Picture + Panel | Mattie Lubchansky + Denali Sai Nalamalapu on resistance and resilience

We continue our interview series on creators speaking at the monthly Picture + Panel event in Boston, which brings together two comic creators to talk about a specific topic — in this case, stories about resistance and resilience.

On Aug. 4, Mattie Lubchansky and Denali Sai Nalamalapu will discuss how their work captures “the spirit of defiance and perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds” in an event hosted by the Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Porter Square Books and the Boston Figurative Arts Center.

Denali Sai Nalamalapu is a climate organizer from Southern Maine and Southern India. Denali lives in Southwest Virginia. They have written for Truthout, Prism and Mergoat Magazine, and their climate activism has been covered in Shondaland, Vogue India, Self, The Independent and elsewhere. They studied English Literature at Bates College and completed a Fulbright grant in Malaysia. You can find them at @DenaliSai on Instagram.

Mattie Lubchansky is a cartoonist and illustrator. She is also an Ignatz winner, a Herblock Prize finalist, and the author of Boys Weekend and The Antifa Super-Soldier Cookbook. She lives in beautiful Queens, New York, with her spouse.

How did you get interested in resistance and resilience?

Mattie Lubchansky: Being a teenager in the early 2000s as America started its fascist slide definitely had a huge influence on me.

Denali Nalamalapu: A mix between my lived experience as a dark-skinned child of immigrants growing up in Maine and the books I devoured in my local library about colonization and the founding of this country on genocide and slavery.

Why did you start making comics on this topic?

Denali Nalamalapu: I began making comics when I was a child but left the genre for other mediums of art. I returned to comics when I was organizing in the Mountain Valley Pipeline fight and trying to figure out how to tell the story of a decade-long struggle to stop a fracked gas pipeline in the Appalachian mountains.

Mattie Lubchansky: I’ve always been a really political person, it’s hard to think of a time where these subjects weren’t top of mind – even when I’m not trying to make political work it just sort of ends up in there!

How are these themes integrated into your work?

Mattie Lubchansky: I like to think pretty holistically. It’s definitely a challenge to turn the big “satire” switch off when I’m doing fiction, to make sure I’m not just making characters on the page say what I think. I try to make everyone their own person with their own motivations, and to let the characters do things I disagree with.

Denali Nalamalapu: As a queer person of color and the child of South Indian immigrants, everything I create is political, and therefore integrates resistance and resilience. My work is also specifically about climate change from an intersectional perspective. It therefore resists false claims that climate change is not real and we do not need immediate action to address the crisis. Resilience is embedded in my climate work because of the devastating impacts of climate change on local communities.

What’s your favorite thing about creating comics on these topics?

Denali Nalamalapu: These subjects matter, and this moment in the climate crisis calls for more storytelling about resistance and resilience because people are experiencing devastation first hand and seeking answers for how to move forward.

Mattie Lubchansky: I think it’s an important time, as a trans woman, as an anti-capitalist, an anti-imperialist, an anti-zionist, to be making the kind of work that isn’t afraid of saying things that don’t necessarily align with the cultural headwinds, which are obviously headed in an oppressive direction.

What’s your least favorite thing about this subject?

Mattie Lubchansky: I think my least favorite thing about the subject is being forced into that box of when I’m not always trying to be necessarily – as a trans person my perspective is going to be politicized by the mainstream whether or not I like it.

Denali Nalamalapu: These subjects are tiring to write about and live! Sometimes I just want to write nonsense things that won’t make the world better but are fun to release.

What misconceptions have you found people have about resistance and resilience?

Denali Nalamalapu: I find people think these subjects are always sad and serious. But they can be silly and colorful and funny, too.

Mattie Lubchansky: I think there’s a real pitfall that making or consuming art is the same thing as the work that needs to get done in the world. Certainly I believe there’s a place for art in any movement or I wouldn’t be making it, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that the world is the world, and a book is a book. You can be inspired and touched, but you still need to get out there and fight.

Are there other media about these topics that have inspired your work?

Mattie Lubchansky: More than any other author I’d say the work of Ursula K. LeGuin is the most important to me. She writes with such a knack for human emotion, and with such kindness –– and it always reminds me that the world doesn’t have to be the way that it is. I try to carry that with me when I’m writing.

Denali Nalamalapu: I am a student of the Black liberation movement and of global uprisings. I learn so much from reading the work of writers, thinkers, and organizers in the Black liberation movement. I find a lot of strength in learning about global movements that have shaped the world and changed things for people suffering under fascist or dictatorial regimes.

If you could recommend one other graphic novel on this subject to people who love your work, what would it be (and why)?

Mattie Lubchansky: I’ve been really loving lately Evan Dahm’s Third Voice comic, which I think is going to be collected into a first volume soon. I just think it’s such a wonderful look at the nitty-gritty details of trying to live a life of dignity in undignified times.

Denali Nalamalapu: Ash’s Cabin by Jen Wang is a great young adult graphic novel about climate change from the perspective of a nonbinary kid. There’s overlap with the themes of my work, including climate change, queer identity, and resistance. Wang does an excellent job of writing a compelling story and main character to get young readers to think about the impacts of climate change.