El viaje más caro/The Most Costly Journey: Stories of Migrant Farmworkers in Vermont is a non-fiction compilation of over twenty Latin American migrant farmworkers’ experiences shared through the emerging practices of ethnographic cartooning. These narratives brought to life through artistic partnership with a group of New England Cartoonists, reflect individual experiences illustrating a shared space of trauma, isolation, uncertainty, and also joy. Out of the nineteen graphic sections represented in this book, topics cover not just the obvious stories of migration and border crossing, but also of the strain and seclusion of living as undocumented individuals. Stories reflect the grief of separation from not just family, but familiar space, food, language, music, and community support systems. The focus is on participants sharing their experience, not just for their own reflection and potential healing steps, but in hopes of encouraging healing in others with similar journeys through this transparent space. Often, the individual contributions end on a message for others, like Delmer’s message “for those who are new to Vermont, and have problems with a boss” or Hildago’s advice, “The suggestion I have for new immigrants,” which lets us see some of the formulas from the oral history process being translated into micro-story form and also understand more about possible motivation for participation.
The process for creation is clearly defined within the contextual essays framing the graphic space and reflects the journey of not only the migrants themselves, but this experimental process, pairing public, mental, and emotional health tools for a community of individuals who often don’t have the means, the cultural framework, or the non-committed time to seek standardized clinical care for lived trauma. As detailed in the publication, this was a process of collaboratively documenting participants’ narratives and working with graphic artists to develop visual representation of parts of the stories, taking into consideration translation needs, deep communication space, and a detailed ethical framework of practice focused on safe-guarding participants. The final compiled publication of these heartfelt micro-narratives was necessarily complex and years in the making.
For all the timeless feel of many of these stories, whether reflecting journeys being made months or decades from the time of telling, or stories ranging from youthful to adult perspective, there is also a sort of time-capsule impression for the compilation. Many participants reflect directly on the cultural space of the recent Trump presidential era’s anti-immigrant policies and the public attack on non-white people, specifically Hispanic immigrants. This contemporary framing both allows a distinct mark in time for historical reflection and also points to the effects of political and public policy with regard to the day-to-day experience of immigrant communities.
The stories shared here are so completely human. The art that helps visualize the narratives is a soft complement instead of a dominating retelling. It is easy to hear the textual representation of the original telling in that the words aren’t overly reformed to be more literary or put into unified prose form. The voices are clear and real and add to the presence and impact of the telling. The partnership between the Vermont Folklife Center, the Open Door Clinic, the University of Vermont, Middlebury College, and the Center for Cartoon Studies proved to be a sound collaborative model for skills sharing and client assistance. There is much explanation in the contextual essays about process and framing from the various partners’ professional perspectives. From the framing of the Vermont Folklife Center, this work reflects a continually growing movement to let the narrators drive their own public representations, moving away from some past ethnographic practices of curating the public face of recorded stories separate from the participant. From this point, the negotiation back and forth between storyteller and artist was crucial to making sure that the representation was as accurate as possible and also centered the individual’s preferences in the telling.
There are many ways in which this process could have been considered a success without centering the narrators so thoroughly, but because of the intentional focus on purpose, audience, and patience in the process, this project is successful in ways a mere “product” could not be. A project that will be equally impactful in public health centers in New England or middle school through college classrooms in Oklahoma, El viaje más caro/The Most Costly Journey is worth reading and sharing regardless of setting.
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[Review length: 721 words • Review posted on December 2, 2022]