Cartoonist Barbara Brandon-Croft and the collection of her comic strip
Where I’m Coming From has been getting some rave reviews lately.
From Black Girl Nerds last week:
What I appreciate about Brandon-Croft’s comic strip is how she celebrates Black women in all of our glory. We can be sarcastic, emotional, single mothers, activists, the woman whose life revolves around a man, and everything in between. She lets us know that we don’t need permission to be who we are. More importantly, she lets us know that who we are is just fine.
Where I’m Coming From provides readers with insight into how Black women view and move through the world.
Brandon-Croft’s work is important to the culture. Her funny comic strips resonate as much today as they did more than 30 years ago.
Ms. Magazine includes the book on their list of Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2023 for February.
The book will be released next week and Barbara will have a meet and greet then.
And today Publisher’s Weekly has an interview with Barbara:
When I was trying to sell my strip and I found one newspaper to pick me up, Detroit Free Press. And even though they actively came looking for this voice, some editors were still concerned about how it would play to their wider audience, which is still dumbfounding to me. But they had the spine to go with it and l appreciate that to this day.
I remember once being interviewed on television. Right before the cameras started, the interviewer said to me, “How are you going to sell this to cities that aren’t Black cities?” And then, it was like, action! and I was on air. I must admit, I had a tinge of attitude. The idea that only Black women would be interested in what my Black women had to say is just insulting. It’s a lack of being able to see us as human, to see our humanity, to realize that our concerns are universal concerns that’s so confounding. That’s what I hope I did.
