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Episode 439: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Paul Peart-Smith Bring a Graphic Interpretation of “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States” to Life
507 Plays24 days ago
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Paul Peart-Smith talk about how and why graphic interpretations are such a powerful vector for storytelling. Roxanne's An Indigenous People's History of the United States is a must-read and Paul's rendering is the perfect gateway in.
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Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Intro & Conference Promotion
00:00:00
Speaker
ACNFers, I'm gonna hold some space here for the 2025 Power of Narrative Conference held on the final weekend of March at Boston University. I struck up a promotional partnership, a promotional exchange with them, and there will be a discount for enrollment for podcast listeners coming soon. I went several years ago, and I'm very excited to attend again. And if you're a journalist, it's pretty friggin' awesome.
Historical Context of Current Events
00:00:29
Speaker
But the thread that I came by is was um war. that That's really what happened, you know, what's happening in Palestine right now. It's genocide and war. And so once I had that thread, then I traced it back. Where did this thread come from? How did the United States get formed and how, you know, how does settler colonialism work?
00:01:04
Speaker
Oh hey, seeing efforts, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. Good for me. Today.
Book Celebration & Graphic Interpretation
00:01:14
Speaker
A week before Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, I thought it apropos to celebrate Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz's indigenous people's history of the United States, but more specifically, Paul Peart Smith's graphic interpretation of Roxanne's seminal 2014 book published by Beacon Press.
00:01:35
Speaker
Paul's renderings are stunning, kinetic, raw. And you read the book and you realize the brutal genocidal nature of settler colonialism on which this country was founded.
00:01:48
Speaker
Frankly, it's impossible not to read this book and not look at Gaza and see the exact playbook being implemented. Go read Runna Nator and Eman Mohammed out of his piece from a few months ago, conversation on this very show about ah just a sliver of the carnage playing out in Gaza.
00:02:08
Speaker
So these histories are the kinds of books we need to read. These are the real histories, not airbrushed or sanitized versions, so first graders can dress up in headdresses made of construction paper. In my opinion, to be the best American or the best person you can be, you need to stare down the barrel of these histories, feel your feels, and then figure out a way to help the oppressed.
00:02:34
Speaker
That can shake out in any number of ways. I'm still figuring it out. In a capitalistic society, that might mean supporting ah businesses from marginalized communities. In my case, I can platform writers and artists who might not get as much attention on, say, some of the more mainstream shows. Listen, it ain't much, but in the spirit of camping, I'm trying to leave my site better than I found it.
00:03:04
Speaker
It's not nothing, it's not great, but it's not nothing.
Community Engagement & Opportunities
00:03:10
Speaker
For those of you who love a good double negative, show notes to this episode and more at BrendanOmero.com. Hey, there you can read, blog posts, or sign up for the monthly rage against the algorithm newsletter, book recommendations, book raffles if you're on the email list. The exclusive CNFN happy hour is gonna return soon. I know you've been waiting for it. First of the month, no spam as far as I can tell. You can't beat it.
Paul Peart Smith's Career Overview
00:03:36
Speaker
So Paul, he is a comics artist and writer for 30 plus years whose work has appeared in 2000 AD, horrible histories, Marvel UK and Sony games. His keen interest in culture and politics led to his creator-owned graphic novel, One Plus One. He has adapted WEB the bb W. E. B. Du Bois' Souls of Black Folk, as a graphic novel for Rutgers University Press, and his latest adaptation, An Indigenous People's History of the United States, is published by Beacon Press. Paul's biweekly newsletter, The Ink Skull, promotes mental health and the best of comics and other
00:04:18
Speaker
arts he currently lives with his family in Tasmania, Australia.
Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz's Background
00:04:23
Speaker
And Roxanne, she grew up in Oklahoma, has been active in international indigenous movements for more than four decades. She's the author and editor of seven other books, a few memoirs, but you know, of course,
00:04:37
Speaker
This is the book that you associate her name with in Indigenous People's History of the United States in this conversation. Let's face it. Both need to come back on their own individually.
Crafting the Narrative Thread
00:04:50
Speaker
We're about to talk about hard-won advice, how Roxanne finally found the through line for her book, and how Paul selected the right scenes in sections to draw, because he had to distill a lot of information into a tiny package. Great stuff, CnEffers. So let's get after it with a riff.
00:05:17
Speaker
like one of the things that you wish you had when you were starting out as an artist was an experienced mentor and Someone to pick you up when it seemed like you would never land a paid gig And I wonder just maybe you can take us back to that to that headspace of of what it's like You know be it a writer or an illustrator a comic artist of trying to get that that necessary traction when they when you're just really frustrated and you're banging your head against the wall and Yeah well you know you go from reading this stuff growing up and sort of imagining these heroic characters sort of sitting and and creating this stuff once you realize that they're actually created by people
00:06:00
Speaker
And I started off like many kids in comics sort of reading, you know, Marvel and DC stuff. And the Marvel backstory, the sort of like the kind of as a kind of meta narrative that was running behind each story was that there was a whole bunch of creators who were having a great time in this place called the ball pen, which was in my mind anyway, located within the ah basement of Marvel Studios, Marvel headquarters. You just got this sense that there was a, you know, there was a real sort of energy creating
Challenges in the Comic Industry
00:06:44
Speaker
this stuff. But of course, when you are sort of sitting in London or wherever you may be as a kid and thinking, okay, I want to do this, it's tricky to figure out where that
00:06:57
Speaker
how you can access that energy, yeah access that that that sort of but team, that group camaraderie that that ah that you see in ah in the book. So um I just toiled away in my room drawing and um hoping that somehow I would get seen and it was only through meeting other cartoonists who were hoping the same thing and then attending comics conventions
00:07:33
Speaker
where you get to actually see the human beings behind these books and and meet them and and get advice from them and see a way forward that it begins to become real, you know? There are many times, I mean, it's it's a strange industry to be in because it doesn't really have a place in the ordinary world, you know, when you fill in a form for some mundane, whatever it may be.
00:08:01
Speaker
And they ask you your profession. You never see comics artists down there. you never see anything ah You barely ever see anything like Illustrator. If you're in the arts, you're kind of outside of society. So you have to create an identity for yourself, which you have to hold on to despite reality saying that what you do doesn't exist, you know?
00:08:26
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's a a tricky place to be in when the when the it feels like the the road isn't well paved for for you. Right. And you're really just kind of bushwhacking going through and trying to trying to find and blaze your own trail which is can be ah you know energizing once you get to the other end and you can kind of see the wreckage of your body of work behind you. But it's ah until you get to that point it's like you you feel like you're going blind and a lot Yeah and that that feeling actually even if you get some measure of success doesn't really disappear because you always are trying to move forwards. You're hoping that when you look back at your previous stuff that you don't feel that it's better than what you're doing now and you are trying to
00:09:20
Speaker
sort of light your own way. You know, you've got a little torch. It's dark out there. And it's not even torches Atlanta. So you just got this little area of light around you and you just keep stepping forwards and hoping that you're moving in the right direction. And that never ends if you're doing it right. So yeah, it's, ah it's sometimes really useful. I found it very useful. I was very lucky. I managed to meet some some artists who were further along in their development and than I was. And they were able to give me encouragement and and just its just a way forward, just model what it would be like um to be a functioning artist. And and it just it just gives you a little bit of, it it you know, you look into that darkness, you see another little lantern going along and you think, okay, um I'm okay.
Roxanne's Writing Journey
00:10:19
Speaker
Absolutely. and Roxanne, similarly, you when you were getting your your start as ah as a young writer and in scholar, you know what were some of the the struggles that you experienced as you were looking to similarly gain you know traction in your field and in mastery? Well, you know i I thought i I always wanted to be a writer. I loved books when I was um from when i was a child. and I wanted to do that, and so I i was lucky. You know, i I grew up in a very rural, um small place in central Oklahoma, and we didn't have very good teachers. They were sometimes just out of teacher's college or even still in college, but we did have um
00:11:10
Speaker
wonderful um English teachers, writing writing teachers in high school, not not so much in grade school. And so I just um ah was encouraged to write. We had to write a lot. We had to write papers. We had to write ah read books and write you know, kind of summarize them. And um so I just started learning to write when I was very young. And my mother, um who's just, you know, really a farm, you know
00:11:46
Speaker
just not educated, she went to the eighth grade. But she was she was a great writer. She wrote gossip columns for the local papers. So I would see her writing, you know, she had this big callus on her middle finger because she wrote with a pencil and on big yellow, you know, tablets. And so I was also an asthmatic and sick a lot and home a lot, even from school.
00:12:16
Speaker
I would sit there watching her, you know, write and write and write and write. And so it just, and then my oldest brother was ah a, um he got more into oral, you know, history and speaking than writing, but he was a very good writer and he taught me how to write and ah read ah before I went to school.
00:12:43
Speaker
So like when I was four years old and I just wanted to be a writer and I didn't really know how you did that. i I said I wanted to be a journalist because I didn't really know how to be a writer. I knew that people had jobs when they were journalists, but writers really don't have jobs. And ah so, but I was lucky enough to ah be encouraged um went to San Francisco State moved to California. I was encouraged by my when I was graduating by my, ah you know, the professor who was in charge of me. um He insisted I go to graduate school, I hadn't intended to go to graduate school at all by that time I was married and
00:13:33
Speaker
you know, I just um hadn' ah just wanted to learn, you know, go to college and I didn't. And so he he just insisted. So I went to UC Berkeley and ah then transferred to UCLA and you had to write a lot in history, you know, it was just, so I learned to write academically.
00:13:56
Speaker
and published you know a lot of academic books. And I decided in 1989, I got very, very sick with pneumonia and then asthma and was in bed a lot. I had to take a break from teaching. I had been you know ah teaching at a university.
00:14:17
Speaker
and um I really couldn't do anything. And so I just started writing, literary writing, where I didn't have to deal with books or anything, just what was in my mind. And I just fell in love with it. So I started going to ah joining writing workshops for a couple of years, just constantly. And then I got a ah master's in fine art fine arts and creative and creative writing.
00:14:48
Speaker
I had already had a PhD I really didn't need in this degree. you know But I got going and I said, well, ah they said, you should just go ahead and you don't get the degree. I just wanted to be in writing workshops. So I got that degree. And then I i i i wrote ah three literary memoirs over a period of so seven years, yeah, three books and published and so that's really how then i I got into literary writing and then Beacon Press asked me if I would care to take take a look at maybe writing in this series they were doing on different
00:15:39
Speaker
peoples in the United States, different groups of people. They had already done an Afro-American history of the United States, so they wanted me to do an indigenous peoples history of the United States. And I thought, oh, here I am back in academia. I said, no, no, no, this isn't academic. You know, it has to be a literary. So that was um you know, that's then the book. The only book of mine that has been a bestseller on the New York Times or been more than one printing, it's had multiple printings, gone into, all you know, now this graphic novel. So, ah I mean, it's really um what I really like to do, you know, sit down and write every day.
00:16:32
Speaker
I love well you know reading, I believe it's in the introduction to the source text, that you lived with the book for six years, you know starting over something like a dozen times before settling on a narrative thread.
Writing Challenges & Breakthroughs
00:16:46
Speaker
So maybe take us to that headspace, because that's ah that that starts and stops can be very ah discouraging to a lot of writers. And I imagine you experienced that too, but you had the endurance to keep to persevere and to find that thread.
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah, I really really wrote so many, you know, the first one I wrote was like came out to about 1500 pages. And um I knew it was, it was, um it was just not right. And i I knew I had to find a thread to go through the book to write a literary academic book, you know, it's a serious, serious book. ah It's not, you know, it's not just literary, it's ah also research-based, but that the research shouldn't be too heavy. you know I mean, there are quite a few footnotes, but not as much as in a ah general academic book. And I i i realized it was boring. you know It was just, this happened, and then this happened, and this happened. and
00:17:56
Speaker
And I had already written some academic books and they they weren't like that, but somehow this was such a huge, seemed like such a huge project. How could I do a 300 page book in the whole history of the United States from its founding and from the point of view of indigenous peoples? So, you know, i the reason the editor at Beacon called on me as I had been actually an activist in many things, many movements you know since the 60s. But I got kind of pulled into um supporting the Native American movement and ended up you know helping form um a process for um indigenous peoples at the United Nations.
00:18:53
Speaker
you know and And so it's it's part activist and also writing a lot, but writing ah short pieces. And then I did write a book called Indians of the Americas. That was in 1981.
00:19:09
Speaker
one So then I started trying to write a history of the United States. And I just, on my own, you know, without a contract without, before I was asked to, and this,
00:19:24
Speaker
I couldn't find a thread in, so I kind of gave it a, wrote a hundred pages and gave it up, and then I wrote the memoirs. But the thread that I came by is was um war. that That's really what happened, you know, what's happening in Palestine right now. It's genocide and war. And so once I had that thread, then I traced it back.
00:19:52
Speaker
Where did this thread come from? How did the United States get formed and how, you know, how does that or colonialism work? And Paul, when you were reading the, you know, reading the source text and what is it about, you know, graphic nonfiction and yeah in in in comics that ah that makes such an ah an effective vector for the storytelling?
00:20:18
Speaker
Well I think it's the combination of words and pictures of course. It's it's ah akin to the way that music works on people. There's a kind of a subconscious and conscious effect of experiencing that art form you know you've got the the images that hit you in the heart the words that hit you in the head and then the sort of combination of the two sort of playing off each other creating different sensations and also imparting information
00:20:52
Speaker
it's It's a very powerful brew. And it's also a one to one experience as well. You know, you don't read these things yeah in a group. You know, you're you're sat having a direct relationship.
00:21:06
Speaker
with the with the material in the same way that you would with a book. I've always felt this, you know even when I was drawing guys in in tights hitting each other, um that you know the the the medium itself is much more powerful than that.
00:21:24
Speaker
don't get me wrong I mean that that's an entertaining side of the of the medium but um it's by no means its limit and we're just really beginning to scratch the surface of how this this powerful medium can be used um to shape and change the way that we think about the things that we've really taken for granted. I mean, looking this this book looks at history and makes it new again, makes it real again.
00:21:59
Speaker
And I think right now, as Roxanne mentioned, it's just so important to realise that we've always been here, that we've always had this this quality within us that can sort of descend into savagery for what we think are high and lofty reasons, but really it's just based fear and fear turning to aggression. And we've always been here, you know, we, you know, we haven't evolved or or if we're evolving, of course it's a very slow process and we're not that far away from the events of our book.
00:22:44
Speaker
And what was the, yeah speaking of comic characters and tights, ah though the spidey sense that kind of goes off in your, that went off in your head when you would come across a passage from Roxanne's book and you're like, oh, this this
Intuition in Graphic Novel Adaptation
00:22:58
Speaker
moment really lends itself to that visual interpretation. yeah it's um It is literally that. It is literally a kind of an intuition that I could really ah can see it in my head. you know you It's a brilliantly written book. So there are many, many images that are suggested. And you know I had to edit through to the ones that I thought that would personify a certain period in the book.
00:23:30
Speaker
you know, across the period, across the period of time that we're talking about. We're talking about, you know, centuries of of war and and and human interactions. So, you know, I had to pick and choose the ones that I thought would be the most powerful and it would work narratively as ah as ah as a comic book.
00:23:50
Speaker
But yeah, it's literally that is that I'm sure that if, you know, if another artist saw the red, the same you know material that they would perhaps pick out other other moments, it's it's what resonates with me. And I thought that I could do a good job with, you know.
00:24:06
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it is. the The visuals are really brilliant and evocative in the like you know just the the way you bring it. It brings it to life in a way that I think is just brilliantly effective. and it's ah So in terms of your own your your style and how you arrived at your artistic voice on on the on the page, but how did you arrive at your particular style and how did that you know lend itself to to to this particular project?
00:24:37
Speaker
I'm very agnostic about my style. ah I think other people can see my style much more clearly than I can. i try I really try to relate to the material the best way I can and I don't really set any rules for myself as to how I approach things.
00:25:00
Speaker
um So for this particular project, I actually spent quite a lot of time thinking about how I was approaching.
Artistic Discovery in Graphic Novels
00:25:09
Speaker
In fact, you know, even as I was in the depth of the the actual producing the artwork,
00:25:16
Speaker
I was still having decisions to make about, you know, is this, does this serve this well? Am I getting this bit right? Am I? And so it's really ah is a sort of a voyage of discovery each each project. I haven't really got to that stage where I'm just sort of like I've got a bunch of tricks and I keep playing them. you know im And I'm not actually criticising that way of of producing because there is a side of comics which is very much this is a cottage industry where you know you've got to hit your deadlines and you've got to
00:25:57
Speaker
you know you've got to produce and also there's a kind of a there is a ah benefit to having a smooth way of producing stuff so that when you read it you don't really even feel the hand of the artist involved you're just reading the that but is completely valid but for me I guess i never got rid of the sort of art school side of me that really wants to find it find a new way of sort of like of of of relating to whatever it is that I'm doing and trying to find a new way to actually make that powerful for the person reading it. This is a long-winded way of saying I kind of discovered my way through the project.
00:26:42
Speaker
And em Roxanne, I love in the author's note of, you know, the original book, you know, you you write in the very first paragraph, the final sentence is like, you know, the the genesis of this book was going to come from outside the Academy.
Writing History from a New Perspective
00:26:54
Speaker
And, you know, that speaks to the narrative thrust ah of the thing and that it isn't academic. And a so like what do you make of, say, the American education or the United States educational system where maybe some of the most formative, the most honest in ah of of histories has to come from books of this nature that are in fact outside ah the yeah the academy, as you write? Yeah, I think for me, you know, having gone through graduate school,
00:27:30
Speaker
but already really deeply um involved with stories, you know, telling stories. And I love novels. I love fiction. I always have a book of fiction going at every, you know, all the time, ah whatever I'm doing. because it To me, that fiction writers, um sort of like artists, have, you know, they they have to compress things and not, you know, go into kind of boring details, but capture within language. And um because I went to graduate school, I really had to unlearn that a lot in writing this book. I practiced with the memoirs. It's easier when
00:28:19
Speaker
It's in the eye voice, you know, and I'm doing the memoir than when I'm not the, character you know, the main the character at all. I think that ah it it's,
00:28:33
Speaker
writing and reading is really important, but the visual, you know, this ah the extent to which I can um make it visual. in words, um and I think poets do that, you know, ah so it doesn't mean it can't be done. i i don't I'm not a poet, um I admire poets so much, i say you know, they get sort of worship poetry, and but I have learned from it how to be, and I think this is also when an adaptation um to visuals,
00:29:13
Speaker
is um I had some practice with this, with ah working with Ralph Peck on um Exterminate All the Brutes, his four-part HBO series a couple of years ago. And um that's the first time I ever worked with a script and how very few words, how he could take a whole concept that maybe is a whole chapter in my book. He was using my book as an adaptation and and with And with one ah sentence, capture it, you know, because he's a screenwriter. I didn't have that experience yet, you know, when I was writing an Indigenous People's History of the United States. But I did find it easier. It wasn't easy to take, you know, the script was, he took it from my book and a couple of other books, whole swaths of things, and he'd say,
00:30:10
Speaker
you know, take this maybe 500 page ah words, 500 words, and to one sentence, how to shrink that. And um so that's what I think the artist has to do ah visually, you know, is capture that. And the thing that I think, well, so many things about Paul's interpretation I think the thing that impresses me the most is how he uses darkness, because it is a dark story. And then at the end, how he uses, the you know, a light comes on. And so it's how to write tragedy without it being really seeing. um I like ah ah a lot of people in the United States really think of Indians as losers, Native Americans. They lost, you know, they lost. They never actually lost a war.
00:31:05
Speaker
You know, I tried to find a time when they lost a war. They never lost a battle. They never lost a war. But genocide is, you know, where they go in and kill the, you know, the women and children ah and and, you know, destroy their villages and homes. Not when, you know, in a confrontation, any real war fighting, they always lost.
00:31:35
Speaker
So they're at of you know they actually won by surviving. and So I think he captures that, um that darkness, darkness, it gets darker and darker and then kind of lights up again. And I think that that's really brilliant.
00:31:53
Speaker
And ah there's a ah quote at the the start of the introduction of the source source text from Willie Johns of the Brighton Seminole Reservation in Florida, where where he says, you know, we are here to educate, not forgive. We are here to enlighten, not accuse. And I think, you know, both of these, you know, the graphic interpretation and the source text and do exactly that. It in it it it enlightens us if we're open to to reading and having our sense of of the history of this country sort of rewire our brains a bit from what we were taught and as children. And um you know yeah i wonder I wonder for you Roxanne, it's just like why is it so hard for so for people to reckon with the actual like brutal history of this country's growth?
Reckoning with U.S. History's Brutality
00:32:41
Speaker
Yeah, you know, ah I think there's a under, you know, ah undercurrent of guilt. um But it's also, you know, a nation of immigrants, that's the next book I wrote. It's not a nation of immigrants, it's settler colonialism. But immigrants come, I mean, the main population is, ah you know, children of immigrants in the United States. And the old, um I'm from, you know, the original ah ugly settlers of Appalachia, Scots-Irish ah killers. you know and
00:33:20
Speaker
ah so it's it's But you know for for people to, ah they feel guilty. There's a lot of white guilt and wonderful people. I mean, that is just say Trump's people, they I don't think they have any guilt at all. but people who know any of these things, you know, and are not racist um or anti-racist, they really feel guilty about it. as They feel guilty about slavery, but guilt isn't a very productive um thing. It's acknowledgement and then how to um how to change that, you know, how to, um
00:34:01
Speaker
ah see that, you know, that really tried try to make a point. And of course, literature is an art, I think, are they were really the drivers of um mental change, of changing people's opinions and film, you know, that more than academic books are just because, they you know, they get kind of boring. This happened and this happened and this happened.
00:34:30
Speaker
So I think getting the passion, you know, passion into the story is, the I guess it's really what makes ah the graphic ah version, you know, the graphic novel as such, um so powerful. um I think Paul's, his next book, he he says his his next work is is um going to be Malcolm X. Isn't that right, Paul?
00:34:59
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and wow, what what that will be is so important and so timely. But I do think the text to work from, you know, the book, ah he's going to use Alex Haley's wonderful book, which is, you know, so so well written. There have been a lot of Malcolm biographies that are maybe better, but not so well you know, creative creatively written. So I think, especially because young people will get to, um a lot of young people have read my book. I was on constant up until the pandemic ah from 2014 to 2020.
00:35:45
Speaker
I was on the road with this book all the time. I i was i realized I was exhausted. The pandemic was a risk for me. um yeah I started doing everything remotely, and um but I was traveling and traveling and traveling. people I didn know the book is became a bestseller and no one can really see why that happened, but it wasn't it didn't get a single review, either academic or in any newspaper. I think there was one little piece by a friend of mine in the San Francisco Chronicle. It's strange how something catches on and people just tell Abby, you read this book. and
00:36:30
Speaker
um it It just rings a chord, you know, and um it it's surprised us all. You know, Beacon has, has you know, they they publish very serious books. They have, ah um they're owned by the Unitarian Church, and um so they they they have a passion, you know, for good books, but to, to and and they are, and they get used in,
00:36:59
Speaker
especially in courses, you know, university courses a lot. And then now they have children, you know, there is a young people's version of indigenous peoples. It's done very well too separately. And I'm hoping that the graphic novel will too, you know, really catch on. I think it i think it will. um It's already, I think,
00:37:27
Speaker
going out of you know this first printing. and So I can't even remember what you asked me.
00:37:36
Speaker
oh yeah it just yeah you you yeah You definitely yeah know touched touched on it. It's just kind of the idea of the yeah the way how just learning about the the real the real history that isn't this isn't in the textbooks that I certainly ah grew up with and was educated on. And then, you know, the you know just reckoning with, you know, the the real brutality and that guilt that you reference. And I i think a way to, yeah you can, like in a kind of a meditation practice, okay, note that guilt, okay, now what are you gonna do about it? and And in the back of your book, you've write you have dozens of books of suggested reading, which is a great place to
00:38:16
Speaker
start to educate yourself outside of the academy as we were saying a moment ago but also with what Paul's rendering of the book to this is like a really it's a way it's it's immersive in a way that I think will really I don't know break maybe break down people's barriers to start learning about this history and then they'll be like okay you know you know I'll pick up the ah Roxanne's book, if they don't already have it, and because Paul's greased the skids with what, you know, his beautiful rendering of your story is done, too. Yeah, they'll want to know more, right, and more details. I think, I think what I did that books on US history, they always have now, I mean, they didn't until, you know, the sort of
00:39:03
Speaker
uprisings in the 1960s where textbooks and history books were just sort of left out. ah it was They were really a white republic and, and you know, who was president and and and the the Civil War. During the, you know, I point out that during the Civil War there was a bloody massacres going on.
00:39:31
Speaker
in Illinois, you know, and in Minnesota, ah wars against Native people, the Dakota wars. And none of that is in, you know, the chapters on the Civil War period. It's not even in there, you know, it didn't happen. So it gets missed, you know, in anyone who's teaching the book. They don't even know it happened, so.
00:39:56
Speaker
And it blows my mind that Andrew Jackson is still on the $20 bill. Totally. I'm flabbergasted. Aren't they trying to replace him with Sojourner Truth or someone, you know. um I think not soldiering the truth, but Harriet or Harriet Tubman, one or the other. I think it's well, I think it no, they didn't choose to. It's the $10 bill or something. that's putting on It's really hard to get rid of Andrew Jackson. My gosh.
00:40:29
Speaker
but way and Paul, the the structure of ah of the book, you know you follow it's follow the corn, the promised land, the the white republic, Indian country, from discovery to sovereignty. And you're rendering and and taking, yeah know condensing as best you can, Roxanne's book. you know What was it about this structure that ah that resonated strongest?
00:40:52
Speaker
I just think to tell the whole story so far in the clearest way possible. i mean what i what i did was I took a bunch of notes, I took extracts from the book, um along with my research assistant, Dylan Davis, um and Paul Bull, and sort of worked out a a narrative structure based on excerpts from the book. And then I broke that down into pages. And then I drew those out as as a
00:41:31
Speaker
thumbnail, what we call a thumbnail, which is a small rough version of the final artwork. And so I could see and start to think about the visual translation of the work.
Balancing Darkness with Hope
00:41:45
Speaker
So that through that process, it was a kind of a natural editing of anything that seemed to be straying off the point.
00:41:55
Speaker
um and it had to work as a i in that thumbnail version that gave me a very strong path for then being able to get on with the with the final artwork. So yeah it was just like the And I also was I was mindful of trying to make sure that it was a book that had hope throughout all that darkness. It's really very gratifying to hear Roxanne describe the book in that way, that the adaptation in that way, because that's what I set out to do, to not shy away from the brutality in the horror, but also not to make this a horror book, you know,
00:42:40
Speaker
There had to be some sense of, there was, a redemption is too strong a word, but but a a a hope for the future and a kind of a read reinvigoration of the culture and a recapturing of of some of those territories. i mean um One of my favorite,
00:43:08
Speaker
parts of the book was the Black black Hills. Basically, the the Black Hills were held by, you know, it's worth thousands and thousands of dollars to to the state, to the United States. But the Sioux have refused to to take the money that was given to them or offered to them to to give away the Black Hills.
00:43:35
Speaker
and They've refused to take it and they're help holding on to it because it means more to them than the money that they're being offered. I love the idea that there's a kind of a reinvigoration of the of the soul of the people and the and and a real sort of strength to hold on that to their culture. And that had to come through in the book. So yeah, um the the the the path that I chose was basically one of Yeah, it's it's it's a story of redemption. It's a story of of a story of of coming through really horrible stuff. So yeah, I hope I chose the the the path that best illustrates that.
00:44:18
Speaker
Well, yeah, and then like the final the final panel of the book you know features the the closing ah you know passage from the Akoma poet, Simon Ortiz, and it's, The future will not be mad with loss and waste, though the memory will be there. Eyes will become kind and deep, and the bones of this nation will mend after the revolution.
00:44:39
Speaker
And i kind of i I just love the the sentiment of that, that it does take some breaking to rebuild, and things can come back together with the acknowledgement that ah the pair of you have have have brought to the fore. and that yeah So yeah, it it will mend, but there has to be this recognition of the breakage. Yeah, yeah. And I find it kind of incredible that this is still a controversial point of view. There are some people who still feel that this is inflammatory to talk about. It yeah seems strange to me because it is history and most of the time people who argue against what was it, a critical race theory and and and this sort of thing, of you know, basically looking at the
00:45:31
Speaker
the reality of the way that cultures have been imposed on people. I find it incredible that they that they want to ignore that that history. Because as I say, yeah, most of the time these people are sort of the same people who would say, look, we can't erase history. You can't knock down statues because that's an erasure of history. You can't, you know, start imposing, putting black people in movies long because somehow this is rewriting history. Well this is actual history.
00:46:07
Speaker
And I don't understand, and I don't see the advantage to ignoring it or wishing it away or rebranding it as some people have tried to, as the Europeans, as as just peaceful settlers who accidentally wiped out a load of people with disease. I mean, it's it's it's just counterproductive. As you say, we need to actually actually really see the way things have been.
00:46:36
Speaker
to realise that we're not that far away from it. um yeah and that whatever solutions we've come up with in the past in order to make things better, we need to be looking at them again. Yeah, yeah it's incredible to me that this is still controversial, but this this book is really important and and I'm glad that it exists. I'm glad that Roxanne's book exists and I'm glad that I was able to do this, this this adaptation of it.
Problematic Sports Team Names
00:47:10
Speaker
uh... absolutely and you know given that you know in in the u.s. you know the washington football team finally changed its name a couple times which they stuck with the football team versus going to commanders but as neither here nor there uh... you know cleveland baseball team changed its name and what struck me and i had no idea about this was the texas rangers in their responsibility in destroying indigenous towns eliminating native nations in texas ah pursuing ethnic cleansing. And here's a team that won the World Series. And I i just thought it was just kind of, oh, yeah, Texas outlaws, you know, that makes sense, Rangers. But I had no idea their culpability in the elimination of indigenous towns. I was like, more people need to know about that because that seems just as awful. as as the other names for the other teams. And i yeah frankly, I'd like to see that that one, a recognition of what that means, and then have it change, because that seems just yeah as as offensive, if not more so. Yeah, yeah yeah Ranger. ranger
00:48:12
Speaker
It's like cowboys and Indians. yeah i Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to be mindful of your time, Roxanne and Paul. And one of the one of the things I've been liking to and bring these types of conversations down for a landing is just to ask the guests, and you know in the pair of you in this case,
00:48:30
Speaker
of um ah some of the best advice in your in your writing or in the comic ah comic drawing that that you've received ah either from a cherished mentor or maybe just hard-earned advice from being in the in the mill for
Maintaining Artistic Integrity
00:48:45
Speaker
for decades. So I just extend that to you. What what is some of the best advice you've heard or learned from your own experience? You go first, Paul.
00:48:54
Speaker
say
00:48:57
Speaker
oh um What's the best advice that I've heard? I've come to understand, actually this is this is good, um Robert Crumb always said that every line is an act of will and what he meant was that the amount of concentration needed was that basically everything that you put down is really an expression of who you are and your point of view and
00:49:28
Speaker
the quicker you sort of realize that the quicker you realize that it's not necessarily about having a set of skills though a set of skills is useful but it's actually about having a point of view the better it is for you because you're not then relying on the sort of material results of what you do comics isn't like as everybody knows for most people comics isn't like a um a major money spinner And if you're looking to sort of buy your yacht based on comics, I mean, yeah you've got a lot of work to do. It's not all work to do, let's put it that way. So you really have got to put the value in expressing yourself to honing yourself to being the artist you want to be, to saying what it is that you want to say, to that is where you need to put your values. And I've found since I have
00:50:28
Speaker
adopted that way of thinking that it's just been it's actually paradoxically been ah much better for my career because I have a sort of a I have faith in my ability to to keep growing and keep learning and and and that's that's I think that's important advice to pass on to to especially to young artists who are sort of like worried about career and style and those sort of things they're not as important as being honest with yourself and really uh having a point of view hmm that's brilliant how about you Roxanne
00:51:14
Speaker
Well, I think there's some inevitability um that we don't really like to, we think we're making our own path and maybe failing or or succeeding or whatever. But I think we have, um less control over our lives than then we imagine that we do. that some things are I had a ah really good friend in my undergraduate years who's um ah greek a daughter of Greek em immigrants, very working class.
00:52:07
Speaker
a woman and as ah is I was in San Francisco State was pretty much a working class university at the time. and she She said everything um everything that happens happens as it has to from all of the steps that go before it. So it's important to be conscious what you're doing,
00:52:37
Speaker
because it's going to push you in some way or another, you know, that we ah maybe don't take ourselves seriously enough of how much damage we can do either to ourselves or to others to, you know, be really aware. And I think that writing um or art in general can really enhance that understanding, you know, that we're, um and film, you know, it can make us, you know, I mean, it's so powerful. I just saw the, um the movie, The Apprentice, and I think everyone should see it. It's quite brilliant. Some people thought it was too easy on Trump. It's Trump and and Cohen. Cohen taught him how to be a monster. And, but it's, it's actually very, um
00:53:34
Speaker
It humanizes them in the sense that they're, theyre ah how corruption works, you know and especially in a capitalist society. I think literature and art ah expressions really um are not very accessible to the majority of the population in the United States.
00:54:01
Speaker
um and that it's very purposeless i purpose purposeful, I think, um in the training to be um good citizens, you're not supposed to know too much.
00:54:20
Speaker
Awesome. Yes. All right, thanks thanks to Roxanne and Paul. That was a good one. Paul has a Malcolm X graphic book coming out. Roxanne has many memoirs. gotta to have them back this is this is cool and good stuff um okay so this this parting shot it kind of came out of nowhere I was gonna write about something else and then this kind of came up and I'm just gonna go with it I'm not looking for pity here I want to be right up front I'm gonna reiterate that at the end of this riff but I just want to say that right up top
00:54:52
Speaker
So can I share a little secret?
Podcasting Challenges
00:54:55
Speaker
It's quite dispiriting for me. I went back one year in terms of podcast downloads. A year ago, there was close to 12,000 downloads in the month of November, 2023. This month will have about 4,000.
00:55:11
Speaker
The graph is practically a direct lying down, like a fucking slope. I don't understand. This is a year where long form, sunsetted, and I'm getting more book pitches than ever before. You know, I understand people outgrow podcasts, like, been vocal about ones I've outgrown, and I understand people likely outgrow me. I'm an acquired taste, as you know.
00:55:38
Speaker
Or they just move on or they just don't like me. As you know, I'm not your classic literary podcaster. I'm way fucking cooler I've had some home run guests this year and the usual slate of great midlisters without feedback and I get so little feedback. My only feeling is that perhaps the election year had something to do with people's attention or perhaps people have grown fatigued with podcasts in general. There's too little time in the day and too many podcasts. yeah Maybe it's overwhelming to see a new one come out every single week and you feel like you have to keep pace and and if you can't you just give up.
00:56:19
Speaker
it's It's like the pile of New Yorkers that show up in your mailbox every week. It's like, God damn it. If I can just read the cartoons, I'll be happy. And they it reminds me of the scene in The Good Place where one of their torture rooms is just a New Yorker coming in like every 10 seconds and the dance's character's just like, they they just keep on coming. It's so true.
00:56:41
Speaker
It's dispiriting in that as as as many of you know if you listen this far in the show You're you're a true fan. I have a book coming out and my only platform to speak of is this podcast It's actually what made me attractive to my agent and my publisher So who knows if I'm gonna be fired from them when this is all said and done and So now the the very thing that made me attractive is just cratering. I mean, I've lost more than 60% of my audience from a year ago. Like, what changed? I know my approach hasn't changed. i Maybe that's the problem. I mean, i am I the problem?
00:57:18
Speaker
I get maybe one email a month from listeners saying that they like a particular conversation. that They got something out of it. They really like the repartee. The Mirren Fader one has actually gotten a couple. That one made me very uncomfortable, and I know Mirren, I think, hates me as a result of it. But people have reached out about that one, and like that one struck a chord with them, namely a biography and exploitation.
00:57:41
Speaker
So I know it hits for some, but that drop in audience would get a show canceled and then in any other market, but thankfully we're like a DIY punk rock show. those are the e That's the ethos of the show, we're independent. I know many of my guests rarely share their time on this show with their audiences. yeah I'm only on Instagram and i I don't see it. I notice it with my own eyes. I notice what I'm not noticing, let's say. They share their time on other podcasts, but for some reason they they don't share their time on this one.
00:58:15
Speaker
and They don't even like their own audiograms I post. I mean, why am I doing all this work? I mean, people get a notification when they're tagged, right? It all comes down to status, really. I've riffed on that before. And as the show's audience continues to crater, I can't exactly say they're going to sell 100 books for their time on the show, as much as you guys buy books. And I can't ask them and be like, hey, you know, I i keep noticing that you share all the other podcasts. Your onlay may ask why you don't share this one. It's like, you know why do i why am I bothering reading all your books cover to cover? and yeah Why do you even want to be on this show if, by all appearances, you're embarrassed or ashamed of your time here at CNF Pod HQ? Why are you wasting your time? I guess why are you wasting mine? It's wild. And like I said at the top of this parting shot, like I'm not asking for pity. I'm not looking for pity. It's it's just the the data.
00:59:11
Speaker
and it depresses the hell out of me. and It's not gonna stop me. I don't know what I'd do without it. I just like, compulsively, I'm like addicted to it. But it does make you question if people are getting anything out of it. and Maybe people don't care anymore, or maybe they only care about celebrity authors, or maybe they hate my voice, or my complaining, which i wouldn't I wouldn't, I wouldn't knock you for that. I do complain a lot, but I put it at the end of the show.
00:59:39
Speaker
You know, that's why. so And very few of you listen this far. Like, ah very few. I would say there's probably like a dozen who listen this far. So in any case, so that's the sad news. So stay wild, see you in Evers. And if you can't do Interview, see ya.