Comprehensive Study of the Oral History of Queer Resistance in Graphic Narrative with an Intersectional Outlook

Graphic narratives serve memory in dual narratives, both through text and images. Each panel in a graphic novel incorporates time and space and subsequent panels pointing towards the passing of time. The temporality with respect to the intertextual insights into the cultural, social and historical context is more visible in a graphic text. Moreover, it elucidates an alternate history and calls for collective memory. When it comes to queer narration, the personal memory of marginalisation, stereotypes and taboos unconsciously becomes a part of the community’s memory. Syan Rose’s Our Work is Everywhere, published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2021, brings about the hustles and beauty of queer life. The popularity of graphic novels and their mass production in the twenty-first century brought a great shift in the perception and popularity of queer-themed comics, graphic novels and graphic memoirs. The paradigm shift is crucially visible from the CCA regulations of the Comic Magazine Association to the increased number of productions of graphic works centred around queer themes and lives. The role of translation in this whole process is commendable as the works from continents like Asia also have a huge readership in the Western world. The depiction of history with the tools of graphic images acts as political markers of power, identity and the dynamic relation between the two. Syan Rose explores the concepts of xenophobia, transphobia, racism, etc, through interviews and retellings from thinkers, social workers, and common people. The depiction of fat shaming and mental health also plays a crucial part of the text as the experiences of subjugation is not limited to a single confined entity. Each experience summons resistance and interpersonal connection. The universality of queer experience within different religious sectors as in Islam and different occupational sectors as sex work are certain examples in the writings from the text. People of colour, their roots, customs and ethnicity and how these factors intertwined with sexuality sophisticate the individuals’ lives can be studies with the help of this text. The history of indigenous people and their ancestral memory as well as the migrated population and their memory are well explored in the text.

The primary methodology employed to write the paper is textual analysis with a focus on the text Our Work is Everywhere. The visual methodology opts to approach and interpret the images in the graphic novel. The research objectives of the study comprise the following;

1. This study aims to identify the lived experiences of queer lives, their experiences of oppression, pain, and injustice.

2. To study the complex nature of memory and power in terms of historical positioning, resistance and societal pressure on queer lives.

3. To locate the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and many other domains and how these intersections act as catalyst in bringing out the identity and self of queer people in narratives.

4. The potential of graphic narratives in the rereading of alternate history and subverting the age-old taboos and stereotypical view surrounding people with alternative sexuality.

Keywords: Graphic Narratives, Queer, Intersectionality.