Long Shadows (August Lindgren-Ruby)

Long Shadows is an ecohistorical graphic memoir. Let’s break that down really quick: 

The graphic memoir genre is what it sounds like– the combination of the graphic novel form with creative nonfiction or memoir. My project deals primarily with environmental history, hence the prefix. Essentially, it’s a comic about my relationship to nature. 

…

My memoir is an activist work of ecocriticism, meaning that it makes a subject of the human/nature dialectic itself. If environmental crisis is the byproduct of culture, then ecocritical literature completes the circle by addressing crisis. 

The memoir has five parts of varying lengths, moving from the personal to the historical and didactic. There’s the story of my grandfather’s rickety mining claim cabin, about the capriciousness of private land and the importance of complicating memory. Then alluring tales from a road trip, deep impressions left of a quote-unquote “real” engagement with American wilderness. There’s an account of a city upbringing, the unstable interaction of imagined and real mapped space, and the belief in entangled urbanity and nature. 

From there, the academic takes over. The role of ideology in determining land use leads to Environmental Historian Bill Cronon’s landmark conclusions from Nature’s Metropolis. From Times Square to Yellowstone, all land – including wilderness – is constructed by capital in the image of some desired value, such as the aesthetic Sublime. Finally, Long Shadows describes the tangled and bloody history of an Oregon wildlife refuge the size of Oklahoma, and the lessons of its management. The memoir concludes by drawing together the personal, the political, and the historical. 

 

Transcript

INTRODUCTION 

Oh, hey! I didn’t see you there. Thanks for coming to my comps talk! In a moment I’ll hand you over to Cartoon Me, who’ll take care of the rest of the talk.

Hello from isolation in North Carolina! [videos: the author waving and smiling, miscellaneous videos of life in NC.] I’m doing mostly fine; hope you are too. I’m August, recently graduated senior English major, he/they, and this is my entire comps. [flip through comps] The entire thing is available in the shared folder along with its interpretive essay, where it’s probably a bit easier to read. 

CRITICAL CONTEXT 

Long Shadows is an ecohistorical graphic memoir. Let’s break that down really quick: 

The graphic memoir genre is what it sounds like – the combination of the graphic novel form with creative nonfiction or memoir. My project deals primarily with environmental history, hence the prefix. Essentially, it’s a comic about my relationship to nature. 

Long Shadows refers to, and locates itself in, the critical school of ecocriticism. In The Ecocriticism Reader, Cheryl Glotfelty writes: “The argument for ecocriticism is simply the argument that literary criticism should respond to the realities of life on earth.” She goes on to say that literature, quote, “does not float above the material world in some aesthetic ether, but, rather, plays a part in an immensely complex global system, in which energy, matter, and ideas interact.” Ecocriticism is the reaction of literature to the ongoing environmental crisis, itself a “by-product of culture.”

MY GRAPHIC NOVEL 

My memoir is an activist work of ecocriticism, meaning that it makes a subject of the human/nature dialectic itself. If environmental crisis is the byproduct of culture, then ecocritical literature completes the circle by addressing crisis. 

The memoir has five parts of varying lengths, moving from the personal to the historical and didactic. There’s the story of my grandfather’s rickety mining claim cabin, about the capriciousness of private land and the importance of complicating memory. Then alluring tales from a road trip, deep impressions left of a quote-unquote “real” engagement with American wilderness. There’s an account of a city upbringing, the unstable interaction of imagined and real mapped space, and the belief in entangled urbanity and nature. 

From there, the academic takes over. The role of ideology in determining land use leads to Environmental Historian Bill Cronon’s landmark conclusions from Nature’s Metropolis. From Times Square to Yellowstone, all land – including wilderness – is constructed by capital in the image of some desired value, such as the aesthetic Sublime. Finally, Long Shadows describes the tangled and bloody history of an Oregon wildlife refuge the size of Oklahoma, and the lessons of its management. The memoir concludes by drawing together the personal, the political, and the historical. 

HOW IT ALL CAME TOGETHER 

My artistic process involved a large notebook, ink pens and brushes, a scanning app, and digital editing software. Pages began life as typed notes, were storyboarded, sketched, and inked. Approximately 80% of the work took place in a local coffee shop. 

The result became a beautiful bound copy courtesy of Print Services. 

CONCLUSION 

In the months since, I’ve often thought that having completed the year of ideation, research, drawing, and production, I’m finally ready to begin. In much the same way that my comps prepared me to write and draw new ways of existing in nature, Second Laird and my other transient departmental homes – Willis (polisci), Goodsell (ENTS), Leighton (History), and Old Music (Geology) prepared me to read and write myself into the world. 

Long Shadows is a first attempt at a story I will be working on for my entire life. It is a terribly short introduction, even to my personal nature stories alone. It passingly references settler-colonialism and white supremacy, but there is so much more reading and learning for me to do. I believe that for literature to have a positive role, it must first acknowledge the stolen land, labor, and lives it, like every other dominant cultural system, rests upon. 

I’ll conclude with one of my favorite reflections from my project: The work of complicating [this memory] is often uncomfortable. But if we are to transform our understandings of nature, nothing is sacred. Everything is going to change. 

THANK YOU 

I’m so grateful for the support of the English department. I have enormous thanks to give to my advisor, Michael Kowalewski, who made time for me every week and always had helpful books to pull off his shelves. Many classes and professors helped directly inspire this project. Susan Jaret McKinstry, whose Critical Methods and Narrative Theory I took, introduced me to Scott McCloud and theories of graphic narrative. In his American Environmental History and American Cities and Nature classes, George Vrtis razed and rebuilt my conception of the American landscape from the ground up. Fred Hagstrom’s Observational Drawing and Dan Bruggeman’s Art in the Anthropocene are responsible for any quality present in my drawings. Kim Smith’s Environmental Justice and David Hougen-Eitzmann’s Agroecology added context and nuance. 

I have to stop thanking somewhere, but I hope it’s clear that in just about every way, this was a deeply comprehensive project. 

Thank you for listening! 

The music was also by me! Find “not knowing” and “twenty nineteen” at soundcloud.com/ augustsoren