KA-POW!
Pitt prof flips from poetry to comics
In her Regent Square home, Yona Harvey occasionally awakens from a dream with an idea for a poem.
This year, her subconscious journeys led to Wakanda, a mythical technologically advanced place ruled by the Black Panther, a Marvel Comics character created in 1966. Over the summer, the University of Pittsburgh professor created a 10-page origin story for Zenzi, a revolutionary leader who appears in a Black Panther spinoff, “World of Wakanda.”
At 8 p.m. Saturday, Ms. Harvey will read her poetry and the Alexey Kruglov-Jaak Sooäär Quartet will perform at the City of Asylum’s Alphabet City tent on Sampsonia Way on the North Side. The event is free, but reservations are required at https://cityofasylumpittsburgh.secure.force.com/ ticket/.
She and feminist author Roxane Gay are the the first black women to write for Marvel Comics. In July, when Marvel announced that two white men would write an origin story about a black female Iron Man, social media exploded with protests.
Ms. Harvey’s visits to imaginary Wakanda began in June when author Ta-nehisi Coates, a Howard University classmate and contributing editor to The Atlantic Monthly, asked if she was interested in writing for Marvel.
“The big exciting thing is that there is a woman at the center of the story. I think just that alone is going to make it have a big impact for young women. When I was growing up, the women were the girlfriend. They weren’t the protagonist,” the 42-year-old poet said during a conversation in her tidy office on the Cathedral of Learning’s fourth floor.
Zenzi is a complicated woman, Ms. Harvey said. “She has a lot of motives for what she does.” Mr. Coates, who also has written for Marvel, offered helpful suggestions.
“He is very supportive. It’s a total collaboration. He’ll send me a text or a bit of art. He is an impeccable editor and sounding board,” she said.
As Ms. Harvey imagined Zenzi’s origins, she thought of Winnie Mandela, who was often interrogated and harassed by South African police but kept fighting apartheid with her former husband, Nelson Mandela. The Pitt professor admired Mrs. Mandela’s “matter-of-fact, unapologetic manner and her ability to start grassroots movements.”
A longtime reader of comics, Ms.
Harvey recalled her days at Howard University in Washington, D.C., working on a comic book with classmates Kemp Powers, an awardwinning playwright, and Doug Kearney, a poet who teaches at Cal Arts. She noted that Lucille Clifton, a poet she admired, also loved comics.
“She wrote letters to Superman and Clark Kent in ‘The Book of Light,’ ” Ms. Harvey said. When she read the book in college, she thought to herself, “Holy smokes!”
As she grew up, Ms. Harvey enjoyed reading about Marvel heroes The Hulk and Spider-Man. Later, it was the comics “Saga” and “Bitch Planet.”
While her days include email, faculty meetings, academic conferences and dinner invitations, her work explores “anger, jealousy, frustration, melancholy and joy. I’ve always been a kid who lived in her head.”
Ms. Harvey also sews, does hot yoga and enjoys cooking meals with her 16year-old daughter, Ua, who tasted grasshoppers while traveling through Thailand this past summer.
“I want my daughter to encounter characters she can see herself in,” she said.
Ms. Harvey, who also has a 13-year-old son, Aaron, did not have to worry about pairing her story with the Black Panther movie due out in 2018. Nor did she give its handsome star, Chadwick Boseman, any thought as she worked.
“What is my problem? I’m too much of a geek,” she said.