The Portland State University Collaborative Comics Project aims to change the narrative around homelessness through ethnographic cartooning based on the experiences of PSU students. The project will culminate into the 10 comics published as a booklet and sold by Street Roots vendors. Street Roots spoke with 8 of the artists to learn more about their process.
Read all the interviews here.
In December 2020, a mutual aid group in Corvallis known on Twitter as @stopthesweepscv emerged as a response to increasing sweeps of unhoused residents in the city. This movement inspired Christina Tran to apply to the Portland State University Collaborative Comics Project as a way to make an impact through art as well as on the ground. Tran is an anti-capitalist community organizer, teacher, designer, part-time librarian and comics creator in Corvallis. Her comic “Caldo pa’la Cruda,” uses both humor and tenderness to share the story of Daniela, an immigrant who experiences housing insecurity throughout her life.
Sarah Hansell: As a comics creator, what drew you to comics as a medium?
Christina Tran: I would say the combination of words and images being able to tell a story. It’s so much richer to have those layers, layered information.
Hansell: What kind of themes do you usually focus on in your work, in your comics and your art?
Tran: I usually focus on autobiographical comics, and most of my comics are about tender subjects. Also, I’m really interested in exploring the human and interpersonal parts of social issues, how they affect us on an individual and community level.
Hansell: I got to read the comics ahead of time for these articles, and in your comic you really used humor and tenderness to talk about your subject’s story. Can you talk a little bit about that as a way to tell your stories?
Tran: Yeah, I think that really came from Daniela’s interview and her stories. Her energy and outlook is so vibrant, and the way she tells her story included bits of humor, so I really wanted to incorporate that into the comic and show her personality. What I loved about this project was that it was based so much on first-hand interviews and that the participants had a lot of sovereignty and agency in how their story was told, how much of their personal identifying info was shared. They had a role in the feedback process as well.
Hansell: Did anything about Daniela’s story, or collaborating with her, working with her, did anything about it surprise you, or change or affect your own mindset or understanding?
Tran: I think I knew because I’ve also done research into homelessness in the past and I know that housing insecurity is a big part of it. And just seeing how many different places (she lived,) just how that can affect a person’s prospects in life. Navigating all of that was really something that struck me about her story, and hopefully, that helps humanize some of that. I think you could blame people on things that are around insecurity or instability, but those are circumstances beyond an individual’s control.
Hansell: Have you ever written about houselessness before?
Tran: I have, in a personal comic project. I had a little bit of housing insecurity the last year I was in the Bay Area before I moved to Oregon. And I actually moved up to Oregon because the housing situation in the Bay Area was so inhospitable to artists. So I had some personal experience with that and was processing that through some personal autobio comics. That’s up on my website, the webcomic called “Neighbors.” I’m not completely happy with that story, but I am glad that it has evolved.
Hansell: Speaking to that and your own connection, as writers we often write about things that are personal for us. You talked about how a lot of what you write is autobiographical. For this project, you’re creating a comic about someone else’s story. How or where were you able to find that connection?
Tran: I think more just showing the small moments of how it affects your life. I think there’s a bigger story, there’s the biographical version of the story of — ‘I moved here and then I moved here, this happened and then this happened.’ I think for Daniela’s comic we were trying to show, here are these little moments that capture some of the emotions, or some of the insights, or some of the surreal moments that happen in life, and (happen) because of these circumstances.
Hansell: What impact would you say this project has had on you?
Tran: I have just started getting a glimpse of all the other stories. I think the impact that this project has had on me is that I’m learning a lot from how the PSU project team has gone about the process. It has been very thoughtful and intentional about how they are working with everyone and giving everyone a lot of respect and say in how the final thing turns out. And I think that I believe that it’s all fractal and sort of a microcosm. The way we do one thing is how we can do everything. So I just really appreciate the thoughtfulness of the process.
Hansell: What impact do you hope this project will have on readers?
Tran: Well, I have a personal theory that sometimes it’s hard for people to look at homelessness as a serious issue because it overloads the empathy that we might have, or how close that might feel to how we might also end up in that situation. I think it overwhelms us and overloads us. And so instead of turning towards caring more, we might turn away because we’re not sure how to actually impact the issue. But I hope these stories keep helping people turn towards the real people behind the stories and the numbers and the stats. And that people keep being curious and keep being proactive about, ‘what does this mean, what can we do to keep making sure everyone has housing and safety and stability.’
Hansell: Why do you think telling these stories with comics as the medium is impactful or important versus other ways to tell these stories?
Tran: I think there’s been a lot of comics journalism, and comics as a way to tell all kinds of stories has been growing. I think the medium is growing to the point where you can use it to tell whatever story … It just allows for a kind of intimacy with the storytelling that’s also really accessible. And I also love how in the book there are going to be 10 different stories, but 10 very different artists’ styles ... you’ll be able to see the differences, the richness, the variety of stories.
Hansell: Another thing I wanted to ask about — there’s not a lot of awareness or conversation around houselessness among immigrant folks. Do you want to speak to that, or how do you think this comic can contribute to awareness or understanding around that?
Tran: I think it’s related to what we were saying earlier about how sometimes housing instability, people moving place to place, or a lot of people under one roof, or living in vehicles, or being in situations having to choose between ‘let me stay with this violent person or be on the streets.’ Those kinds of things are all part of homelessness and housing insecurity, but we don’t often think about it. Sometimes we only think about homelessness as the person who’s literally sleeping on the street.
And this isn’t from Daniela’s story, this is more from general being aware, that I think the way it shows up in certain communities, and maybe immigrant communities, won’t necessarily look like in a tent on the street. But it might look like many people under the same roof or someone’s couch surfing from relative home to relative home. There’s a little bit of research that I’m basing this off of, but I think those are areas that would be helpful for people to be able to expand their ideas of homelessness to also include.
Hansell: What’s next for you, what are you working on now?
Tran: I’m actually working on some writing and zines about art and money and the solidarity economy. Sort of like, why it’s hard to be an artist under capitalism and what are the ways that solidarity economy models of cooperatives and gift ecologies and being real about resources, including housing, can help all of us find a little more collective freedom.
Hansell: I saw on your artist bio that you explore capitalism in your work. How do you situate this project about houselessness within that larger theme?
Tran: I think the pandemic has shown how warped our ideas of what is necessary and what is essential, how warped that all is under capitalism. And I really want to explore not even just anti-capitalism, but post-capitalism models, which are also very old, of how we can sort of break away from this. It’s sort of a ridiculous notion that we can own land, our own property, and if you don’t work hard enough, you don’t get that. You don’t get a roof over your head, or you don’t get to be secure. Also in media work, we’re supporting people in how to think of housing cooperatives, and what are other ways through community land trust and housing co-ops, and just like subverting this model of mortgages and nuclear family housing.
Editor’s note: Street Roots has partnered with Kacy McKinney and her team at PSU to publish the PSU Collaborative Comics project. Street Roots’ vendors will sell the publication alongside the newspaper beginning Feb. 2.