Lila
Quintero Weaver, Darkroom: a memoir in black and white.
Tuscaloosa,
Alabama: U of Alabama P, 2010. 264 pp. ISBN: 978-0817357146
Lila
Quintero Weaver’s first graphic novel, Darkroom: a memoir in black and white,
presents a personal narrative of childhood and adolescence as an
Argentinean-American in the deeply segregated town of Marion, Alabama during
the 1960s and 1970s. Darkroom begins when Lila immigrates to the United
States at the age of five and ends, rather abruptly, with a condensed narrative
of her life after high school and her return to Argentina, forty-four years after
her departure. The coming-of-age story, dramatically set during the civil
rights movement, directly links the protagonist’s personal experiences of
immigration with the escalating national crisis, attempting to focalize this
tense historical period from a child’s curious but not fully cognizant
perspective. The adult writer/illustrator, in contrast, maintains a more mature
understanding of the racial tensions in which she grew
up. In this way, through both content (as a young
immigrant’s tale that depicts societal change in addition to personal
development) and form (as a graphic text), Darkroom remains a unique
example of the bildungsroman.
The
graphic novel traces the young protagonist’s odyssey as she copes with
discrimination, struggles to find a place within movements for racial justice,
and gradually comes to terms with her identity as a Spanish-speaking immigrant.
At times the author’s deliberate use of a child-like perspective and naïveté
read as such. Weaver’s overt, even exaggerated, metaphors and visual symbolism
of “black and white” or “dark and light,” especially when connected to the
development of photographic images and the setting of her father’s darkroom in
the context of a deeply segregated society, risk bordering on cliché. Given that a child’s perspective propels the
narrative, however, these somewhat simplistic renderings might also be read as
innocent if not tender and endearing.
In
other instances, the author/illustrator more successfully takes advantage of the
graphic medium to denote racial difference and condemn prejudice. When
depicting racist white characters, Weaver frequently utilizes thin gray contour
outline with sparse facial detail and little or no infill shading. Extreme
close-ups exaggerate harsh facial expressions when white townspeople utter
racist sentiments, e.g. “Nigras? You invited Nigras?!” (97) and “...the coons're gonna march down to the jail” (146).
Weaver's visual style not only highlights the speakers’ whiteness but also
visually connotes the severity and two-dimensionality of their thinking. In
contrast, Weaver consistently depicts African American characters with more
complex shading and frequently includes their hands (or feet) with expressive
gestures within the frame, adding more personality and depth to these images.
In
the citations above, colloquial speech further underscores the uneducated biases
of the speakers; in other words, text and image function together to depict ignorant
bigotry. Likewise, the author/illustrator exploits the balance between text and
image to portray segregation and the narrow-mindedness of white townsfolk. In
one example, the text fits subtly around a gathering of African American
church-goers, allowing the characters’ visual physical presence as a community
and their individual facial expressions to dominate the frame; on the following
page Weaver depicts a group of white church-goers with text in large speech
bubbles that span outside of the frame, activating the edges of the image and
drawing attention to their words rather than the characters,: “It’s those outside agitators! They’ve got
the nigras all stirred up!” “This is
serious! If they get the vote, they’re gonna have the majority, and they’ll
take over!” (138-140). This technique effectively
highlights collective prejudices and fears.
In
contrast, by portraying herself as a child immigrant with an educated
middle-class background, and as a light-skinned Latina whose identity slips in
and out of whiteness, Weaver positions herself as a subjective outsider whose
non-whiteness allows her to see racial injustice. Yet non-blackness, inclusion
in white society, and childhood naïveté protect her from gaining a more
intimate or experiential understanding of racism. Weaver takes advantage of
this position and, in her role as adult storyteller, guides the reader through
her gradual realization of racial segregation and violence. In this way, the
graphic novel becomes a teaching tool, capitalizing upon a youth’s perspective
and providing a gentle introduction into violent racial conflict. The
incorporation of sketched re-creations of historical documents such as
textbooks, literacy tests for voter suppression, and newspaper articles enables
a persuasive blending of childhood memories and adult comprehension. Such a
dual narrative perspective allows a certain naïveté regarding racial
discrimination and further permits the protagonist to confront instances in
which she was complicit with racism and segregation (200, 247).
Weaver
traces the protagonist’s recollection, reflection, and gradual realization of
racism by overtly repeating certain compositions or scenes, and, occasionally,
by repeating text. Throughout Darkroom, imagery and narrative
structure—intricately linked –mimic the circularity of memory. For example, the
snapshot of her last view of Argentina (introduced at the text’s onset) appears
again at the end of the graphic novel when Weaver returns to her native country
(30, 249). Similarly, Weaver illustrates a close-up of young Lila’s eyes after
she witnesses segregation in a local health clinic; this
same frame appears again much later when she begins to understand the
persistence and pervasiveness of racism in her classroom, church, and
neighborhood (68, 183). Visual and textual circularity combined with focused
attention upon the protagonist’s eyes not only provide insight into Lila’s evolving
comprehension but also invite readers to acknowledge their own gaze and “see”
the South for themselves.
In
short, with Darkroom: a memoir in black and white Lila Quintero Weaver
nostalgically represents the experience of racial difference through childhood
memories. At times the graphic novel suffers from its attempt to converge
numerous if not competing narratives: an immigrant’s tale, a coming-of-age
story, and a chronicle of the civil rights era. Weaver’s personal memoir as a
Latina and an immigrant slowly dissolves and ultimately disappears into the
historical narrative of the civil rights movement until, in the end, the protagonist decides to literally return to her
roots. Although this may disappoint readers specifically interested in the
interaction between Lila's latinidad
and the stark segregation of the South, such a representation may be true to
Weaver's personal experience. The graphic memoir gives the impression that as
she assimilated into white American culture, civil rights struggles were
critical to personal growth and a sense of self. For these reasons, Darkroom
will appeal to students and scholars of the bildungsroman,
narratives of the Jim Crow era, and Latina literature.
Weaver’s visual text will be of particular interest to those engaged in graphic
representations of racial and cultural identity.
Madelyn
Peterson
Whitman
College