If you’re heard of Trigger Warning during this past week in American Politics, you’d hear that it’s about traumas reopening for survivors of sexual assault, harassment, and that is causes distress. I’ve thought long and hard about what I would write tonight because my heart is so heavy. As we head into election day with voter registration as an immediate remedy, I also thought of other avenues to heal a nation that has communities feeling silenced, lost, and dis-empowered even while trying their best to have a strong front. I thought about two things:
1. I used to tell my students I visited on career day that we vote every day, even if it’s not on election day. We vote by what we choose to consume, from the products we endorse and the pop culture we support. Those very entities are sustained whether or not they practice ethical business practices, employ people fairly, and offer people a voice/representation on a main stage.
2. While growing up I was exposed to the very few representations of the kind of women I wanted to become as a young woman of color with fledgling interests in feminism. And through it all, I still find myself support those notions, those people, and those redeeming characteristics that continue to live in the business, pop culture, and other feminist entities. Here’s a picture of me and Assistant Editor Mark Otto, before we even work together. But here we are tied by the image of feminist characters existing in the media that we mutually celebrated.
This raises my last point on how young people who can’t vote yet, can choose to change oppressive culture. Maybe we can create an alternate view to Trigger Warning by way of Trigger Rising. When a reader sees, reads, and understands the characters in Queens Comic Anthology, they can reference it to growing up in a way that helps them rise and uplift. With referencing Rising as immediate as Warnings which move us into emotional states, we can be pockets of healing and strength in present and bright future to come.
Thank you for helping us continue this journey to change comics, perceptions of women, ideas of activism, and most of all, rising to the best we can be. We hope that you can share our link and our love for all the women, allies, and non-allies (yes, even them) who will need and want this book. In the last few days of this campaign, while we are eagerly standing by our computer and calling upon all the larger networks and wider nets, we think it works best when YOU have a distinct and powerful conversation with a couple of friends why this book will be a game changer for anyone waiting to rise up and meet a new day.
From the Alternate Universe of the Queens Editors lots of love,
Rei Hino (Sailor Mars) & Tina Belcher
