TOPIC: “ A storm of a girl silently gathering force - Peminist Girlhoods in the Comics of Trinidad Escobar and Malaka Gharib”

(forthcoming in Asian American Graphic Novels (2021) Ohio State UP, edited by Eleanor Ty)

In Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory (2005), I defined peminisms, or Filipina/American feminisms, as the gendered analysis of imperial trauma. (6) Twenty-first century Pinay writers engage with the themes of identity, family, colonial mentality, diasporan identities, sexuality, religion, education, class, and trauma. Their unflinching engagement in the peminist project of decolonization characterizes and unites this body of work. 

This article situates peminist comics within the rise of both girls’ studies and Filipinx American studies. Drawing upon my previous work on Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons, I trace the lineage of contemporary peminist comics, focusing on the themes of decolonization, identity, family, and healing in the comics of Trinidad Escobar and Malaka Gharib. I argue that these new comics constitute an important contribution to the field of girls’ studies which, despite its efforts to center intersectionality and diversity in researching girlhoods, remains dominated by an overfocus on white and Anglo girls in the U.S., United Kingdom and Australia.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Melinda Luisa de Jesús is Associate Professor and former Chair of Diversity Studies at California College of the Arts. She writes and teaches about Filipinx/American cultural production, girl culture, monsters, and race/ethnicity in the United States. She edited Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory, the first anthology of Filipina/American feminisms (Routledge 2005). Her academic writing has appeared in Mothering in East Asian Communities: Politics and Practices; Completely Mixed Up: Mixed Heritage Asian North American Writing and Art; Approaches to Teaching Multicultural Comics; Ethnic Literary Traditions in Children’s Literature; Challenging Homophobia; Radical Teacher; The Lion and the Unicorn; Ano Ba Magazine; Rigorous; Konch Magazine; Rabbit and Rose; MELUS; Meridians; The Journal of Asian American Studies, and Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth-Century American Girls’ Cultures.

She is also a poet and her chapbooks, Humpty Drumpfty and Other Poems; Petty Poetry for SCROTUS Girls’ with poems for Elizabeth Warren and Michelle Obama; Defying Trumplandia; Adios Trumplandia!; James Brown’sWig and Other Poems; and Vagenda of Manicide and Other Poems were published by Locofo Chaps in 2017. Her first collection of poetry, peminology, was published by Paloma Press in 2018.

In Spring 2019 Melinda was the Muriel Gold Senior Visiting Professor at the Institute for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada where she organized the Pinay Power II: Celebrating Peminisms in the Diaspora conference (see pinaypower.ca for more info).

She is a mezzo-soprano, a mom, an Aquarian, and admits an obsession with Hello Kitty.  MORE.