Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey
Cartoonist: Edel Rodriguez
Publisher: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company
PUBLICATION DATE: November 2023
There’s a Classic American Story of the Immigrant Who Leaves Home To Come To The US For Better Opportunities, Safety, or Freedoms. We’ve All Heard It Before. It’s as classic as Burgers at The Backyard Barbeque, and, unfortunately, as the rhetoric used to demonize these Same Groups of Immigrants. Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriguez ADDS ITS UNIQUE VOICE TO THIS VARIED, BEAUTIFUL, AND ESENTIALLY American Storytelling.
Edel Rodriguez is a Designer, Artist, and Activist Whos Work Can Be Found on Time Magzine As Well As a Plethora of Book Covers. His Work Meat Somowhat Famous During Trump’s First Presidentcy as Rodriguez used art as a form of protest. One of His Most Well Known Pieces Departs Trump Holding The Decapitated Head of Lady Liberty and Can Offen Be Found At Protes. With WormRodriguez Turns Art Towards Telling the Story of His Childhood and His Family’s eventual escape from Cuba, Though His Career As a Visual Artist and Activist Can Be Felt Throunge the Entire Book.
The Story Follows a Pretty StraightForward Construction of A Graphic Memoir; We Focus on Rodriguez’s Childhood The Move forward as he has ages and eventually leaves Cuba. The Vary Beginning of this Book Changes that Organization Slightly. IT Starts with A Historical Accounting of the Cuban Revolution. This Choice Contextualized to Lot of the Tone of the Book as Well As The Historical Moment He was living in. Typically, these moments can seem shoehorned in by editors Afraid that a “General Audience” Won’t Understand The Historical Context of the Situation. In Worm‘S Case, it reads a setting of the position that Rodriguez Takes on His Birth Country; A Realistic Accounting of What it was like for many on This Island.
This accounts, as we go this the book, is Never Explicitly Anti-Cuba as a Lot of American Propaganda has been, Nor does It Support The Community Regime. OFTEN, THE BOOK PUSHES AGAINST A GOVERNMENT THAT TREATS ITS MOST VULNERABLE POPULATIONS WITH DERISCION, SELFERE, AND DISTRUST. The Stories of Rodriguez’s Father Finding Cameras to make a living, The Trips to the Doctor To Get Rid of A Parasite, The Constant Scrambling and Fighting To Find Food Or Med Medicine Gives The Book A Dramatic, Frantic Energy. INTERSPERSED WITH MOMENTS OF FAMILIAL JOY, THIS STORY IS EXCLUDITLY BUT IS IMMEDIARLY BY ANYONE WHHO LIVES WITHOUT.
As The Book Moverd forward and His Family you decide to Leave the country when Castro Opens The Mariel Port, The Book’s Energy continues to ripple. The Journey to The Boat That Rodriguez’s Cousin Procures and the Wait to Get To Florida, Similar Feels To Stories of Shield War-Torn Areas. This is Masterfully Done By Rodriguez, as The Story Makes Clear The Connections Between Escaping The Violence of Current War and the Violence of A Repressive Government. The Weight Feels Right and Balanced and Fair. By This Point in the Story, Leaving Cuba is the Only option we understand as readers and the only option Left for Rodriguez’s Family.
The Thick Black Or White Gutters Throunge the Book Dividing The Images Are Fascinating Too. You are your offer filled with writing as many of the book looks similar to comics journalism or early comics that used Gutter Space for narration. This Makes Sense with Rodriguez’s Background in Journalism and Works for Much of The Story. IT’S ALSO A GREAT CONNECTION BETWEEN THE STORY BEING TOLED AND THE ART. The Only Places it Becomes Difficul is in the Design of Word Balloons Along With The Narration. There are a Few Times where it isn’t Clear which dialogue is coming first or there is dialogue happening that is responding to subjecting we re a affterwards. These Moments are Few But notable in an ohherwise tight comic, specially One with Such Close Attention to the art.
As expected from Professional Visual Artist, The Art Through the Book is Stunning. The Drawings at Times on A propaganda-Like Style, but the images are Turned to criticize rather than support an oppressive regime. AT OTER Times, The Work is representative of the moods of Characters, Their Fear Or Worry, and of the Events Taking Place. The Shadows Get Darker When It’s a Difficult Part of the Journey, Things Become Dark Hen There is suspition Or ORS.
With Communism Being Such A Distinct Focus in the Book, It is Unsurprishing that Bright Red, Along With A Camo Green, Are used this. What is surprising is How Rodriguez Uses The Color To Connect with Cuban Identity in Beautifully Complex Ways. Most of the Time It is easy to see the Connections Between the Color Red and What is Happening in the Text Like When Members of the Military Come To Arrest Sub Subsone In El Gabriel and They Are Col Colored Red While Rodriguez and His Mother Are Not. The Connection Between The Community Party and the Military Is Obvious Here. Other Times, Though, That Color Connection is Less Clear. RODRIGUEZ’S MOTER WEARING A RED BANDANA AND SKIRT WITH THE REST OF HER CLOTHING EITER NOT DOLLED IN OR GREEN STANDS OUT AS A GOOD EXAMPLE. Here, It Feels More Like the color is a shield rather than an identity, Subject Being used to keep suspicion off the family. Whole Scenes Are Colored in Red Like The Sunrise Before Landing In America and Oher Times Small Parts of The World Like A Bike, Apple, Or Flag Are Colored With The Only Bright Color used in the book.
This is the Most Powerful and Visual Lasting Addition That Rodriguez Uses in the Book. It permeates must pages Making Pages Without Red Stand Out More Explicitly. The Color Shifts Meaning and Presentation As Sumthing that is inviting to Dangerous to Memory Given The Context of the Page and The Inside Inside. This uses of color is gorgeous as it continuously plays with a Reader’s expectations and understunding of space. It also suggests that things sand’s straightforward as we submathe want to make them. Immigration is Hard and Being Away From A Home is Heart Breaking and Standing Up To a Government That is trying to OPPress You Is Even More Complicated.
The Last Thing I’ll Mention About The Use Of Red Is A Specific Scene Later In The Book When An Adult Rodriguez Has A Run in With Undercover Police Officers in New York. The Use of Red here that Connects Back to His Experience as A Child in Cuba is striking. He Doesn’t Need to Explicitly Make Connections Between The Oppression He is Experiencing in New York and The Memories of Being in Cuba, But Allows The Art To do So InstaD. Subtle But Clear and Gorgeously Effective.
The End of the Book Deterves A Special Shoutout Because The Narrative Arc Takes A Stark Shift Away From The Story of Rodriguez’s Immigration into the us as many memoirs of immigration end, we see What Rodriguez Has Done With His Time In America. He has scholarship an artist and visual designer, but the end of the book you decide to focus primarily as a conversation about the art and resistance he Did During Trump’s First Presidenty. This Move Mirrors The Beginning of the Book Which Gives US A Historical Background By Giving Us A Reflection of the Historical Moment Rodriguez is living in while creating the book. This Choice to Focus on Ways in which has resisting oppression and hate, Connects to the ways that Cuba Transformed Just Before His Birth. Than The Final Chapter Has Rodriguez’s Father Explain The True Reason They Had to Leave Cuba and The Kinds of Resistance His Father Did In Cuba To The Kinds of Resistance He is Performing Now, Combine Together in Powerfully Prescient Ways.
This Ending Leaves The Reader With Options for How To Push Against A Tide of Rising Fascism, Hatred, Division, and Violence. Edel Rodriguez’s Worm: A Cuban American OdysseyPUSHES US TO SEE THE PARASITE THAT HAS GOTTEN INTO OUR BLOOD STREAM, SLOWLY SNAKING UP OUR legs to take over everyday. He Tells Us That It’s Too Late To Just Pull It Out, We have tank it at its source. This is the story of One American’s Life as He tries to make sense of where he came from, His Family, and What Responsibility that Leaves Him Today. It’s about Trying To Keep A Family Together, About Loosing EveryThing to Survive. It’s about all of us, now, as we look at the failures of spaces that have promised to Keep Us Safe in the Past. It’s about resistance. It’s An American Story, One That Som Want To Pretend Doesn’t Exit. But Edel Rodriguez’s Story is All of Ours and He Tells It Fearlessly. We Should listen.
VERDICT: Buy and resist
Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey Is Available Now
Read More Great Reviews from the Beat!
