The Illegally Well Graphic Novel and Un-Planner: Building Movement Sustenance through Undocumented Asian American Storytelling

Elizabeth Hanna Rubio
Gender and Sexuality Studies
UC Riverside

Illegally Well is a collaborative storytelling project focused on creating resources to support the sustenance of immigrant justice activists at a moment in which the movement contends with immense political grief. Through collaboration with the Directors of undocumented resource centers at five UC campuses, leadership at each of the five constituent organizations of the National Korean American Services and Education Consortium (NAKASEC) network, and three of their organizational allies in California, we will conduct a series of workshops with undocumented Asian American organizers at UC campuses and across the US. These workshops aim to: 1) Engage undocumented activists in the framing, character development, and writing of a graphic novel that uses speculative fiction to help organizers reflect on the psychological and social toll attendant to their protracted struggles for legal recognition, and how those struggles shape their relationship to past, present, and future, 2) Teach these constituents about the craft of graphic storytelling and the process of seeking material resources to support their own projects, 3) Increase undocumented Asian American engagement at UC undocumented student resource centers, and 4) Create a popular resource that centers the often-overlooked experience and movement contributions of undocumented Asian Americans.