Kiara Edit

[Leontina Heidgerken]

Frizzytells the story of how a young girl, Marlene, comes to appreciate her curly hair and Afro-Domincan roots. With the help of her best friend Camilla and her ta Ruby, she learns about the reasons why straight, blonde hair should not be only ideal, and why that racist notion was passed down to her generationally. Frizzy is an important read for everyone, but especially for young latine kids who want to embrace their natural hair and themselves just the way they are.

Valdez: Well, I only work on graphic novels. So that's number one. I think that it's important for things like this to be visual because we can see skin tone, we can see curl patterns, and a lot of these things need to be in your face for people to really grasp it. [Claribel and I] talked a lot. These are two things we talk about in depth. Rose is amazing, but obviously, Rose is not Dominican and Rose doesn't have curls the way we do.

So at the end of the day, where we really spent most of the time [talking] was skin tone and how curls look because curls are most of the book. And [Claribel and I] had to sit down and Google things like, 'What does curly hair look like when it's sweated out? When straight hair is sweated out into curly hair, when it's blown by the wind? When the product is badly put in it.'

And there were a lot of these little things that you cannot get from a book, you're gonna be writing a whole paragraph in a novel of what this curl looks like, and people are still not gonna get it. So I think the visual medium is perfect for this kind of story.

And a lot of these scenes hit much harder because you see how much Marlene is struggling to get the curl she saw on YouTube and how different [hers was] and what a big gap it is from what you see her accomplishing at the time, like the bathroom scene.

My journey was very peculiar because I knew I wanted to be an editor from the age of sixteen. How did I find out editing was a job? I truly cannot remember. Most people don't know editing is a job until they graduate college. What I wanted to do at first though, because I was really a huge weeb, l loved anime & manga and I was learning Japanese, I wanted to be a manga editor. I took Japanese in high school because I was like, 'I'm going to be a manga editor,' and I thought that a lot, until I met my now-manager a year before graduating.

Also, I just have always loved writing. I've been writing fanfiction since I was twelve. Obviously I started very badly, but I used to write them and print them out and then bring them to recess secretly and give them to my friends to read who at the time were like 'oooo.' My friends will not do that now.

I knew I always wanted to be an editor first and foremost. I always thought 'I love writing, I love art, but I want to support it because it's not my passion to do the thing.' I just want to be in the background, kind of like how people who do like stage direction and lighting like to be in the space but don't want to be at the forefront.

My journey was well rounded. Writing has helped me as an editor. I work with authors who are doing their first memoir and are falling into the same traps I did. Writing gives me context into editing. And by being an editor, I was able to figure out what I was gonna write, what market I was gonna write for and be strategic about what I do. So I really love the balance I have. Now, when people ask me, would you quit your job to write? I'm like, 'hell no.' I'm an editor first and foremost, and I'm also a Virgo who needs a 9-to-5 job and knows what my paycheck is in two weeks. So yes, that is where I am right now.

Give yourself the chance to find something you like as much as writing so that it doesn't become your whole life. There are people that need to have writing as their whole life and that is perfectly fine, but there's plenty of people that don't need to have writing as their whole life.

Write on the weekends or do whatever job they want to do that fulfills them just as much or enough to pay the bills standardly. And then they can write. You're a writer no matter how much or how little you write as long as you're consistently writing your whole life.

Social media was very important to me when I first started. I knew going into Twitter that I was going to take back the peels of the onion that is publishing. Specifically with my audience being people of color, but obviously anyone who followed my account, so I've been very honest, a bit too honest, on Twitter since I started.

And it wasn't really until earlier this year, a little bit last year that I realized that I did what I needed to do in the last six years at the time. Especially in the comics community, a lot of things are regurgitated every six months. I was ready to step back. And I'm very glad I did what I did.

There's a lot of people that found me through Twitter. It helped my editor career because I built up a reputation on Twitter about being very honest and people sometimes really like that. They like genuine people. And I love genuine people. So that's what I strive to be. Social media helped me to find artists that I love and I'm working with now. I treated it like a rolodex for me, with people who I want to work with, people who I follow.

Before that, I decided that I did what I could. Any time an argument or a discussion comes up yet again, I can retweet one of my old tweets because really, publishing does not change. It is a cycle. It actually has helped my mental health a lot, not being online. As an editor, we're not really here comparing ourselves to other editors on Twitter. I think it's a very different environment than it is for an author or an artist.

I'm glad Twitter happened. I'm glad to move on to something else. I'm also glad to just step away from relying on social media so much. It just doesn't fill my needs anymore and it actually is contradictory to my future success.

It's also great to see who is reading it. Sometimes with some of my books, I have no idea who's reading it. And then I found out through Twitter it fell into a certain niche or a certain space. That was amazing to see.

Claribel and I, we both had mothers that were hairstylists. So we had the hardest situation. All my femininity was based on long straight, back-length black hair. For a while before I did what I did (I went curly in college), I was stepping my way towards it. Not straightening my hair in the summer. My mom would be mad, but I would do it and then color my hair, get a perm, and then I went ombre, and then I finally went all curly. It was a gradual step.

Do it even if your mom doesn't want to and then apologize later. I would be so much further in my hair journey if I had started earlier. So that's what I would tell her. Just be a little rebel and deal with the consequences.

I love that. Finally, here at Popverse we celebrate the best in TV, movies and comics. And I was wondering what latine TV, movies or comics are you really enjoying right now but that you're not working on?

And then- this is way older because again, I don't keep up a lot, I'm watching way too much white fantasy. But the last thing I fell in love with that was latine was Vampire vs the Bronx. I just feel like not enough people watched that.

From the Editors June Scudeler This is the final issue of SAIL that we are seeing into production as editors. It's a tremendous pleasure to announce our successor, Kiara Vigil, of Amherst College. Kiara is well-known in Native American and Indigenous Studies for her wide intellectual range. Grounded in Lakota history and language studies, she has published on just about every issue at the forefront of our current scholarly conversations: Indigenous intellectual history; Indigenous histories of the book; and pedagogy, writing, and cinema. We know that SAIL will remain vibrant and vital under her stewardship, and we look forward to seeing where she takes the journal. If you have a moment, please drop her a line of welcome, and offer to read essay submissions if you are able.

If there's something that stands out for us about our time with SAIL, then, it's been care and relationships. In the interest of caring for our shrinking, overworked professoriate, we transitioned the journal to a more humane, twice-yearly publication schedule. And in the interest of building relationships between scholars working in the US and Canada, we tried to grow a relationship between SAIL's sponsor, the Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures (ASAIL) and the more recently formed Indigenous Literary Studies Association (ILSA). In Spring 2018 (the fortieth anniversary issue of SAIL), we published essays about Indigenous women writers on both sides of the forty-ninth parallel. In Fall 2019/Winter 2020, we published a double issue devoted entirely to scholarship by ILSA members.

And finally, the double issue at hand is guest edited by Michelle Coupal and Deanna Reder, both past presidents of ILSA. During the height of COVID-19, these scholars assembled a vitally important collection of essays about pedagogy. With the planet entering full-fledged climate catastrophe, which Kyle Powys White has called an intensification of colonialism, teaching Indigenous literatures is arguably more urgent than ever. As we all face uncertain futures, these editors and scholars give us reason for hope. [End Page viii]

Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.

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