Sequential Maida
I admit it, I regularly google myself. It's a bad habit, I'm sure. As people say more and more about me online I might start to find more things said that I don't like. But then again, how else would I have found the following? I didn't know I was mentioned on Sequential Tart! And quite favourably, too! Here's the excerpt:
Among all the hubbub, I passed by a table where an artist was sitting quietly, doodling in his notebook; on the table in front of him was a small booklet entitled Maida Kilwa and showing a young girl wearing the hijab, standing with her mother. Intrigued, I picked it up and flipped through, instantly enchanted by the rounded, textured artwork as well as the presence of people of colour in the book.
It turned out that Jonathon Dalton (the creator of Maida Kilwa) lives locally in the Fraser Valley but has spent extensive time across Canada, in Taiwan, and in England. This lends a deliciously cosmopolitan feel to his stories, which explore the current-day diasporic nature of identity using characters of different colour, ethnicity, and nationality with an unusual twist: the time-frame is set slightly in the future, and these issues are explored through a lens of sci-fi dislocation rather than a strict focus on "character x is black, and therefore character x has black issues".
The Maida Kilwa book I picked up was just a wee character study, so I picked up his series A Mad Tea-Party as well. I haven't yet had time to read them, but I have no doubt that I'll enjoy them and will be bringing you all a more in-depth interview with Jonathon Dalton as soon as I can!
And the source. She must have written this months ago. How did I miss it?
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jdalton) wrote,
