I am a writer/artist and these are some of the surreal drawings that I am putting in my graphic novel series titled "On the Margins". Through this series that I am creating, I hope to reveal to the world some of the issues in Vancouver's downtown eastside, AKA the "DTES".
One of the main points of the book is to show how young children, especially Aboriginal children, get forced into the sex trade as young as 9. I show how social services and foster care chew up kids and spit them out on the street; Also mostly Aboriginal children.
Another big point of this book is to show the residential school system's impact on modern day Aboriginal youth and all people in the DTES. The DTES is filled with residential school survivors and that has implications on everyone's mental health in the DTES through association, even non-Aboriginals. Traumatised people tend to traumatise more people. My mother is a residential school survivor, so it is not late history for our people.
This all leads to another one of the points of this book; to show what it is like living in the 'mental health crisis' of the DTES. The Vancouver police were the first to coin this term which is very appropriate, it describes the DTES very well. The Vancouver police were the first to see the mental health crisis rise and rise over the years. They are often the first ones called for a public disruption that may be caused by somebody who is mentally ill. They would arrest them, or just convince them to go into the police car, and instead of being able to drive that person to the hospital for much needed psychiatric care, they end up having to arrest them and put them in a prison cell, all the while making them even more ill in the process. It is a poor solution to put mentally ill people in jail or prison because our mental health services are insufficient, but this is what happens, which is a crisis to the police because they are not equipped to care for severely mentally ill people. This is burning out the police in the DTES which only adds to the problems in many ways.
I could go on forever about my book lol, I always have to stop myself. But I will leave you with that, and I hope to hear your impressions and thoughts on my drawings, and critique is welcomed!
I added another drawing just for fun. This is Delilah, she is the main character of the series. Without any description of her, tell me what impression do you have of her from this drawing?
