27-year-old artist Renren Galeno’s parents used to ask her that question. Not anymore, not after her illustrations were part of “Searching for Maura,” a ground-breaking investigative report in the Washington Post that was a finalist for the prestigious Pulitzer Prizes.
Discovered because of her comics on climate anxiety, the Davao native gave a unique Filipino perspective to a major American journalism project that unearthed a long-buried scandal involving the US government’s Smithsonian Museum.
The project also blew open a hidden part of Philippine history that saw Filipinos displayed in a human zoo at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.
Galeno tells Howie Severino how she convinced her parents that art was a viable career choice and what it was like to collaborate with investigative journalists.
Discovered because of her comics on climate anxiety, the Davao native gave a unique Filipino perspective to a major American journalism project that unearthed a long-buried scandal involving the US government’s Smithsonian Museum.
The project also blew open a hidden part of Philippine history that saw Filipinos displayed in a human zoo at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.
Galeno tells Howie Severino how she convinced her parents that art was a viable career choice and what it was like to collaborate with investigative journalists.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [speaking in Tagalog]
00:02 [speaking in Tagalog]
00:04 [speaking in Tagalog]
00:06 Mahabang Attention Span. Ang guest natin ngayon ay si Renren Galeno, 27 years old lang, isang comics
00:13 artist sa Davao City at isang finalist sa Pulitzer Prizes. Isa sa pinaka-prestigyosong gantimpala sa
00:20 rarangan ng journalism sa mundo. Para sa kanyang illustration sa Washington Post investigative
00:26 report, "Searching for Maura". Renren Galeno, magandang araw sayo. And congratulations.
00:34 Magandang araw po and thank you for having me.
00:36 So Renren, ano bang pakiramdam? You're 27 years old and kinilala ka na ng Pulitzer Prizes para sa
00:44 iyong obra.
00:46 Ano po siya? Very strange. Parang hindi po totoo. Hanggang ngayon parang I'm not quite sure how to
00:58 feel about it. Of course, there's the pride, there's such a great honor. I'm really proud of
01:04 our team and our work. Pero personally, parang I'm still navigating kung ano ba talaga 'tong
01:12 nararamdaman ko.
01:13 Understood. Yes, understood. Kasi ka-announce lang din. And I'm sure it was, everyone knew that
01:24 it was great work all around. The reporting, the text, your artwork, the video, etc. Pero iba rin
01:36 yung malaman mo na ginawara na kayo bilang finalist ng Pulitzer Prize. Pero ang isa pang aspeto rito
01:45 ay you are from Davao City, you live there, that's where you are right now. Wala ka sa mainstream
01:51 media, wala ka dito sa Kapitolyo ng Pilipinas. Paano ko pala nadiscover ng Washington Post?
01:58 It was very, very interesting po kasi parang they just sent me an email one day. I received an email
02:08 February of last year. And I say this all the time, pero akala ko talaga na scam siya or may
02:16 nagjidjoke kasi it was out of the blue. Pero siyempre I said yes. From what I gathered from
02:25 the team, they liked my previous work, 10 Years to Save the World, and I also have some other short
02:34 comics available online. And that's what they said kind of drew them to my work. So of course,
02:45 I was very honored. I said yes, and we got to work. Okay, Renren, I mean, you're talented,
02:57 but you're not the only talented artist in the Philippines. At 27, hindi naman ganun kalaki pa
03:05 yung iyong body of work. So what stood out for them? Ano bang sinabi nila sa 'yo? I'm sure hindi
03:13 lang naman ikaw yung consider. I'm sure marami silang tinignan na artwork and I'm sure naghanap
03:20 din sila ng Pilipino dahil tungkol naman sa mga Pilipino itong investigative report nila. So
03:26 they wanted to make the report as Filipino as possible as well. Parang puro kayo babae na
03:33 Pilipina. Marami kayo Pilipinang babae. Si Regine Cabato, si Nicole Dunca. You're either Filipinas
03:41 or Filipino-Americans. But ano bang sinabi nila sa 'yo? What did they like about your work? What
03:46 made it stand out? In particular, yung sinabi na 10 years to save the world. It's about climate
03:55 change. It's a comics anthology. Meron kang contribution doon yung "I pray you're born with
04:04 gills." Dama? It was about climate change anxiety as a woman, as a woman, a future mother. Obviously
04:14 caught the attention of Washington Post editors. But what about it did they like? What about your
04:22 style, your work? Did they tell you that they liked? So they were looking for a Filipino
04:29 illustrator. Again, this is a very Filipino story. So they did mention that they liked the emotion
04:40 of my characters as well as the dynamism in the composition of "I pray you're born with gills."
04:46 And what was really important to them, because this is a piece of investigative journalism that
04:53 we will be illustrating, is the creation of these very vivid set pieces or backgrounds.
05:02 So because I really enjoy drawing backgrounds, I really enjoy these very cluttered scenes.
05:11 And I incorporate that a lot in my work. I prefer drawing places more than people, actually.
05:18 So they did mention that they liked the sense of place and kind of the detail that I put into
05:28 the backgrounds. And we made good use of that in the comic itself.
05:33 Okay, but at the same time, what they were asking you to do was different,
05:42 quite different from what you had previously done. Because what you did for the Washington
05:48 Post was not exactly comics. I mean, it was an illustrated report, meaning it was based on
05:58 a factual story, a fact-based story. So you can't really use your discard.
06:09 Yes. But so it was kind of a balance,
06:12 because you're an artist, so you need to have a discard. But at the same time,
06:15 you can't just stick to the story, because there's a story. And then,
06:21 there are a lot of people involved in this, a lot of collaborators. I don't know if you have
06:27 collaborators in your other works, but most likely, you kind of created those by yourself.
06:36 In this case, I saw the credits, there were a lot of people involved in your work here.
06:40 So it was quite different. So walk us through that. What was that experience like?
06:46 You're right. I did start making comics just by myself for a while. I started making comics in
06:54 2020. So starting from there, I mostly made work by myself. I wrote and illustrated everything.
07:04 And I was very content in that system. So when they offered the job to me,
07:12 that was my first time working with a writer. And it was something, it was great.
07:19 So that experience was amazing. And I did learn so much from them. At the time that they contacted
07:26 me, I believe the project had been going on, they'd been working on it for about a year.
07:33 So when I received the script, it was kind of this summary of everything they've learned
07:40 during that investigation. So by the time it arrived to me, it was still a first draft,
07:47 of course. And while there were so many incredible people on the team, my main kind of going person
07:55 was my editor, Hannah Good, who did an incredible job just managing everything. And I had such a
08:04 great time working with the team. The story is very heavy and very emotionally taxing. But
08:11 working with the team felt, it felt great. It was honestly a breeze. We only met on Zoom once,
08:20 and then everything else was just email communication, which to me is just like,
08:26 maybe at that point for me, it was unheard of. It was just so efficient. And I feel like we
08:34 really understood each other. And when we worked from the first draft, I felt like we really
08:41 understood what the other one wanted to convey. And they were very cool about letting me explore
08:50 certain ideas. And they were just so supportive in terms of research and just in general,
08:55 and their own passion for the story, their own drive to get this right. It was just so infectious,
09:04 and you can feel it from the script to the additional support. So the actual production was
09:13 very fun for me. It was very exhilarating. And on my end, at least, the illustrations took
09:23 about three months. So you described the experience of working with them as great. I mean,
09:31 that's good to know. And of course, you could see that the outcome was fabulous. However,
09:39 you're an artist, you have your own ideas. Were there ideas that you had to negotiate or
09:46 you had disagreements about and eventually had to kind of make, you know, have compromises?
09:52 Was there any points of contention in producing this?
09:58 Points of contention, I wouldn't say. So it was more of because I came from fiction,
10:06 and my writing is primarily fiction, horror fiction. So it's very, it's I'm very used to it,
10:15 like exaggeration. I'm used to more editorializing emotion. They really did have to ground me there,
10:25 because first of all, again, investigative account, a journalistic account. So the rules were to make
10:34 sure that we avoided speculation as much as we could in the areas where we had all the information,
10:41 we would display it in the comic. And in the areas where we might need to create approximations of
10:50 people, places, we will kind of create a composite of different accounts, and visualize those and
10:59 put them in the comic. So that was one thing that I had to learn. And it was, again, an incredible
11:08 learning experience. I didn't feel any conflict per se. It was just figuring out this, this medium
11:17 and this method of visual communication. And I was always eager, eager to learn.
11:24 Okay, I'm going to ask you some specific questions about your illustrations,
11:31 because this is such a compelling story, you know, your search for Mauro. But
11:34 I want to just rewind a little bit, no? So about your origins, were you born in Davao City?
11:42 And where did you grow up there? And then went to school there?
11:48 I was born and raised in Davao and lived in Manila briefly to study. So that was UP Diliman
11:57 College of Fine Arts for about four years. And then I went right back home.
12:01 Yeah, I understand you started at Ateneo de Davao, and then you moved to
12:08 University UP, UP Mindanao, somewhere in Mindanao. What made you decide to shift to
12:16 UP Diliman? It's a little far from home, right? It's a little far from your family.
12:19 I started at Ateneo de Davao studying architecture. To me, that was our compromise
12:29 with my parents. I get to draw. It's a kind of, it's like a career they could understand.
12:36 Of course, they could understand. Of course, there was that stigma that you're an artist.
12:43 And after one SEM, I begged. I begged them. This is not for me. This isn't it. I know I'm
12:53 meant to be somewhere else. I have to go to an art school. And there was a lot of resistance
12:58 from my parents. Of course, the stigma associated with being an artist in the Philippines.
13:06 Walang clear career trajectory. But I did just beg. I said, "If I fail, that's on me.
13:15 I would just like the chance to do this." So, I wasn't a K-12 student. So, I was still not 18.
13:25 So, our compromise, again, was, "Okay, let's try something else." I studied communication arts
13:31 in UP Mindanao. And maybe to my parents, it was like, "Oh, there's art in the name. So, maybe
13:37 it will stick." So, that's a little bit closer to home still. And I get this different environment
13:45 and maybe more freedom to explore my artwork. But it's still not it. So, I did tell my parents that
13:56 I need to go to art school. I'm sorry. And they said, "Okay, you can go to art school. But the
14:01 task of UP Diliman." I think in an effort to dissuade me. But I was very, very stubborn.
14:07 And I went anyway. And the rest is history, I guess. Yes. But so, what do your parents think?
14:16 Do they still attach a stigma? I mean, obviously, you have success as an artist, but
14:25 they understand you better now? Yes. At the beginning, it was very
14:31 the typical, "Ano ba talaga trabaho mo?" And for a while, I don't think they understood what exactly
14:37 I was doing, only that I was doing something. And now that there are, I guess, physical books,
14:45 and there are, well, Maura was a thing that happened. And I think they're very understanding.
14:55 And they've come to be supportive of it, which I'm very grateful for.
15:00 Okay, well, they must be so proud of you. So, back to Maura. So, you got all of these materials
15:11 from your colleagues at the Washington Post. You've been having this back and forth with them.
15:20 What kind of guidance were they giving you? Or did they just say, "Just show us what you think.
15:27 Just give us some samples of what you want to do, how you want to execute this."
15:34 One of the first things they gave me was this document. It was a document filled to the brim
15:42 with different resources, as well as different pictures, archival pictures that they had access
15:49 to and compiled for me. So, there were pictures of the people in the fair. There were pictures
15:55 of the ship that they would have gone on to go to the States. There were also pictures of trains,
16:04 buildings, all sorts of things. There were so many pages in that document.
16:08 And another thing they gave me was the first draft of the script. And what I ended up doing those
16:17 first few days was directly sketching out the images. So, they were direct replications
16:27 of the pictures. It kind of started there. The realization that this was a story about gaze and
16:37 perspective and interrogation of the context of these images, I realized that what I was doing
16:44 by replicating these pictures and showing them again, I was essentially repeating what was being
16:49 done to these subjects. So, that's kind of what jump-started the whole theme of it for me, at
16:58 least. And that is very evident in a specific section of the comic where we turn the perspective
17:08 of the picture around. So, you're not looking at the subjects anymore, not looking at the Filipinos
17:16 anymore. You're looking at the fairgoers and you're looking at the camera. And that's kind
17:21 of where it started for me. Okay. Renren, just for our listeners and viewers, I want to zoom out a
17:28 little bit and maybe you can add to this, but I just want to say something about the St. Louis
17:33 World's Fair of 1904. So, this is an investigative report about something that happened more than
17:38 100 years ago. That's why the theme is a little difficult because you can't talk to any witnesses
17:46 or survivors from that era. But basically, in 1904, the Philippines was a new colony of the
17:55 United States. And part of the purpose of the St. Louis World's Fair was kind of to exhibit the new
18:04 colonial subjects to an American public that had no idea what the Philippines was or what Filipinos
18:10 were. People from various parts of the Philippines were gathered, put on boats, and then put in these
18:17 villages in St. Louis, Missouri. And not just the Iguorot, but many Bisaya, different ethnic groups.
18:27 And many, many Americans came from all over to see these new colonial subjects of America.
18:41 In the Soyok village, they were from the mountains and they have their own
18:48 culture, etc. And these were demonstrated. And Maura was among them. Now, part of the context
18:59 of this is, it wasn't just to educate Americans. It was also in a way to show American cultural
19:15 superiority. There's a racist element here. That's part of the context. And then to humanize this
19:26 whole subject, the report focused on Maura, the 18-year-old woman who died kind of mysteriously.
19:36 Whether it's really her brain that ended up in the Smithsonian, etc. But it was really about
19:49 U.S. colonialism, this world's fair. Is there anything that you wanted to add to that
19:56 context? This is not taught in our schools, right? Yes, I think it was very important. Because for me,
20:04 I knew about the human zoos because of, I suppose it was a viral, there was a viral photo that was
20:14 shared around Facebook of a young Igarot girl with her hands bound in Coney Island. So,
20:20 that was my only exposure to this. Again, it's not taught in schools. So, learning so much so fast
20:26 was very emotionally taxing. Also, as an artist, I had to keep looking at the references again and
20:36 again and again. Personally, there was definitely a racist element to the fair. In a lot of ways,
20:44 the way that they had these people on display, it was almost as if they wanted to justify the
20:54 occupation. The way it was framed and the way that the articles are written and the language
21:00 that they used was, "These are the savages we are giving American civilization to."
21:11 They were seen as lower than or lesser than, sorry. It was kind of like,
21:21 again, they were there to be displayed. They were there to be gawked at.
21:26 But another thing that I want to bring attention to here is that while they were exploited in the
21:36 fair, there are so many accounts of our ancestors who actually had this very adventurous spirit.
21:45 They wanted to go to America. They wanted to experience this brand new world.
21:49 I think it's really important also that aside from recognizing these atrocities,
21:58 part of humanizing these people is acknowledging their agency. They were curious. They wanted
22:06 to see the world. They were genuinely inquisitive. They had an adventurous spirit.
22:12 Quite a few accounts mentioned that. I just would like to add that, I guess, to the context
22:21 of this whole thing. Okay, Ren. That's something that has, in a way, confounded me. You just said
22:32 that these Filipinos who were brought to the World's Fair in 1904 had agency. It's their
22:37 decision. This is not human trafficking. But my account, I think it was in that video on the
22:48 Washington Post website where there was an account quoted that said that many of those on the train,
22:57 many of the Filipinos traveling on the train, they traveled by boat from the Philippines,
23:03 of course, and they got down in Tacoma, Washington from Tacoma. They spent several
23:07 days on the train to go to St. Louis. They didn't know where they were going. They didn't know
23:16 why they were there. That kind of confused me. It didn't sound like agency to me. It sounded like
23:25 they might have been fooled. I don't know. Would they promise something else?
23:29 It was not a universal experience. There were people who had agency. There were people who
23:36 really didn't know where they were going, etc. Yes, it's definitely not a universal experience.
23:47 Definitely not. There were some people who were tricked and they were promised certain things
23:53 that were never delivered upon. I apologize for my earlier statement if it caused any confusion.
24:01 Because the "recruitment" for this was different per peoples. There were different experiences.
24:15 While there were some people who look back at it with pride, there were some people who returned
24:22 to the Philippines. It was documented that they look back at their time there with pride.
24:29 There are still quite a few accounts of exploitation. Generally, they were fooled.
24:37 They were promised things that were not delivered on. You mentioned earlier that there were Filipinos
24:44 displayed or exhibited in Coney Island. That's in New York. Maybe my other listeners are wondering,
24:51 "Why in Coney Island? We're talking about St. Louis." Actually, after the St. Louis World's Fair,
24:56 there were some who were recruited to become part of a traveling show. Coney Island is a famous
25:07 entertainment complex, I guess. An amusement park.
25:18 But anyway, I'll go back to Maura. One of the distinctive aspects of your illustrations is that
25:26 many of the characters in the illustrations in the report had faces, had full faces.
25:39 I understand they were based on photographs. Maura herself, the main character,
25:46 you never showed her full face. Why? Again, because we did not want to speculate
25:52 on anything, we decided to create this sort of approximation of Maura based on existing newspaper
26:01 accounts of her. The most prominent descriptions that we had were, first of all, her long hair.
26:07 She was a girl of 18, and she had tattoos on her arms and hands. The way that we decided on
26:15 Maura's appearance was, we had photos of two Suyuk-Ihrut women. We had Tugmina, who was the
26:27 same age, and she also had long hair. The build was mostly based off of this image of Tugmina,
26:35 while the tattoos were based off of a woman named Demenya. We assumed that her tattoos are very
26:44 similar to what Maura would have had, like a full sleeve. To clarify, there's no existing photo of
26:51 Maura. The reporters were not able to track any down. Yes. Despite the fact that there was really
26:59 heavy newspaper coverage of this event and many pictures of the Filipinos. It's interesting that
27:09 the main character of this story, there was not a single photo that you could base her face or her
27:17 illustration on, and yet there were photos of many others and many other Filipinos at the same fair.
27:25 Yes, I believe this is because Maura died before the fair. The heavy documentation was shortly
27:33 after, during the fair itself. Yes, and just again to fill in the story, Maura came down with
27:44 pneumonia. She died of pneumonia, spent several days in a local hospital there in St. Louis.
27:50 As you mentioned, she died before the fair opened, so there's no photography because most of the
27:58 photography was taken by people visiting or reporters, photographers visiting the fair.
28:05 After she died, there was an autopsy done on her. None of this, I guess, was reported in the
28:15 newspapers, but investigative reporters later on learned that a famous anthropologist or a leading
28:21 anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., which is a research and museum
28:28 government institution in Washington, came to St. Louis, did the autopsy, and supposedly took part
28:36 of her brain, the cerebellum, back to the Smithsonian to be part of this experiment.
28:44 So, he collected brains from many different ethnic groups, mostly Native Americans,
28:51 African Americans, and also now and then Filipinos, people of color.
28:56 Again, it's part of this set of beliefs back then, these theories that the brains of people of color
29:09 were different from the brains of white people. Yes, the researcher or the anthropologist,
29:19 Herdlitzka, was responsible for acquiring different, as he mentioned, specimens for
29:29 the Smithsonian at the time. And from my understanding, while I can't speak on
29:40 the method of reporting that they have done prior to what I've added to the report,
29:49 it's my understanding that he has, I guess, collected several specimens from the World's
29:58 Fair, and there were anticipated deaths that he knew about, and that's where some of the specimens
30:08 came from. And this collection just grew and grew over the years, and he performed comparative
30:16 studies. Again, from what I know, he performed the comparative studies against the brains of
30:23 white people, and it was all in an attempt to establish some kind of supremacy.
30:29 So, did you learn about all of this only from this project? You said there were some
30:41 memes that went viral earlier that gave you an idea about it, but
30:50 you're much younger than I am. So, when you were growing up, you were in school,
30:54 none of this was taught to you? No, not even in college. And I remember
31:00 saying as much during our first meeting that this was my first time learning all of this,
31:09 and it, at the time, to me, did not feel like a Filipino problem. It was, after all,
31:15 an American institution with an American doctor, and it wasn't something that I saw
31:22 myself in at the beginning. I felt very detached from it because I had no idea
31:29 how deep this went. So, when I really started to understand, started to look through all of
31:38 those research, all of those resources, and going through the script, it was quite difficult.
31:46 This all just happened, and I had no idea. And now I had no choice but to look.
31:54 So, now you believe as well that it's a Filipino story, not just an American story?
32:01 Well, we're definitely a big part of this story. And Filipinos, of course,
32:08 we were under the Americans for quite some time. And this is just part of that ugly history that
32:16 apparently not a lot of people knew about, myself included.
32:21 What do you think should be done with this story? I mean,
32:24 dapat bang ituro ito sa schools natin? How important is this story here in the Philippines,
32:30 do you think? I would like to think that it is quite important here. This is a part of our history
32:38 that we don't know about. This is something that is news to myself and apparently to my peers.
32:46 So, one of the first things that they told me when they saw the story, my friends I mean,
32:52 this was that they had no idea this was a thing that happened. So, I'm just grateful to be a part
32:59 of this work that makes this story accessible. And I'm really hoping that it reaches a lot more
33:09 people. And we're really grateful for this opportunity for the story to get more eyes on it.
33:15 Hopefully, more people are able to see this. I hope they are inspired to dig a little bit deeper
33:22 as well. Well, Ren, this is the first story that I have seen in the Washington Post or any other
33:32 major foreign newspaper where an article of this length or any kind of content like this was
33:41 translated into Filipino. There's a Filipino translation of this. So, obviously, there's an
33:48 effort to make this accessible to Filipinos as well. It's not just for the American audience.
33:55 So, if you're not very comfortable in English, there's a Filipino version. At the same time,
34:06 I noticed a lot of the Washington Post staff and journalists working on this had Filipino roots.
34:18 This is, they felt like they were telling their people's story as well to their audience.
34:23 Yes, we had, I believe, I think it was about 13 people, 13 Filipinos on the team or maybe more.
34:32 And I was really grateful for their dedication to making this accessible to Filipinos. At some
34:41 point, we had hoped to publish it as well in Kankanay. And we have such a dedicated team
34:49 of translators, all attributed, of course, in the comic's credits. And they were really passionate
34:58 at making sure that this was accessible. It's available also in video format, which might be
35:06 a more popular format for Filipinos. And that video has a Filipino translation. I'm really
35:12 proud to have worked with them because this is the first Filipino article for the Washington Post.
35:18 And it's also, I think, their first kind of interactive format. So, it's really exciting.
35:23 Yeah. In fact, it's branded in some places as an illustrated investigative report, which is also
35:35 rare or maybe the first of its kind. You mentioned that this could be translated into Kankanay.
35:42 I mean, is there really a serious discussion about this or is this just your wish? Obviously,
35:50 this is about Kankanay-speaking people as well, not just Tagalog-speaking people. I mean,
35:56 you yourself, you're in Davao where they speak Visayas. So, the Filipino translation is
36:04 really Tagalog language-based. But there are many Filipinos who are not that proficient in Tagalog.
36:11 So, is this going to be accessible as well to Kankanay speakers and people there?
36:18 There was definitely a hope in the beginning, but of course, the logistics and everything
36:24 and working in publishing so far, I realized that translating is grueling. And translating,
36:33 not only translating, but also localization is really hard work. But this was something that
36:41 we wanted to do in the beginning. But unfortunately, we only have it in Filipino, but really hoping
36:49 it's more than enough. Well, you know, there's time. I mean, I'm sure this story, this project
36:56 has new legs because of this kind of publicity. So, who knows? Just back to your origin story
37:06 again. As a child, were you already interested in art? Were you one of those kids who was
37:10 constantly doodling in the notebooks? What kind of kid were you? Yes, definitely that kid.
37:17 I actually have, my parents have kept drawings that I don't remember making. I was three years
37:24 old. I remember being three years old and my parents would show me this book I vandalized.
37:29 And I don't remember doing that. And they were like little tiny people on the edges of a book.
37:36 So, I feel like drawing has always been a part of who I am. There was never a time in my life
37:44 where I wasn't drawing. So, yeah, I was very much that kid with the dirty notebooks and
37:53 sketchpad in hand. Even when I was studying architecture, I was still finding a way to
38:03 kind of incorporate my own practice, so to speak, my own little doodles into my mechanical plates,
38:12 much to their chagrin, I suppose. So, in the course of this project, you really got to know
38:21 Maura, know Maura's life. She had a short life, but you probably found out as much as
38:28 anyone knows about her, to do the illustrations about her. Was there any part of you that began
38:37 to identify with her? I mean, you know, she's a young woman. You're a young woman, no, Filipina.
38:45 You got to know her more than most people. What kind of relationship or if any did you
38:54 form with someone like her who came alive in your illustrations but has been long dead?
39:04 Well, I would like to hope that anyone who reads the comic would identify with Maura. She's this
39:14 character that does not have a face per se. She's an observer and I really wanted the reader to
39:25 identify with her. And I suppose I found myself in that in kind of that headspace or what must
39:34 it be like to be a teenage girl in a strange land and a lot of what informed the paneling,
39:43 like for example, there's an opening shot of the World's Fair that feels very, very majestic. It's
39:51 this very tall panel of a lot of the main buildings at the middle of the fair. And I wanted
40:00 to portray that grandeur because I felt that's what it must have felt like for Maura, looking
40:06 at all of that, this expansive, grandiose, these monuments that would have been unfathomable to her.
40:18 And underneath that long panel of the World's Fair, there's also a similarly long panel
40:25 dedicated to the hills of Suyup. So, it's a lot of these things, a lot of these compositions,
40:32 the perspective of these drawings and these panels. I kind of placed myself in Maura's shoes.
40:42 If it's new to her, if it's large, if it would have been large and majestic and strange to her,
40:49 I wanted to portray it as that. So, she kind of, she was ultimately the camera, the lens
41:00 through which I wanted to show the world around her.
41:04 Yes. And what makes your treatment distinctive is that while the illustrations were based on
41:14 many photographs, you gave it a different perspective. For example, there were many
41:26 photographs of Filipinos, but on portraits, done by, I guess, all the photographers were white,
41:34 American photographers, shooting Filipinos. Your artwork depicted the scene with a photographer
41:46 shooting the Filipino subjects as if you were either a bystander there or a Filipino
41:55 at the fair looking at what was unfolding. So, you changed the perspective from the colonial
42:06 gaze of where the photographer is invisible and only the Filipino colonial subject is seen.
42:16 But the colonizer is also there in the act of taking photographs and interacting with the
42:26 Filipinos. Now, was that your idea or was that from the Washington Post people or what?
42:30 It was my idea, but I had to, of course, run it through them.
42:34 What was really important to me was interrogating the context of the pictures and kind of showing
42:43 what lies beyond the frame. And of course, I'm very biased, but I feel like comics was the perfect
42:53 medium for this because we have the element of the panel where an image, much like a photograph,
43:00 is cut off to display a certain scene. And a lot of the crowds that you see in that sequence
43:07 are intentionally placed outside of the panel. So, while the subject of the pictures themselves
43:15 are still very much inside of that picture, of that square or rectangle. So, this was that
43:23 interrogation of context, wondering what exists outside of the frame of this image, wondering how
43:31 that image came to be, who took it, who's looking at it, who posed it, who posed this image. Because
43:39 a lot of the images that I had received and are available of our Indigenous peoples are actually
43:45 from studios in America. And what kind of reactions have you been getting? Has it been all
44:00 positive? It's hard to please everyone, right? What's the mix of reactions that you've gotten for
44:06 this? So far, it's been positive. I know there are some comments, first of all, that asking why
44:16 they've made this into a comic. This is a news thing. Why is it a graphic novel? This is for
44:25 children. Those kinds of comments kind of always happen and it just comes with the medium, I
44:31 suppose. But mostly, it's been quite positive and I'm really grateful. And what are you working on
44:39 now? What can we look forward to after this? Well, first of all, my book, Sawala, came out
44:48 November of last year and it's available via Secret HQ or Comiket. So if you are into chickens
44:57 and horror stories, maybe you can check that out. It's about sabong, right? Yes, it's about sabong.
45:04 If you are interested in that as well, yeah, you can check it out. And this is a work of fiction.
45:12 It is a work of fiction, yes. And you'd be open to doing nonfiction work again,
45:19 like Search for Maura. I mean, yeah, I love it. Actually, it's quite the process of finding
45:28 additional visual research is quite taxing. You do quite a lot of digging, but I was so grateful
45:36 that they gave me that initial list of resources because fact-checking on my own was easy and then
45:43 I can always go to them if I had any additional questions. So that support was incredible. But
45:49 I found myself really enjoying that process and working with a writer. What I'm realizing,
45:56 what I realized rather after this particular project is I really like working with the writers.
46:03 There's something different when you have someone to kind of bounce your energy off of,
46:08 as opposed to working by yourself. It's a little lonely.
46:12 Yeah. And so this is a new vista in your career, no? You weren't really planning, no?
46:20 This is not something you studied in school, no? I mean, fine arts at UP,
46:27 there's no such thing as illustrated investigative journalism. There's no such course or subject.
46:36 Yes, but it's definitely not something I even dreamed of. It's not within my field. I'm not a
46:45 journalist and I don't write in the traditional sense. So a Pulitzer's not exactly something that
46:53 you dream about. Even maybe an Eisner or a Book Award, that could have been maybe like a pipe
47:02 dream. So this is so unexpected, but of course, I'm just so grateful.
47:07 All right. This has been a great conversation. We want to thank you for sharing and for doing
47:17 this great work, no? And helping everyone understand a critical part of our history in
47:23 such a unique and powerful way. So congratulations on being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
47:30 Renren Daleno, mabuhay ka. Maraming maraming salamat.
47:34 Thank you, Pastor Howie. Thank you so much.
47:37 Hi, I'm Howie Severino. Check out the Howie Severino Podcast. New episodes will stream
47:44 every Thursday. Listen for free on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and other platforms.
47:57 [Music]