If you spotted a shiny chef’s knife on a sidewalk, what would you do?
These were some of the questions that raced through my mind last fall after I read Roz Chast’s comic, The Knife, in the New Yorker. Though I love and admire her work and she remains one of my favorite cartoonists, her casual and humorous story about finding a knife on the streets of New York City got me thinking deeply about privilege. Weirdly enough, I had a very similar experience.
When I shared my thoughts about the piece in a Facebook post, many of my author and illustrator friends — black, white, brown, Asian — echoed my sentiments. We talked about privilege, about the perspectives that we don’t often get to hear or see in the media, and about the choices that people of color make about safety and civic responsibility in this post-9/11 world.
My friend April, an illustrator, said if I wanted to create a response piece, she would be happy to collaborate.
And so was born this comic.
