Today on the site, Alex Wong talks to Tillie Walden about her new memoir, Spinning, her relationship with figure skating (the book's subject), the importance of representation in the comics industry, and her affinity for Studio Ghibli movies.
Have your parents read Spinning and what’s been the feedback and conversations you’ve had?I get that question a lot. I get a lot of questions about how people in my world have reacted to the book, and I always have the same answer, which is, that is between me and the people in my life. As a memoirist, people are very eager to hear more about my story. There’s a lot of my story that I’m willing to talk about, but I have to draw clear lines to keep some of my life to myself, because so many people think that just because you’re a memoirist, you’re a very public person. In reality, I think I’m a pretty private person, and I control what I let out about myself, and in this book, I obviously let out a lot.
There is often this expectation from people that when you do something personal, they just expect you to be an open book.I find that a lot of people expect it to be a continuing conversation, and in my mind, it’s like, no, everything I had to say about my life and my story is in that book. Outside of that, sure, there’s tidbits I’d be happy to talk about, but no, it’s not a continuing conversation. That book is it. That’s what I’m putting out, the rest of my life is for me and my loved ones.
I always use Instagram as an example. People can share personal things on there, but they’re not there to have a conversation about those moments.It’s so easy to get overwhelmed by like-sharing, especially with social media. You really have to control your own flow of information.
Meanwhile, elsewhere:
—Interviews & Profiles. Rebecca Shuh talks to Eli Valley (Diaspora Boy) about making political comics in the Trump era.
RS: You talk in the book about backlash you got at different points for the comics. Do you have any memorable stories about an incidence of that backlash?
EV: There were so many. The main one that changed a lot of things for me was the one where I positioned Abe Foxman as an anti-semite. I talk a lot about how he waged this war on The Forward until they stopped running me. The Forward didn’t want to make an immediate cut because they didn’t want to make it look like they were bowing to McCarthyite pressure, so they did a slow, don’t accept his pitches, we’ll take a smattering, but it’s over. I was able to get in three or four over the course of the next year, I don’t remember exactly how many, but…it really left me…it wasn’t a great experience.
—News. Ramón Esono Ebalé, a political cartoonist in Equatorial Guinea, was arrested two weeks ago and remains detained without charges today.
Human rights advocates initially feared that authorities intended to charge Ebalé with criminal defamation for his often-lewd caricatures of Equatorial Guinea’s dictator Obiang, who has ruled the small country on the west coast of central Africa since 1979, earning a reputation for brutal repression of journalists, dissidents, and political activists. In recent years the crackdown has also spread to artistic domains including theater and popular music. Reports that they instead appear to be drumming up charges of money laundering against him are likely even worse news for Ebalé, who could be sentenced to many years in prison.
—Misc. Best American Comics series editor Bill Kartalopoulos has published the list of "notable comics" that came out during the period covered by the latest volume. This is always a reliable, thorough guide to noteworthy work.
