Dee's interview

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.