From the shame of coronaracism to queer confidence — British-born Chinese artist The Mollusc Dimension explains his journey with comic art from Squid Horse
Note: The artwork for this comic and the music video have since been completed and therefore, besea.n were asked to update these. However the writing in the blog remains unchanged as a document of TMD's experience at the time. Please follow @SquidHorseComics (Insta/FB) for updates on the comic.
I was afraid of travelling well before coronavirus and coronaracism. Racism (along with other forms of discrimination) has limited my confidence since I was young. Only recently have I identified and begun to explore my sense of shame about being Chinese and my Chinese body. Coronaracism took this self consciousness to a whole new level. Luckily, I have been able to turn to my oldest tricks for processing mental health struggles : art and imagination.
Content notes: anxiety, depression, dysregulated eating, racism
6 panel comic about the experience of a character called Squid with coronaracism. Squid is a British Chinese, queer, trans human with spiky dark, straight hair. Purple line drawings with purple tones on a pale purple background. Each panel is described in more detail throughout this article.
After experiencing sinophobic hostility while grocery shopping, I tried to eat less so that I wouldn’t have to buy food. I avoided leaving the house alone. I still avoid leaving the house at night, even though I used to go out after dark. This fear affected my relationships, both with my mum and my (now) ex-partner. Fresh news about ESEA (East and South East Asians) encountering racism triggered my anxiety and depression.
“Squid Horse“ — Using comics to process and transform difficult issues
Some of my most successful social media posts are my comics and I would love to make more of these. There are three protagonists, each representing a different part of myself.
1. Squid (a name my friends, family and people in the creative industry call me and, incidentally, my middle name).
2. Horse (an English translation of my Chinese family name, 馬 Ma, anglicised to Marr by my father in the late seventies)
3. Cool Head Mollusc (a hipster musician).
Since I was little, drawing has been a mental health coping mechanism for me. I also use drawing to communicate challenging or sensitive ideas. As a 41-year old, British-born Chinese, trans-masc, queer multi-hyphenate artist, I had substantial difficulties communicating with my Hong Kong raised parents. Funnily enough, they seemed to “get” my drawings and find them amusing. Sadly, not enough to encourage me to study art — but that’s another story!
Before I describe the aftermath of coronaracism, here’s a panel depicting a moment from the experience itself. It’s from a previous Squid Horse comic called “The Mumness”.
This panel is taken from a different story called “The Mummess” and has more colours. The character Horse is walking into the distance, angrily holding a filled grocery bag. To one side, a white man shouts racist abuse at him, depicted as a spiky graphic in a spiky speech bubble. Horse's mum (close-up) looks worried and helpless. She has wings and is next to a sad mug. Horse is similar to Squid but wears a dark plain t-shirt and is angry.
It was a cool, dry evening and I was grocery shopping for my elderly mum. She had written a very long list and I went to a few different grocery shops. In the last shop, I was laden with a heavy bag, trying to look for the remaining items. I felt overwhelmed, self-conscious, and anxious. My mum is Very Particular. Not everything was available, and however hard I try, I usually forget something or return with something that is not precisely what she wants.
I was the only person of colour in the shop, the only East Asian. After paying and leaving, I was about 30 metres away from the shop when I heard a voice shout “CORONAVIRUS” very loudly at me. I was enraged and thought about going back but I didn’t want to risk losing the shopping. I haven’t been to that shop since then. I wondered if it might even have been the owners. Hopefully not.
Later, I made a comic focusing on my experience of coronaracism and exploring six aspects of it. I will say something about each panel.
Squid is standing on the street, wearing a face mask and looking back at the queues of shoppers outside a single grocery shop. The shops on either side are marked "closing down" and "For Sale". The shop doors, street and Squid's bag have despondent faces.
I see the empty shops and I think it’s "my fault"
I am hard-wired to believe it’s “my fault”. Why?
My experience of coronaracism connects to my earliest memory of racism. On the school bus, a white boy aggressively told me to move away from him. While the attacks were verbal rather than physical, they were highly intimidating. How would I know they wouldn’t go further? They were both also about space, resources and the perception that I was contagious or associated with contagion.
When I told my dad, he immediately launched into a tirade of “You should have said …..” From this moment, I learnt not to share bad experiences because I anticipate that people will just tell me what I should have done.
Both times, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the bus, I was trying to obey the teacher’s instructions. Three decades later, while trying to fulfil my mum’s grocery errand, I was verbally abused by a complete stranger.
Lorry labelled "Fresh Anxiety". "I feel guilty and embarrassed," thinks Squid as he smiles and accepts a grocery delivery from a delivery character that is human with bird-like feet and wings. The grocery crate looks worried and sad.
2. Stay at home
Getting supplies delivered meant I didn’t need to go out. But there was a new problem.
I felt guilty and anxious that the delivery drivers might perceive me as being to blame for the pandemic. Going by appearances, the grocery drivers were white, Black, South Asian, or other ethnicities rather than ESEA. I’d receive the items feeling self-conscious, thinking they might judge me for being greedy.
This discomfort goes a little deeper. Around 7 years ago, in the aftermath of post-traumatic bereavement, I had a traffic accident and lost the car. Coerced into driving lessons immediately afterwards, and having had toxic experiences, I now no longer drive. Accepting that we had to get groceries delivered required humility. While privileged to be able to have food delivered, I felt guilty because there were additional fresh items that my mum is used to, which we had to order more frequently.
A close up of Squid's frazzled face as he is surrounded by food items pulling faces and crying out for attention. The panel is labelled "Like this but with a mask" to confirm that he would be wearing a mask in the shop. Squid wears a t-shirt with !?! also with faces.
3. Anxiety at shop
I can’t just choose a bag of apples, I have to start questioning the validity of my existence. Feeling awful about taking up space in the shop. Sad about the eyes on me .Wishing I was invisible. Buying withered, reduced, or the last remaining food because I feel sorry for it. Avoiding things I like because enjoyment seems unbearably extravagant.
"I bet he hates me," thinks Squid as he walks past a man holding a shopping bag who is shown thinking "Cereal... Milk." A cloud above holds up hands to its face and looks exasperated or stressed. The man's shopping bag is sort of pouting or smirking at Squid.
4. My rejection sensitivity was heightened
As a queer and trans person with PTSD, my hypervigilance increases dramatically when hearing about homophobia and transphobia. Over the years, I became fixated on the expressions and body language of people as they walked past me.
My ex-partner is a white disabled, LGBTQIA+ person. In the years we’ve been together I noticed, and was envious of, how he would make an effort to engage in friendly conversation with complete strangers. Over the time he lived with us, he made friends. I did not.
One day, I noticed three Black people in a row smiled at me. Was this because I felt more relaxed to smile at them?
The fact that my ex was the first male partner I’d had who was aware of white privilege helped me understand how people’s behaviour could impact us very differently.
That said, due to my many years of having battled aggressions and harassment, I do tend to give off a “don’t come anywhere near me” vibe!
Squid picks at his food in the kitchen while his mum (a human with bird wings hovering in mid air) looks worried and talks to him. Above Squid's head is an unfurling of food boxes and containers that grimace or leer at him. His food and mug look sad. By his feet, a long dragon or cat-like tail with spiky patterns stretches out with a curled end.
5. And then there’s Asian Mumness
Since the sudden, yet also ironically prolonged loss of my dad, my mum and I have struggled to rebuild our lives and relationship with one another.
She has had her own formative experiences, such as growing up poor, and not attending secondary school. Unlike me, she did not experience the racist aggressions and micro-aggressions , sino-misogyny and homophobia at a young age. One of the signs of this is how loud she is around the house. I can hear her huffing, groaning, shuffling, retorting into her phone; in contrast, I tend to hide how I feel.
Whereas my mum’s way of coping with the lockdown was to eat and care for the house as best she could, my response to the lockdown (exacerbated by coronaracism) was to eat less, shop less, and avoid the kitchen. This way I wouldn’t have to hear the mainstream news go on and on about Covid (which, yes you’ve guessed it, I felt terrible about).
"But the trees love me". Squid is taken for a walk by his mum's dog. Watching him, the tree has eight eyes and six friendly smiles. A large sun peers over a flowery hill and smiles.
6. Home Grown
During lockdown, when I walked my mum’s dog, I took photos of local trees. Some of these I turned into drawings, poems, a video and a zine for a multimedia project with Usurp Art. The dazzling, kaleidoscopic art of local trees can be seen alongside performance writing in the zine Home Grown Zine — so-called to emphasise that I was born here. When I say I was born here, I don’t mean that I have any more right to be here than immigrants. I mean that I’ve been putting up with the rubbish of racism for a really long time.
As with other times in my life when I’ve been deeply unhappy, I threw myself into my work and completed no fewer than six client projects since the first lockdown. I arranged the work via one-to-ones and emails. It felt odd to be commissioned when so many other creatives were out of work which also made me feel ashamed and guilty. However, as I said in another interview with Asians in Britain, “Queers and intersectional orgs [are] finally getting funding”. (1)
In other words, I am finally getting to do the work that makes the world safer for someone like me.
A local creative initiative, Woodford Creative Hub posted my photo of a tiny world of moss on Instagram. The photo was originally from a project called One Hundred Days of Light. I took a photo each day to keep me focused when going through depression that I couldn’t bring myself to name, perhaps because of ingrained stigma. I still feel depressed but I am now more aware of it and strong enough to communicate it without shame.
There is a dire need for Positive Representation of ESEA in the media and culture
When resources are hit, the worst comes out. I believe that culture and media have a huge part to play. People of all races feared contagion and were upset about having to restrict our lives. Yet, the UK media seemed fixated on using ESEA faces to illustrate Covid-19 headlines , against which Viv Yau campaigned.(2)
My coronaracist’s voice had an accent which may have been European or East European. While I could not see the person, I feel that it’s highly likely they were white. As well as instant rage, I felt severely frustrated by the lack of education in school, and in the media around colonisation and why BIPOC are in the UK. It was also disappointing to be targeted by someone who might be a fellow immigrant or otherwise with dual heritage.
Many ESEA organisations and individuals reported on the link between coronaracism and the disproportionately high usage of ESEA faces in the media in stories about Covid-19 from 2020 onwards. “Between January and August 2020, 33% of these images featured East or South East Asian people, according to campaign group End the Virus of Racism and Britain’s East and South East Asian Network, when, in reality, we make up less than 2% of the UK population. Often these stories are actually unrelated to Asian people”.(3)
Every time we saw a news report about another attack, such as the one on Jonathan Mok, I was alarmed and not only felt less like leaving the house, despairing at the slow-drip of racism in UK society, but also severely depressed.
Ironically, depression and anxiety are aspects of mental health I feel I have in common with white and cishet people. Had I not been fighting the constant downward spirals exacerbated by this local verbal attack, I might have been running art and comic classes for people, perhaps even for the children of the person who shouted at me.
After many months, my confidence improved and I managed to organise a small internal music student event and together we raised £135 for Redbridge Foodbank. It feels frustrating that I did not have the capacity to do this earlier.
What’s next?
Could Awkward Times with Squid Horse be the first UK comic about being a gen X QTPOC Chinese British being?
Navigating the loneliness of queerness, transness, misogyny and East-Asian-ness in spaces dominated by cishet people, art is where I feel most at home. Art is my home. But it took me a while to realise that I was not represented and still longer to realise it’s up to me to do something about it.
The first comic I got into was The Sandman (Gaiman, DC Comics) which I managed to find in a long-gone comic shop called The Comic Shack in Leytonstone. As I mentioned in a recent interview,(4) I’ve been a fan of comics such as Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Marjane Sartrapi’s Persepolis and Rutu Modan’s Hamilti for many years.
Due to the lack of ESEA representation, I have held back from telling my story for many years. But younger ESEA (generally non-cis men) have started to find my work and I feel like this could be the beginning of something wonderful. I am running the first "Awkward Times comic workshop" for Asians with Rumah Khai on 28th August, 2021.
Something Different this way comes...
A project I feel passionately about that differs strikingly from Squid Horse is Asians Have Feelings Too — the title of my new pop song about being Chinese, queer, trans, and AFAB — aspects of my identity I have both been shamed for being “too much” and also “not enough” (these phrases are part of the song lyrics).
As with Squid Horse, as far as I know, a pop song by a British ESEA artist on these topics does not exist — yet.
My dream is to invite members of the public, ESEA (queer, trans and all sexualities and genders) to submit art and photos for a music video teeming with ESEA and people of all races who stand in solidarity with us. The video will become part of a live show to promote positive ESEA representation.
Unlike comic art and zine making, this is a BIG project that requires a team and public engagement. It is my first venture into crew-building and leading a team production. Hostility, micro-aggressions and gas-lighting made me smaller and smaller so that I wanted/want to disappear. But now I know I have the power to share how I use my imaginative perspectives to transform painful experiences into art with people everywhere. I could take my creativity on tour.
Video: Asians Have Feelings Too (2022)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugYXa47tST4
Seeing and hearing ESEA talk assertively fills me with joy and energy.
ESEA community — I wish I grew up surrounded by your confidence and encouragement..
Non-ESEA people — your solidarity is much appreciated.
And I am still growing.
I am beginning a process of intentional recovery and I’m honoured to share some of it here with you.
I wish to extend fulsome and warm thanks to besea.n, Amy Phung, Anna Chan, Asians in Britain, Tuyet Vân Huỳnh, and all the ESEA folks who have finally found me, for all your incredible work and support. At last, I have found the conversations and community I had dreamt of, but never thought possible, — until now.
Your experiences and voices make me feel like I can dare to go for things that terrify me or which I feel like I don’t deserve. At last, I can explore and share these feelings with new confidence.
Mental health resources:
I have referred to some mental health issues in my interview, so here are some resources.
UK HELPLINES
Switchboard LGBT+ Helpline: 0300 330 0630
Mind Infoline: 0300 123 3393
Samaritans: Call 116 123
BAATN — The Black, African and Asian therapy network (UK)
Pink Therapy — Gender and Sexual Diversity Therapy in the UK
If you are not UK based, or if these options don’t work for you, please search for a support line that you can use where you are.
Sources:
1. Asians in Britain Interview. 2021. https://www.themolluscdimension.com/multiverse-realities/blog-0063/take-your-place-besea-identity-asians-in-britain-image-based
2. Yau, Viv. “Stop depicting East & South East Asians in Coronavirus related media”. https://www.change.org/p/stop-depicting-east-south-east-asians-in-coronavirus-related-media
3. USC Annenberg, Inclusion Initiative, 2021. Quoted by Resonate Voices on Instagram May 19, 2021. https://www.instagram.com/resonatevoices
4. Chinese Arts Now. Interview with Urie Jo and Tuyet Vân Huỳnh for: “Stay Connected”, CAN 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGwAd3lgL3U