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CULTURE
February 17, 2020 mcgilldaily.com | The McGill Daily
“Everything is temporary for us” Interview with Comic Artist Daria Bogdanska
Willa Holt Managing Editor
This week, the Daily’s Managing Editor Willa Holt sat down with comic artist, union representative, and former punk musician Daria Bogdanska to discuss her autobiographical graphic novel Wage Slaves, which was reviewed in Vol. 109 Issue 12 of the Daily: the joint Labour, Body, and Care Issue with Le Delit. Willa Holt, The McGill Daily (MD): What made you choose a graphic novel as your format for Wage Slaves? Daria Bogdanska (DB): Let’s start in general. I used to read a lot; I always read a lot of comics, especially a lot of independent graphic novels and DIY. I’m not a really patient person, but I like telling stories. So I guess I started first making comics because they’re so much faster than just writing. Those kind of comics, especially the DIY ones, were written by mostly young people from big cities. Stories about regular life shitty jobs. It was something I could identify with. So I really like this kind of medium, you know? It’s like it represented a kind of lifestyle and the kind of problems that I maybe could identify with that I didn’t find in other mediums or literature or TV. And that was the inspiration, and I like drawing. Then I went to comic school in Sweden, and I realized also that, especially when making this book, I would never be able to write a book in Swedish, you know?
Those kind of comics, especially the DIY ones, were written by mostly young people from big cities. Stories about regular life shitty jobs. It was something I could identify with.
Daisy Sprenger | Illustrations Editor I just arrived in Sweden, and I couldn’t communicate really well. So the first part of the book is in English, and then at some point during the time I was working on the book, which was three years, I realized that my Swedish got much better and it’s actually better than my English, so I switched to Swedish. So the 50 first pages of the book [as published] in Sweden are in English, and then it turns to Swedish, which also illustrates my journey of learning the language. Something that strikes me is not only I like the medium, but it also enabled me to tell my story in Sweden, in Swedish, because I don’t know if I will ever master Swedish on that level that I could write litera[ry] texts. And where I lack words, I can use pictures and drawings, and that makes it easier for me.
MD: One of the things I appreciate about the book is that you talk about how all immigration experiences aren’t the same, and that some people deal with different levels of discrimination When I started drawing the based on their backgrounds and book, I couldn’t speak Swedish. their languages. Why was that so
important for you to get across? DB: Everything is temporary for us [Millennials]. We don’t experience any security like on economic level, and there are many, many different levels. And then there’s [discrimination], I think many people can identify with, no matter if you’re [a] migrant or not. And then it comes this other level that you mentioned, which is specifically the experience of being a migrant. And, you know, I wanted to tell the story of being a migrant. But I realized that I cannot represent all the people, all the migrants, since, like you said, the stories, the backgrounds – the privileges are so different. I can not just, like, self-proclaim myself being some kind of voice of the migrants. So it was very important for me to say that. And I would say in interviews, “This is a story of a migrant.” I’m telling the story of some other people’s reality also. But I am not the most typical example, also, I’m pretty special. Like, you know, I arrived in Malmö and for example, I got support from a community like this punk community, with some
Swedish people, [who I could] practic[e] the language with, that I could crash at when I lost my job. I got so many different privileges that put me in a different situation than colleagues of mine. And then again, that I’m European, that puts me on another level. So there are different levels of privilege of migration; what we can do sometimes, how can we react, what rights we have. It was also important for me to both be able to say, “This is the story for you, Swedish people, to hear a story of our migrants, us migrants,” but also say, “But it’s not the same story for everybody,” you know. MD: How did you approach writing about your co-workers and other people in these different situations? Was that difficult for you? I know with autobiographies, it’s kind of hard to decide how much of other people’s stories you can tell. Did that come up for you while you were writing? DB: Yes. And you know, that is the hardest part, and I’m glad you’re asking this question. This question comes up all the time, it’s
like, “Isn’t it hard to write about your personal life, you know? You’re kind of talking about your love relationships; you’re showing sex; you’re showing yourself, your own flaws.” And I’m like, what? I mean, I’m not ashamed of showing my personal life, so it’s not hard to write about myself. I’m pretty sure that everybody knows that everybody fucks up and everybody has the same experiences, or similar experiences in a way. So, it was not a problem for me to share my personal life. What was a problem is, like you said, it’s a very, very hard thing to decide where I have a right to tell my story that includes other people and where their right to not being depicted in a story starts. I tried to ask people. Some of my friends were like, “Absolutely, no problem with that,” and they’re just like, “Do your thing. Don’t worry about it. You can use our names.” Some people wanted their names changed. Some people wanted their looks changed. But the hardest one I guess is my partner. The start of our relationship is depicted in
