Ghosts

[psocoptera]

Ghosts, Raina Telgemeier, middlegrade graphic novel. A girl with a terminally-ill little sister has a comforting fantasy about life after death. Er, sorry, "puts aside her fears to embrace her heritage and the magic of the Day of the Dead". I did enjoy it, it's very sweet, but the real-world thread and the magic thread felt poorly fit together to me. I have the impression that the internet dislikes this one because Telgemeier is a white author [edited; I was being flippant in my word choice of how I described this and I'm sorry] using Mexican imagery (and uses an abandoned mission church as an atmospheric setting without mentioning the horrific shit that went down at the missions) but, I don't know, I guess I lean towards the "more art good" side of the cultural appropriation wars, at least in some cases. (That creative work can be a profound way of entering into a relationship of empathy, respect, and imagination with the cultural Other, to which mandatory avoidance feels like a negative alternative...) Anyways, given how much Junie loved Book of Life and Coco it's not a surprise to me that Telgemeier doing Día de los Muertos was something she wanted to pick up, and I think it's nice that stuff like this is going to be her cultural reference point instead of, say, the misery of Macario (which I don't think we actually watched *every* year in Spanish class, but man do I remember hating). Like, at least she'll think of it as colorful and beautiful. (I'm not sure whether I think a ruined hacienda would have been better than the ruined mission. Maybe?)

Comments

[jedusor]

I am conflicted on some nuances of cultural appropriation but I am very much not conflicted on whether it's okay for a white person to use the word "whitey" in dismissing other people's concerns regarding same.

[psocoptera]

Ok, that's fair. I apologize for the offense. Would you prefer that I edit it without a note, edit it with a note, or leave it with a note? I'm inclined to do the middle one of those and am going to preemptively do that but am happy to re-edit if you have a preference (or a suggestion of an even better option I haven't thought of).