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Can you introduce yourself ?

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Hello! My name is Dee. D. Mathieu Cassendo

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I’m a cartoonist, an illustrator.

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I create propaganda,

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and soon, queer pornography.

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I started drawing when I was five.

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Everyone draws when they’re little.

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My first “famous” drawing,

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which made my career

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is a pink dragon with stinging flames.

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But, professionally,

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I started putting my stuff online in 2011

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and creating small comic strips.

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My goal in life is to create a webcomic.

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Things that really interest me

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are the world of fantasy,

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how people interact,

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also within a world that is more real,

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in Laval, Montreal, very Quebecois,

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and definitely very Afro-Quebecois.

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La Petite Suceuse is my first book,

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in paperback.

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It’s the story of a young

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280 year-old girl.

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Who lives in a universe,

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in a Quebec, in 2302,

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in the future.

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We’re living in a leftist dictatorship.

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Everyone is very ecological.

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Education is free.

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But, no one is happy.

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No one is happy because Quebeckers

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have lost their right to vote.

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Because there is a world elite

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that is lead by people we call the Hemagis.

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And the Hemagis are people who have super-human powers

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but need to feed off of human blood.

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There are a lot of roles for the Hemagis.

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My protagonist, who is Magdalena,

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the young girl, has had enough,

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has had enough of being at the service of humans.

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Her role as a patroller is to walk the streets

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to ensure humans are not attacking other humans

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and she finds them really childish.

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She decides to start her own small revolution.

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There’s contempt among humans and

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Hemagis and the humans have really had it,

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but really had it with the Hemagis.

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Mag decides that she’ll give them a reason

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to really hate them.

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And that’s the story in brief.

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[As a person who identifies as afro-feminist and queer.]

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I don’t just draw blue-eyed blonds I guess

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and apparently that surprises a lot

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of people. When I started to affirm myself

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more in my art and all that,

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there were a lot of people asking me

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why I only draw black women.

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And I’m like… (gestures toward herself)

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Why would I draw anyone else?

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You know, it’s not strictly that but

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black women, the black woman is

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prominent in what I do but that’s because

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I’m surrounded by black women.

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I grew up with two sisters, one mother,

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I have a father, a brother too

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but you know women have always been

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really, really close.

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I find that being black is glorious!

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I find that women are really pretty.

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It’s like, it’s obvious that I’ll include

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them in the things I love, so, drawing.

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Black: everyone sees that I’m black.

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Woman: some still wonder.

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But, more political claims are invisible.

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Plus, in any case, in my case,

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it’s important to say them loud and clear.

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Afro-fem, yes.

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I still have, not necessarily a reluctance

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with the word Afro-feminist,

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but it’s just that when I
learned what it really is,

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it was in a European context

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and the reality of Afropean women isn’t

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the same as Afro-Americans,

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Afro-Quebeckers, Afro-Canadians.

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In Quebec, we need to reaffirm ourselves

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in terms of the Black feminist struggle.

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It’s complicated because above all,

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we think “ah yea, afro struggles

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in general, it happens in the U.S., with

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Martin Luther King,” but it’s bigger

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than that.

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If I use this label,

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it’s because I want to.

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I respect people who refuse the label,

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it’s all good.

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But it’s also to, push me to learn more about it.

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I think that by using labels,

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it’s easier to navigate

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toward where you want to go.

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During the parade for St-Jean,

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which is the national holiday of Quebekers, I guess

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They decided to make it a green parade

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so people would be pushing the floats.

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On one of the floats,

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there was a female singer –

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I don’t know her name and don’t care to be honest

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with a long blue robe, singing:

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“My dear Quebec, it’s your turn!,”

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with lots of people, all white people,

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singing around [the float] with little fairytale motions.

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And around the float

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with the little white woman,

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there were young racialized men pushing the float.

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I don’t know what the French expression is

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but in Creole we say “En ba rèdi,”

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like, they were really having a hard time.

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With costumes that the organizers said were parchment coloured

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with verses from poems on them,

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but from far, okay,

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it looked like slave clothing.

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You know, they still don’t realize

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the image it projected.

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Even after the rehearsals, to say to themselves

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“you know what, this is weird.”

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But no! Because they could care less.

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And that’s the “bottom line” of

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the diversity conversation in Quebec.

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People don’t care, simply put.

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And, they patted themselves on the back

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saying “Oh yes, we are good for diversity,

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we wanted to include the everyone.”

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But for them, inclusion means having

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people from an underserved neighborhood,

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to have them do the shit jobs.

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Basically, there was a controversy

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because the image:

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it got people scared.


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It was extremely colonial

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but you could say it’s just Quebec

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putting its cards on the table.

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I told myself I needed to react

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because we’ve had it in Quebec with negative

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images when it comes black communities.

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If for Quebec,

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diversity is about having black people

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lifting up white people, because

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that’s what it was.

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Then, we’ll just “switch” places.

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So that's what I drew.

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With black people on a kind of platform,

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with pan-African flags,

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hyper “swagged up”

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with white people lifting them up

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wearing flesh-coloured robes.

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I said to myself, voila! That’s it.

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I got comments that were

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very much like “Ah, but you know,

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we’re not all racist.”

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or “Yes, but I’m not racist.”

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I find it disturbing to get messages

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from white people saying “Ah, yes,

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I’m happy to see what you’re doing, etc…

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I hope you go kill all the white people

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in your stories.” But I’m like “What?”

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A lot of people have a hard time

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understanding the goal of my comics,

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that I identify with the word Afro-Quebecker.

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I don’t want to kill all the white people,

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“What the fuck?” Like, seriously?

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I have a big mouth and it’s bad


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when you’re on social media.

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But, it’s fun at the same time

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because it creates a community.

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There are people who get interested

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in your work and it creates opportunities to collaborate.

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It’s fun

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It's fun but not fun at the same time.