BY ZAN ROMANOFF
AMINDER DHALIWAL GETS MYTHOLOGICAL TO FIGHT ASIAN HATE IN A NEW GRAPHIC NOVEL
ITHOUGHT therewas something interesting about studying a minority versus being a minority,” Aminder Dhaliwal says. She’s explaining why her second graphic novel, “Cyclopedia Exotica,” begins with a rupture of the fourth wall: a page of information about the Cyclops, “an exotic subspecies of archaic humans,” suddenly interrupted by one of their kind looking up from the page to address the reader directly. “Oh, hi,” she says. “You’re reading about me, I see. Blegh! What a dull way to learn about a minority.”
This particular Cyclops is Etna, one of the characters Dhaliwal follows through a series of short comics that offer an intimate look at how Cyclopes live and work among the two-eyed majority. In a time of persistent hate crimes against Asian Americans, the parallels are clear — and intended, Dhaliwal says. But then, “I had so many people messaging me asking, is this about the trans experience? It was so enlightening to see, we’re all just going through the same things.”
Dhaliwal’s first book, “Woman World,” imagining a man-free planet, was published in 2018. She regularly posts panels from her works in progress on her Instagram account to thousands of followers. When she’s not drawing comics, she works in animation, with credits on shows including “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Steven Universe.”
She spoke with The Times about the power of Instagram, the frustrations of Hollywood and how different mediums helped her break free of comic conventions.
“Cyclopedia Exotica” feels particularly L.A.-inflected. Two of the Cyclopes, Jian and Gray, have a storyline about making and selling art. Then there’s all this discussion about how body image gets manufactured and sold to us. Do you think living here has affected the stories you’re telling?
Because I worked in children’s animation, there were all these rules about what could happen in an episode — and what could a child understand? What will make you lose advertisers’ money? It’s just so frustrating, and it filtered into my comics.
A lot of it too was friends telling me stories of microaggressions, where you come to this big ol’ melting pot and you almost don’t expect it to happen. But you start picking up on the small things, because maybe the big things aren’t happening now. The Jian and Gray story — I’ve felt that. I had so much of my life where people would ask me to come pitch on something. They would always ask for “the Indian version,” and I always felt so unhelpful. I grew up in England, and then I moved to Canada!
It’s a really odd feeling to be brought in and told how great your work is and then to have that slow realization that it might have more to do with the color of your skin or what pronouns you use. Or how many followers you have, because