The Comic Book Exhibit That Stirred GuiltAfter I wrote my article about “¡Wepa! Puerto Ricans in the World of Comics,” an exhibition at the New York Public Library, I felt both pride and guilt. Let’s address the easy one first. While reporting the piece, I was delighted in thinking about how far comic books have come. I’ve been a fan since the late 1970s, but I had to sheepishly admit to being a geek in 2002 when I pitched an article to The New York Times about comics. I feared judgment, and I was right to. The editor who greenlit the piece still teases me for his role in igniting my side hustle writing about the comics industry.
Since then, I’ve often reported on representation in comic books, but working on this piece stirred up new feelings of guilt for not being bilingual. My parents moved from Ecuador to New York seeking a better life. If you lined up my siblings from eldest to youngest (me), you would hear diminishing fluency in Spanish. My parents always address me in Spanish and I reply in English. When I visited the homeland more than a decade ago, I communicated with cousins by muddling through. But when I called my parents, I spoke English. In elementary school, my teacher drafted me to translate for a classmate’s parent. It was a failure because I could translate only from Spanish to English, and not in the other direction. In retrospect, I see that my disinterest in learning my parents’ first language was an attempt to assimilate. This maybe explains my simmering anger several years ago when a new colleague presumed to address me in Spanish. I responded in English. I felt apprehensive about my language deficiency as I arranged an interview with Manuel Martínez Nazario, whose collection is at the heart of the library exhibition. I was told that he might feel more comfortable speaking Spanish. I could translate my questions in advance, but I worried about how to respond in the moment. English was ultimately just fine. Manuel used some Spanish words — I had to look up “cantera” or quarry — but the conversation went smoothly. I was happy that I could understand the exhibition material, which features excerpts from comics in Spanish. Perhaps because it was aimed at children, I was able to read a two-page sequence from “Tato y Kenepo,” about an alley cat and a bird (a Greater Antillean grackle) that Puerto Ricans call a “chango.”
Being bilingual comes more naturally for my nieces. I knew I was risking being made fun of when I texted some of my family about how to correctly translate “¡wepa!,” slang used in Puerto Rico to express joy. My niece judged me, but without much bite. Her response? “This is hilarious.” While reporting this article, I had a ¡wepa! moment. It was with Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez, a comic book creator whose career I’ve followed for more than 10 years. Edgardo taught me the word for stew, or “sancocho,” in 2014, and one of his comics is in the exhibition at the library. He texted me “¡WEPAAAAA!” when I told him I was covering the show. Our common experiences — growing up poor and Latino in the 1970s in New York City — has made us supportive of each other’s accomplishments. In a text, he wrote that New York’s public library “was a haven for me as a child growing up poor; I felt rich.” He added, “Now, as an author, I feel proud to have my books in their collection.” What a joyous moment. ¡Wepa!
Invite your friends.
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