According to her bio on the flap of her debut graphic novel, Danica
Novgorodoff was raised in Kentucky, herded cows in the Andes and taught
English in Ecuador. Working on her debut graphic novel, Slow Storm, out now from First Second, her multicultural background is obvious.
Kentucky-born firefighter Ursa Crain doesn’t live the life expected of
a Southern lady. She’s tall and broad, strong and stubborn, and she’s a
dedicated member of the North Oldham Fire Department. Rafael José
Herrera Sifuentes, called Rafi, is an illegal laborer living in a barn
loft, sleeping just above the horses he tends to while earning money
for his family in Mexico.
The unlikely duo is drawn together by a sudden fire, engulfed in their
own complicated cultural mores and personal expectations. A moving
study of two people who don’t seem to fit in the place they find
themselves, Slow Storm is an ambitious opening gambit by anybody’s standard.
We talked to Danica about her book.
Newsarama: Danica, Slow Storm is a very ambitious book. How did this story evolve?
Danica Novgorodoff: I began thinking about the story while I was
living in Kentucky – I wasn’t sure what form it would take, but I
wanted to write about and draw the landscape, storm chasers, Mexicans
working on horse farms, Mexican saints and iconography as imported to
America, the Kentucky Derby, and firefighters in contest with the
disasters of nature. And, of course, a love story (albeit a largely
unfulfilled one). I was working on a horse farm at the time and spent
some time hanging out at the North Oldham County Fire Station with a
friend who is a volunteer firefighter there.
NRAMA: I was extremely impressed by your dialogue, both in the
way you capture Southern dialect and your ear for Rafi’s broken
English. Was it difficult to capture the language without making the
characters sound like clichés?
DN: It wasn’t easy! I’d thought about dropping the “g”s from the
ends of “–ing”s to try to replicate the Kentucky accent – like, “He’s
expectin you.” But it looked too forced, so instead I tried to get the
sound of it across through diction alone.
And I didn’t want Rafi to sound stupid; rather, he struggles with the
English language. In his mind, of course, he’s got very complex
thoughts and emotions – then again, his internal dialogue can’t be too florid and verbose, because he’s probably only graduated high school, at most.
NRAMA: You’re from Kentucky, correct? How important was it for
you to capture the quality of life there without descending to Southern
stereotypes?
DN: I hope that my main characters transcend stereotypes – while
Ursa’s brother and other co-workers are uncomfortable with her defiance
of what they think a girl should look like and how she should behave,
Ursa neither submits to pressure, nor is she unbreakable – it takes a
stranger to crack her tough shell.
While I didn’t want this to be a political or didactic story, I wanted
to present Rafi’s character – a Mexican immigrant trying to work hard
and stay out of trouble in order to support his family back home – in a
personal way that looks beyond the distrust of and rage against
“illegals” that so many Americans feel.
NRAMA: When did you get the idea to put together and contrast
Ursa, a confused Southern firefighter, and Rafi, an illegal Mexican
laborer?
DN: I wanted to write a story in which two very unlikely
characters are thrown together by forces beyond their control, and form
a brief but meaningful relationship – one that works outside of the
constraints of their expected roles, their duties, cultural
differences, language barriers – everything practical.
NRAMA: Why did you decide to keep most of Rafi's dialogue in Spanish, while his narration is in English?
DN: There’s a big gap between what Rafi thinks and feels and
what he is able to communicate. The feeling of isolation is quite deep
when you can’t speak to the people around you – I remember when I was
in Mexico and just beginning to learn Spanish, feeling like I wasn’t
sure what was going on around me most of the time, having to go along
with things without knowing exactly why they were happening, and being
hungry all the time for a complete thought, a meaningful connection
with another person. Through his narration, I wanted to show the
reader, who might or might not speak Spanish, what is going on inside
his head.
NRAMA: Contrasting that, we rarely go directly into Ursa's head for her thoughts. Why not?
DN: Occasionally we do, as she’s trying to figure out her own
life philosophy, and how it fits with her passion for firefighting and
contrasts with her traditional Christian upbringing: “You can gimme a
long sleep, satin shoes, and religion when I’m six foot deep.” And then
again, when she’s inside the fire, she realizes in a very visceral way
how slighted she feels by her brother and co-workers: “I feel that I am
disappearing.” This part was inspired by my firefighter friend’s
incredible description of being inside a burning building – the smoke
blocks all light, such that you are completely blind while trying to
locate the fire, and then get out alive. You can’t even see your own
hands in front of you. I wanted this oppressive physical state to
relate also to her emotional state. Ursa is a bit of an emotional
rollercoaster – her internal thoughts range from the exuberantly
passionate to the heartbreakingly lonesome. Rafi’s a bit more poetic,
determined, and staid.
NRAMA: Certain sequences, particularly those seen through Rafi's
eyes, but also Ursa when she's in the barn fire, have an unreal
impressionism. What did you base this view of the world on?
DN: On a basic level, the dream-like sequences are borne of the
characters’ entry into a state of physical or emotional distress.
Rafi’s entire memory of his journey from Mexico to the United States is
quite hallucinatory, and occurs after he’s realized his barn is
burning, tried to save all the horses from dying in the fire, probably
inhaled a lot of smoke, and knocked his head while being trampled by a
spooked horse.
Similarly, Ursa has some terrifying visions after entering the burning
barn with three minutes to locate any possible victims, and instead of
saving lives as is her duty, she puts her brother’s life in danger in a
fit of untimely rage.
These visions also explore this sense of the power of the unseen that
Rafi and Ursa share, even though their respective cultures’ ideas of
the mystical, spiritual, or religious are very different. It’s the
inscrutable force of nature, of religion, of language, and of fear that
each of them is trying to understand. Often they doubt the unseen, but
sometimes – as when Ursa comes face to face with Rafi’s patron saint,
Saint Christopher, and mistakes him for a vision of death – you have to
think there’s something true and universal to the inexplicable, the
unnamable.
NRAMA: You've spent time in Kentucky, Virginia, the Andes and
Ecuador. How did those experiences help you shape the characters' lives
and outlooks?
DN: I feel like I've had a very intimate relationship with the
places I've lived (especially the ones you mention here). I wanted
Kentucky and Mexico to be characters in the story – places that Rafi
and Ursa love, miss, resent, struggle against, talk to, respond to –
places that are not passive but influence their lives dramatically. And
of course the things I did in Kentucky, Virginia and South America –
ride horses, photograph the landscape, learn Spanish, and write – were
the seeds of this story. Also, the simple fact of Rafi's displacement
and Ursa's entrapment by her hometown very much shape who they are and
how they think.
NRAMA: How long did it take you to complete Slow Storm?
DN: I thought about it for about a year, then worked on the story for another year, and spent a third year drawing it.
NRAMA: What's next for you?
DN: I’m working on two new graphic novel projects right now!
One is called Refresh, Refresh, and it’s based on a short
story by Benjamin Percy and screenplay by James Ponsoldt, both by the
same name. Set in a small town in Oregon, it’s about three teenage boys
whose fathers are all Marines fighting in the Iraq war. The boys are
doing typical teenage things – trying to graduate from high school and
decide what to do afterward, meeting girls, sneaking into bars, getting
into all kinds of trouble – while also dealing with becoming the men of
their households before they’ve truly grown up, missing their fathers
but also resenting their absence.
I’m also working on a new story set in China, about the macabre
tradition of ghost marriages, and a boy who embarks on a wild adventure
to find a bride for his dead brother.
I’m super excited about both of these projects.
Slow Storm is currently available from First Second.
