choom – Queer and Trans Black, Indigenous and People of Colour Vancouver

The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival (better known as VanCAF) was launched in 2012, as a two-day celebration centered on comics and the illustrative / visual and literary arts more broadly (Demonakos, 2016). While VanCAF does not specifically focus on QTBIPOC issues and activism, the space itself has been made a
translocal and transnational space through artistic disidentifactory practices that rewrite common narratives of comic storytelling and the mainstream comic art environment. As described by Bachetta et al. (2015), placemaking is the actual reconceptualization and materialized production of space for QTBIPOC and by QTBIPOC subjects (p. 775). By highlighting the interconnections between the emergence of imagined worlds, material spaces and cyber spaces, the placemaking of QTBIPOC at VanCAF shows the importance of difference and moves us beyond Vancouver (Bachetta et al., 2015, p. 773). While the festival takes place in Vancouver, the festival ultimately brings together indigenous artists as well as settlers of colour from various diasporic communities across spaces, exceeding the limited notion of the ‘local’ as removed from globality.

One of the workshops featured at VanCAF 2017 was “Queer Witches of Colour: How Fantasy Can Empower Us All.” Panelists included Joamette Gil, Der-Shing Helmer, Judy Jong, Jayd Aid-Kaci and Jade Feng Lee—all of whom have explored the possibilities of reimagining fantasy in their work despite and as a result of the genre’s Eurocentric reputation (Young, 2015, p. 1). The event’s description states: “[f]antasy is a genre that lets us escape into worlds of magic and supernatural possibility” (Hamada, 2017). Disidentification from the norms of fantasy storytelling (e.g. centering of whiteness and cisheteronormativity) is ultimately descriptive of the survival practices that are taken up in navigating the constraints presented by dominant interrelated systems of oppression (Munoz, 1999, p. 4). As pointed out by scholar Helen Young, the racial, as well as sexual and gendered discourses that circulate in fantasy works often invisibilize whiteness as a racial position, as it is constructed as the default or norm (2015, p. 1). Through queering, the escapist tendencies of fantasy are used as a means of imagining alternate spaces, futures and ways of being in the world for QTBIPOC as a site of ‘re-humanization’ including through realms of the non-human or less-than-human.

Cover of Eidoughlons, featuring an East Asian (Chinese) dumplingmancer, smiling at the new dumpling friend they have made.

Debuting at VanCAF 2017, Feng Lee’s zine Eidoughlons: A Field Guide for the Aspiring Dumplingmancer catalogues various types of dumplings, simultaneously disidentifying with quest fantasy or heroic fantasy and ethnic storytelling (i.e. the centering of food and mythologies in storytelling) by the joining of the two into one form. Eidoughlons highlights the significance of the intergenerational transmission of knowledge in a fantastical manner, imagining other ways of being in the world and presenting alternate spaces for processes of identity recovery for QTBIPOC that do not necessitate rejecting our families and cultural backgrounds.

Cover of Power & Magic, featuring art by Ashe Samuels. Three brown and black witches surround what appears to be a cauldron or vessel of some sort.

The creation of cyberspaces by and for artists of colour—particularly QTBIPOC—have created spaces for collaboration and community-building. In an interview, editor, artist, owner of Power & Magic Press—a QPOC-operated publishing house—Joamette Gill (one of the panelists) points to the formation of online groups for women and non-binary people of colour to collaborate that led to the production of Power and Magic (Moondaughter, 2016). The formation of cyber spaces invokes the queering of space by and for QTBIPOC, particularly through the navigation between queer and trans of colour imaginaries, cyberspaces and lived reality. The retooling of space across different mediums—cyber, fantastical and material spaces—as the non-human and more-than-human (both tending to be racialized sites) are invoked as routes of rehumanization.

The presence, projects and work of QTBIPOC that has emphasized placemaking that moves beyond hegemonically defined notions of space, as the place of QTBIPOC at VanCAF 2017 is entangled in a broader web of diasporic and colonial formations that operate across a multitude of spaces.

References:

Demonakos, A. (2016, November 1). VanCAF returns with a new festival director and advisory board. Vancouver Comic Arts Festival. Retrieved from http://www.vancaf.com/2016/11/01/vancaf-returns-with-a-new-festival-director-and-advisory-board/

Hamada, J. (2017, May 11). Vancouver comic arts festival 2017. BOOOOOOOM. Retrieved from https://www.booooooom.com/2017/05/11/vancouver-comic-arts-festival-2017/

Bacchetta, P., El-Tayeb, F., & Haritaworn, J. (2015). Queer of colour formations and translocal spaces in Europe. Environment and Planning D, 33(5), 769-778.

Munoz, J. E. (1999). Performing disidentifications. In Disidentifications, 1-34.

Moondaughter, W. (2016, February 1). Creating queer and POC-centric comics: Joamette Gil. Sequential Tart. Retrieved from http://www.sequentialtart.com/article.php?id=2877

Young, H. (2016). Race and popular fantasy literature: Habits of whiteness. New York: Routledge.

The QTBIPOC Youth Gathering came out of a collaboration between the Urban Native Youth Association (UNYA) and QMUNITY, alongside other organizations. It was a day-long gathering that occurred on 30 January 2017. The gathering invited over 50 queer, trans and two-spirit youth of colour from across British Columbia to share information about resources, as well as discuss what is lacking in their communities to facilitate change while centering the voices of those for whom changes are to be made. Together with the facilitators (also QTBIPOC youth), they put together a QTBIPOC Road Map to be shared with each of the youths’ communities. The event also notably included workshops for adults and non-QTBIPOC people, while funding was made available for youth who live outside of Vancouver to participate in the meeting (Takeuchi, 2016).

The plan to create a youth gathering grew out of conversations that began in 2016 between UNYA, the Vancouver School Board and youth support workers around creating safer spaces for queer, trans, two-spirit, people of colour youth. Aimee Beauchamp of Squamish Nation, a school support counsellor notes that upon beginning her work with UNYA, she received many requests to run programs for two-spirit and queer indigenous youth. After connecting and consulting with various organizations, they decided that the best way to understand needs of the youth was to have them partake in discussion (Takeuchi, 2016). Ayesh Ismail-Kanani, one of QMUNITY’s youth workers co-facilitated a brainstorming session, while Tiaré Jung followed along with conversations and drew live images of the ideas that were being presented to produce an infographic. By documenting and facilitating discussion rather than leading it, QTBIPOC voices are centered, as opposed to a reliance on assumptions about how youth navigate institutions (Ismail-Kanani, 2017).

Image description: A map titled “QTBIPOC Youth Road Map,” outlining needs in various institutions including “learning and school,” “health care,” “work,” “social activities and recreation,” “public space,” “home” and “trusted people.” Under each category, needs are listed with some marked with a red circle to note level of priority.

The QTBIPOC Road Map maps out important sites in the everyday lives of youth and their needs within those spaces. Needs are marked with red dots to denote a higher level of priority; some examples of this include gender neutral washrooms, quiet public spaces to decompress, healthcare professionals always learning, staff training in schools, inclusive learning that acknowledges queerness and transness and people of colour histories, accessible queer recreational spaces and affordable housing. The emphasis on different spaces and the significance of various relationships that QTBIPOC youth have with different institutions importantly points to the need to move away from the production of cis-white-centered queer spaces (e.g. Davie Street) by moving away from idealizations of the metropolis, as such work reveals the operation of interconnected systems of oppression across cities, suburbs and rural communities. This is exemplified by its mention of the need for accessible and meaningful community consultation of public space alongside issues around affordable housing, including spaces for more marginalized youth. This connects QTBIPOC to issues around settler colonialism, including gentrification and neoliberalism’s centering of the ‘free individual.’

The discussion between QTBIPOC ultimately disidentifies with identitarian politics, recognizing its strategic uses in terms of queer, trans and two-spirit, people of colour advocating for their needs, while also emphasizing the desire to be seen as ‘whole,’ and, thus, beyond mainstream queer politics’ tendency to devalue or erase race and class from discussions around sexuality and gender. The presentation of the lived realities of QTBIPOC and their navigation of societal constraints in the everyday moves away from the homonormative white middle class subject, centering identitarian ideas about queerness, sexuality and gender that is supported by a post-racial and multiculturalist understanding of the lower mainland (Bacchetta et al, 2015, p. 771; Manalansan, 2005, p. 147). The articulation of discussion about the everyday lived lives of QTBIPOC youth through a road map reveals the “inadequacy of conventional narratives where self and community progressively unfold,” as the desire for transformation is shaped by the need to navigate institutions to survive, highlighting important work being done within institutions (Manalansan, 2005, p. 147). While this is not necessarily ‘transformative’ or radical, the livability of queer and trans lives of colour and two-spirit lives becomes a site of contestation that centers the desires, affect and, thus, futurity of QTBIPOC and two-spirit youth.

The success of the road map has yet to have been reported, but it has been made available as a resource on QMUNITY, UNYA and other web pages, as well as reportedly being made accessible to the communities of the youth who participated in the gathering. The bringing together of QTBIPOC from beyond the ‘Vancouver’ area provides a more nuanced notion of queerness that is not limited to the bounds of the metropolis that brings into the realm of possibility alternative spaces.

References:

Jung, T. (2017, January 30). QTBIPOC road map [Illustration / Online image]. Retrieved from http://qmunity.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/QTBIPOC-Youth-Road-Map.png

Ismail-Kanani, A. (2017, February 28). Hearing from the youth: QTBIPOC youth gathering. QMUNITY. Retrieved from https://qmunity.ca/news/qtbipoc-youth-gathering/

Manalansan, M. (2005). Migrancy, modernity, mobility. In Eithne Luibheid and Lionel Cantu (eds.), Queer migrations, 146-160.

Bacchetta, P., El-Tayeb, F., & Haritaworn, J. (2015). Queer of colour formations and translocal spaces in Europe. Environment and Planning D, 33(5), 769-778.

Takeuchi, C. (2016, December 12). Urban native youth association to hold gathering about safe spaces for queer youth. Georgia Straight. Retrieved from https://www.straight.com/blogra/844226/urban-native-youth-association-hold-gathering-about-safe-spaces-queer-youth

Author: choom

Place-making of QTBIPOC at VanCAF 2017 and Beyond

QTBIPOC Youth Road Map and QTBIPOC Youth Gathering