Calgary artist releases new comic book ‘Race Issues 2’ detailing racist experiences during the pandemic

We were seeing racism change during COVID-19, we were seeing specific communities be targeted in specific ways.

These drawings and words represent real experiences of racism in Canada during the last two years of the pandemic.

They’ve all been carefully curated into this book called Race Issues 2 and it hopes to make these important messages of struggle accessible, in hopes to resolve them.

The poems were all written by Iman Bukhari based on submissions to the Canadian Cultural Mosaic Foundation and boiled down to 40 stories.

The book’s drawings are by four racialized Canadian artists bringing perspectives from Black, Indigenous, Asian, and southeast Asian people. This one is called The Irony, comparing the messages of those fighting pandemic restrictions, and George Floyd’s words before he died.

‘I can’t breathe… he doesn’t want to wear a mask, but then he says “I literally can’t breathe,” said Iman Bukhari, the curator, and poet of Race Issues 2.

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This is the second edition of the book focusing only on the period of time during the pandemic.

One of the featured drawings in the book displays the distance many racialized Canadians experienced from loved ones.
The person who drew one of those drawings, they’re Indian themselves, and their family actually died in India while they were creating this so this was actually their own story.

“There’s so much baggage that certain communities carry that we’re unaware of,” said Bukhari.
“It was a heavy drawing, I think it was one of the last drawings I did because I wanted to take my time with it,” said Summer Taylor, one of the artists of Race Issues 2.

Taylor is from Toronto and they say drawing this piece, called ‘Weight’ left an impact.

“Not only were we dealing with the weight of the pandemic, but also Indigenous communities were dealing with plenty of other issues prior to it,” said Taylor.

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Bukhari says these experiences are still prevalent and this book is part of ongoing work to create awareness for systemic change, something they say is key in eradicating racism.

“In order for us to do something about it, we have to change the system, and I recognize that’s hard but we need to start taking the steps,” said Bukhari.

Race Issues 2 was released this week on Amazon and hopes to be put on school library shelves in the Fall.