this happen. And I have a good foundation in moving forward and taking this back to Denver with me and sharing this with other folks—so with Anne and then folks at the Colorado School for the Blind to see if this is a viable way moving forward not only in my own storytelling, but also in teaching tactile comics and that process to people who don’t make comics.

Ivelisse Estrada:
And will braille be incorporated into?

Ebony Flowers:
So I have used braille. But with my understanding and talking to people who are blind or have low vision, most people don’t read braille. I think it’s very—I don’t know the exact percentage. But it’s like 10 percent maybe.

Heather Min:
Yeah, I read that as well.

Ebony Flowers:
Yeah.

Heather Min:
Smartphone.

Ebony Flowers:
It’s super small. And so I will say that I don’t know if braille is the most efficient way of creating a tactile comic. I think that it will be an incorporation of audio with the tactile aspects to it. I think with just what I’ve heard, people prefer audio over tactile. Touch is not a prominent form of learning across the board.

If you’re blind or have low vision, or if you are not and you have 20/20 vision, tactile touch is just something that’s schooled out of most people probably in kindergarten. Like in preschool, you start learning how to sit in a circle. And you have to have your elbows out. And it’s like elbow-distance apart.

And prior to that, if you ask a group of three- or two-year-olds to sit down, it’s kind of this tumbling action that happens. Touch is such an amazing aspect to learning for early-childhood education. And I’m not sure why, but it gets completely schooled out. So that by the time you’re in middle school or high school, definitely by high school you’re like, don’t touch me.

All:
[LAUGHTER]

Heather Min:
I feel like we could talk to you all day.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Yeah.

Heather Min:
Thank you.

Ivelisse Estrada:
But we should probably wrap it up.

Heather Min:
Yeah.

Ivelisse Estrada:
You have places to be.

Heather Min:
Thank you so much.

Ebony Flowers:
Yeah. Thank you.

Heather Min:
The BornCurious podcast is brought to you by Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Ivelisse Estrada:
Thanks for joining us. You can find BornCurious wherever you listen to podcasts. And to learn more about Harvard Radcliffe Institute—

Heather Min:
Visit radcliffe.harvard.edu.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

*In listening to the audio, Heather Min noticed that the musical group she mentions was actually the trio from Atlanta, TLC, and not the duo from Queens, Salt-N-Pepa, that is referenced in Ebony Flowers's story.