Taking place within the Bartos Forum of the New York Public Library’s central location the Key Note speech coincided the educators in comics brunch. Author of Marjoire Liu Keynote speech revolved around the ideas of “the monstrous woman”, ideas of race, and her work that lead her into creating Monstress.
For Liu the monstrous woman is one that exist as a opposition to men. She is a “slayer of men…a bad mother…a whore” Or “one that doesn’t know her place”. From a teen she wanted to he able to have the super power of being able to fight any one and win never losing. After sharing this personal moment to a friend she recoiled because it was so personal for her to want to feel safe from the world, a world that as a young woman growing up is set against you. This lead her to daydreaming of being a lethal dangerous, a monster. In her dreams all her friends were monsters also. They were strong and they went human like those that have hurt her in reality. To Marjorie these women were not a warning but a guide, they weren’t cautionary tales but they could be fully realized complete human being. Counter to most stories about women.
As a woman of color Liu is radicalized for existing. As a half Chinese half White American woman she has been seen as Native American, Russian, or “that strange race called exotic”. The fact that she was seen as an other against the normalcy of whiteness in media stuck out to her. Liu was further lead to see the distinction between her seeing her inner self as monstrous, yet humane; and those that would try to box her into an oft idea of what a mixed background person is and who they are, instead of allowing them to be.
The treads of her youth accumulate as an adult as she is writing novels, romance novels about monsters and humans. The characters throughout her work were all of different backgrounds or they were the monster themselves but they shared a longing to belong. As Liu broke through at Marvel Comics, as the first Asian woman to write for Marvel and the first woman of color to write for Marvel, she still had an urge to explore foundational elements of her self -womanhood, women of color, Asian women. It was at this time that she felt a representational depiction of her self her. Woman. Asian. Monster. Liu had played in the mythology of white male depictions, sliding in her own longings with work with Daken, X-23, the wedding of Northstar and his husband. “The child me, she wanted more, and she’s the one who guided me, who lead me, inspired me”. “That little girl in me, she knew what was out there and I jut had to listen to her. “This child self who was monstrous as a outsider, who grew into a monstrous woman who made way in the face of white hegemony that brain washed youth as it’s normalcy, this child self gave birth to a world where everybody was “Asian or an outsider…where every important character was a woman. “A world where a traumatize mixed race girl with a monster insider her would decide the fate for better or worse of everyone”
Monstress is a response to the world around Liu where she could pour her obsessions into. Its a part of of a wave of media, like Crazy Rich Asians, that give ability for Asian and Asian pacific islanders to see to dream in Asian. “To have a dream where we aren’t only in the dream we ARE the dream”. Surmising representation matters for everyone. Its one of the key things in comics to dream the fantastic but if you can’t even see yourself in the fantastical how could you yourself be fantastical and creative. Throughout this comic con i’ll be looking at spaces where “monsters” dwell and see how folks deal with representational issues and spaces to create and dream.
Kaos Blac
Kaosblac@comicattack.com
Twitter: kaosblac
