Can you introduce yourself ?
Hello! My name is Dee. D. Mathieu Cassendo
I’m a cartoonist, an illustrator.
I create propaganda,
and soon, queer pornography.
I started drawing when I was five.
Everyone draws when they’re little.
My first “famous” drawing,
which made my career
is a pink dragon with stinging flames.
But, professionally,
I started putting my stuff online in 2011
and creating small comic strips.
My goal in life is to create a webcomic.
Things that really interest me
are the world of fantasy,
how people interact,
also within a world that is more real,
in Laval, Montreal, very Quebecois,
and definitely very Afro-Quebecois.
La Petite Suceuse is my first book,
in paperback.
It’s the story of a young
280 year-old girl.
Who lives in a universe,
in a Quebec, in 2302,
in the future.
We’re living in a leftist dictatorship.
Everyone is very ecological.
Education is free.
But, no one is happy.
No one is happy because Quebeckers
have lost their right to vote.
Because there is a world elite
that is lead by people we call the Hemagis.
And the Hemagis are people who have super-human powers
but need to feed off of human blood.
There are a lot of roles for the Hemagis.
My protagonist, who is Magdalena,
the young girl, has had enough,
has had enough of being at the service of humans.
Her role as a patroller is to walk the streets
to ensure humans are not attacking other humans
and she finds them really childish.
She decides to start her own small revolution.
There’s contempt among humans and
Hemagis and the humans have really had it,
but really had it with the Hemagis.
Mag decides that she’ll give them a reason
to really hate them.
And that’s the story in brief.
[As a person who identifies as afro-feminist and queer.]
I don’t just draw blue-eyed blonds I guess
and apparently that surprises a lot
of people. When I started to affirm myself
more in my art and all that,
there were a lot of people asking me
why I only draw black women.
And I’m like… (gestures toward herself)
Why would I draw anyone else?
You know, it’s not strictly that but
black women, the black woman is
prominent in what I do but that’s because
I’m surrounded by black women.
I grew up with two sisters, one mother,
I have a father, a brother too
but you know women have always been
really, really close.
I find that being black is glorious!
I find that women are really pretty.
It’s like, it’s obvious that I’ll include
them in the things I love, so, drawing.
Black: everyone sees that I’m black.
Woman: some still wonder.
But, more political claims are invisible.
Plus, in any case, in my case,
it’s important to say them loud and clear.
Afro-fem, yes.
I still have, not necessarily a reluctance
with the word Afro-feminist,
but it’s just that when I learned what it really is,
it was in a European context
and the reality of Afropean women isn’t
the same as Afro-Americans,
Afro-Quebeckers, Afro-Canadians.
In Quebec, we need to reaffirm ourselves
in terms of the Black feminist struggle.
It’s complicated because above all,
we think “ah yea, afro struggles
in general, it happens in the U.S., with
Martin Luther King,” but it’s bigger
than that.
If I use this label,
it’s because I want to.
I respect people who refuse the label,
it’s all good.
But it’s also to, push me to learn more about it.
I think that by using labels,
it’s easier to navigate
toward where you want to go.
During the parade for St-Jean,
which is the national holiday of Quebekers, I guess
They decided to make it a green parade
so people would be pushing the floats.
On one of the floats,
there was a female singer –
I don’t know her name and don’t care to be honest
with a long blue robe, singing:
“My dear Quebec, it’s your turn!,”
with lots of people, all white people,
singing around [the float] with little fairytale motions.
And around the float
with the little white woman,
there were young racialized men pushing the float.
I don’t know what the French expression is
but in Creole we say “En ba rèdi,”
like, they were really having a hard time.
With costumes that the organizers said were parchment coloured
with verses from poems on them,
but from far, okay,
it looked like slave clothing.
You know, they still don’t realize
the image it projected.
Even after the rehearsals, to say to themselves
“you know what, this is weird.”
But no! Because they could care less.
And that’s the “bottom line” of
the diversity conversation in Quebec.
People don’t care, simply put.
And, they patted themselves on the back
saying “Oh yes, we are good for diversity,
we wanted to include the everyone.”
But for them, inclusion means having
people from an underserved neighborhood,
to have them do the shit jobs.
Basically, there was a controversy
because the image:
it got people scared.
It was extremely colonial
but you could say it’s just Quebec
putting its cards on the table.
I told myself I needed to react
because we’ve had it in Quebec with negative
images when it comes black communities.
If for Quebec,
diversity is about having black people
lifting up white people, because
that’s what it was.
Then, we’ll just “switch” places.
So that's what I drew.
With black people on a kind of platform,
with pan-African flags,
hyper “swagged up”
with white people lifting them up
wearing flesh-coloured robes.
I said to myself, voila! That’s it.
I got comments that were
very much like “Ah, but you know,
we’re not all racist.”
or “Yes, but I’m not racist.”
I find it disturbing to get messages
from white people saying “Ah, yes,
I’m happy to see what you’re doing, etc…
I hope you go kill all the white people
in your stories.” But I’m like “What?”
A lot of people have a hard time
understanding the goal of my comics,
that I identify with the word Afro-Quebecker.
I don’t want to kill all the white people,
“What the fuck?” Like, seriously?
I have a big mouth and it’s bad
when you’re on social media.
But, it’s fun at the same time
because it creates a community.
There are people who get interested
in your work and it creates opportunities to collaborate.
It’s fun
It's fun but not fun at the same time.