BY Professor Monica Chiu, English Department, UNH

Ethnographic cartooning is a humanistic practice. Through interpersonal engagement, a storyteller and an artist work in partnership to make sense of the former’s experiences of immigration and emigration, of adjustment, longing, and perhaps the prolonged and painful absence of remote family members. In assembling for publication a collection of comics documenting members of New Hampshire’s Indonesian American communities, we learn what they value and what the larger non-Indonesian community might share with them.

The community gatherings featured here, and their productive ends are both the point and the start of Drawing Together. In two comics workshops organized (one in Somersworth in February 2022, and one in Dover, August 2022), over fifty Indonesian Americans participated, including children and their parents or guardians. From the second workshop, a (Xeroxed) book of comics drawn by artists pre-Kindergarten to high school and beyond, under the direction of workshop leader Bennett. 

Drawing Together unites participants over difficult stories about emigration and immigration, many such narratives still invisible to the wider New Hampshire community. The embedded comics example below—drawn by Bennett as one early drafted page of an emerging comic about Indonesian American resident Timothy—demonstrates how comics effectively communicate in a unique manner. Narrative, image, panels and pages, fonts, chronology (or lack thereof), bodily representation, motion or stasis on the page—these basic elements of the medium of comics all provide ample insight into how an autographic (cartoon) avatar thinks, feels, reacts, is injured, heals, or continues to face challenges. 

Drawing Together is both public engagement and public scholarship. The generated archive of collected cartoons will assist others not only in discovering communities in NH that have been invisible, but also will highlight pulse points around specific topics, such as race and ethnicity in

NH, and related topics about race and refugees, asylum and ongoing anxiety. Through the social and haptic process of gathering, talking, and drawing, we become active agents of cultural content made publicly available for education and to encourage other arts-based community projects.

This project was made possible by a grant from UNH - Center for the Humanities

From: David Ryan
Date: Wed, Mar 24, 2021 at 3:34 PM
Subject: Respecting All Human Differences in SAU16

Good afternoon:

As we continue to emerge from the grip of this pandemic, I wanted to refresh your understanding of our commitment to providing opportunities for students to thoughtfully explore conversations and make sense of events involving race and culture in the safety and security of a public school classroom. There have been several violent events that have taken place around the globe in the past few weeks, and no doubt you have seen or heard the tragic news of the recent Atlanta spa shootings in which 8 people died just one week ago. Spurred by anti-Asian bias and disdain for another culture, the growing number of anti-Asian attacks during this pandemic should cause us great concern, particularly as we embolden our students, staff, and families to embrace the core values contained within our work in advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in our schools and community. To address this concern and inform our educators about resources that are available to them, we shared the following from two of our DEIJ committee members with them last week and we wanted to share with you as well:

As an anti-racist, it is our obligation to call out racism when we hear and see it. As you can see, our anti-racism work is so very critical to building a better, more loving future for us all. In moments such as these, we are often confused about what we can do. Here is some action steps for us all to take:

*Check-in with your Asian-American friends and family*

1. Educate Yourself. Here are some resources to educate yourself about anti-asian violence and a history of anti-asian oppression in America. 

2. Educate Others. We need to teach our students, communities, colleagues, friends and family about the beautiful diversity of our Asian American communities and begin to build a compassionate understanding of Asian American identities. 

3. Donate to organizations that are fighting anti-Asian racism and violence. 

4. Report violence against Asian Americans if you see something. 

5. Read: Minor Feelings, If They Came for Us,  The Farm, The Joy Luck Club, Arrival,  Dear Girls,  Interior Chinatown,  Know My Name, In the Country, The Woman Warrior

6. Learning for Justice toolset to be used as an age appropriate guide if students are engaging in conversations about this topic including conversations and stories about the reasons for bias, examples of micro-aggressions, and common injustices. 

As always, teachers know their students well and continue to practice professional judgment in using these tools. We are committed to preparing all of our students to be global citizens and in that mission lies the core value of helping each of them develop their vision for the world at their own pace and how they want to fit into it. In respecting all human differences, students will have a more true vision of what needs to be in order for that to happen. 

Please visit our DEIJ page often for more information and resources on this work.