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Bingo Love <3

by Tee Franklin

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About the Author

Tee Franklin, author of Bingo Love and Jook Joint, is a Black, gay, disabled comic book writer. Franklin is the first Black woman to be hired by Image Comics, and she hopes to pave the way for more marginalized comic creators. She helps amplify Black comic creators through the hashtag #BlackComicsMonth.

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Summary of Bing Love:

Franklin writes about unconventional topics such as romantic love at an old age, mental health, and Queerness all through the perspective of Black characters. Bingo Love is by Tee Franklin and art by Jenn St-Onge follows two female protagonists, two adorable queer ladies, over the age of 50. The story is about Hazel Johnson and Mary McCray who fall in love in their teens, but due to societal pressures, family, and religion, they are forced apart. They grow up, live their lives as straight women, get married, and have children, but encounter one another later in life. Bingo Love highlights X’s theory of queer time, meaning that Hazel and Mari live unconventional lives together. All of their “firsts” that many experience in relationships in their teenage years, Hazel and Mari experience at an old age. Franklin does a great job of portraying not just beautiful, romantic queer relationships, she also exels at portraying older queer love as sexy.

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The Power of Art:

The topic of mental health is an important one for Franklin and it makes its way in her stories. In an interview for SYFY WIRE about her new graphic novel Jook Joint, she discusses mental health issues and the power of art: “I’m disabled and music and writing actually have saved my life. I was very depressed and even suicidal. When you’re in pain 25/8, it's all you think about, and I didnt wanna be around any more. I didn’t want to live anymore, but my therapist—she wanted me to basically take my pain and just get it out and write it. So between the music and the writing, it just...everything just spilled out of me. While this book [Jook Joint]  was cathartic for me, I’m hoping that those who are suffering from ptsd and who have been—who are survivors of domestic violence like myself, I’m hoping that they’ll have some kind of relief of seeing all the bad guys axed and tortured. I don't know, but it works for me” (SYFY WIRE, 6:07 - 7:08).

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Analysis:

In Bing Love, for example, Franklin explores queerness within the family and the ways in which traditional family values and queerness are in opposition, affecting the mental health of her characters. However, the graphic novel not only addresses these issues, it also subverts the idea of the perfect Christian family by carving a space for a new kind of family with new values.

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Queer love as pure and innocent:

We are first introduced to Hazel and Mari in the 1960s, when they are teens. As we know from history, the 60s were not only hostile to Black folks, but it was hostile towards queer people as well, so as a queer Black woman in this era, Hazel subverts homophobia when she views her love for Mari as pure and innocent.

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One:

Two:

Three:

However, Franklin explores what it means to be queer and Black within christian families. Queer love is seen as both a sin and a poor reflection of the family. In the first two panels, we see Hazel and Mari’s mother and grandmother reinforce the hostility that is directed towards queer people by calling their love a sin. In the second panel, we see the way that the hostility is carried through later in life, with Hazel’s daughter, claiming that her mother is “ruining the family.”

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Hazel grows up and is encouraged by her father to marry a man and live a conventional, heteronormative life. Due to this life forced upon her, Hazel represses her sexuality so deeply, she now believes loving a woman is “wrong” when, as a teenager, she did not hold those opinions.

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This takes us to the next important theme in Bingo Love. As Hazel is grappling with Mari coming back to her life again after 30+ years of being apart, and confronting the reaction from her family as they find out that their mother is Biexual, Hazel visits her psychiatrist. The representation of therapy as a tool for the BIPOC community is powerful as this resource is not utilized nor readily available to many. Therefore, seeing Hazel work through her experience in a setting that is safe is powerful.

Her psychiatrist helps her work through her internalized ideas of queerness as wrong, and affirms her identity. This helps Hazel be confident in her queerness, accept Mari’s love, and build a big, beautiful and accepting family.

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I Exist! and How Do You Translate Non-Binary?

by Breena Nuñez

Breen Nuñez is an Afro Guatemalan-Salvadoran cartoonist who “creates diary comics that often explore themes surrounding the awkwardness of racism, being a queer Afrodescendiente from the Bay Area, and understanding what it means to be Central American from the US. Their hope as a cartoonist & educator is to help BIPOC folks give themselves permission to express their personal stories through the language of comics.”

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Breena Nuñez’ illustrated work also represents the intersections between queerness, race, and mental health. In their website, Nuñez speaks about discovering their Blackness as a Salvadorian and Guatemalan queer person. They explore these different identities in multiple web graphics. In I Exist!, Nuñez asserts their Afro-Salvadoran identity. They embark on a journey to find the history of her Black ancestors who lived in El Salvador.  As a Guatemalan, Nuñez finds themselves questioning their indigeneity and what that means for her personal history in their web graphic Being Half Guatemalan. While much of their research is based on historical documentation and speaking with scholars and artists, part of searching one's identity is done in therapy. Conceptualizing what these intersecting identities and histories mean is a complex and difficult process, which is why decolonizing therapy is essential.

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Afrochapinaca

Interview for Prime Vice

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Nuñez begins this web graphic by describing their therapy session as exhausting, which should never be the case. Many BIPOCs and queer, non-binary folks find themselves feeling this as they constantly have to educate and explain to others their reality. Nuñez finds themselves in the same situation while talking to their therapist. This experience is an important one to represent because therapy can also be an unsafe space, specially for queer people of color. The depiction of the therapist, to me, represents the ways in which therapy has been colonized. The frameworks in psychology and in the medical field need to be reworked and decolonized so that those who are marginalized have a space where they can explore and make sense of their identity. Nuñez, who is an Afro-LantinX, is exhausted to have to do the work to decolonize and explain themselves in a space where it should be meant to feel (and be) safe, where they should feel supported and get the help they need. This web graphic is a sharp contrast to the scene in Bingo Love, where the audience sees Hazel with her therapist who is of color, helping her work through her experiences.

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In How Do You Translate Non-Binary?, Nuñez demonstrates their experience with therapy as a queer Black person. They are sitting in front of their therapist, who remains a dark shadow, not telling the audience their identity except for the fact that she is a cis-hetero woman. Nuñez states that “[they] tried going to therapy for the first time last year” and that “it was helpful until it grew to be exhausting” for them. The reason for this exhaustion soon becomes obvious. Nuñez’ therapist is questioning Nuñez’ definition of gender queer/non-binary.

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Nuñez spends a couple of panels explaining where their ideas of non-binary come from, all which are non-western. Once they are done explaining, the therapist’s inability to understand these non-western definitions of gender indicate that she may be white.

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Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O'Connell

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Summary

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me is about Freddy Riley, who is in a toxic relationship with Laura Dean. After her partner has broken up with and cheated on her multiple times, Freddy states that “[she is] actively aware that [her] nonprofessional advice-giving friends are struggling to muster sympathy for [her] increasingly ridiculous situation” (32) and is looking for a more “professional,” or perhaps a different point of view, of her situation, which is why she writes to Ann Vice, a relationship columnist. Freddy asks Ann for help in how to navigate her relationship with Laura Dean. Freddy seeks Ann’s help because Laura Dean constantly cheats on her, gaslights her when Freddy wants to have conversations about their relationship, breaks up with her, and then emotionally manipulates her back into the relationship. Laura Dean holds all of the power in the relationship, and Freddy does not know how to assert herself and have her needs met. She might have never learned the tools to recognize what toxic and unhealthy relationships look like in the queer context.