Originally founded in 1985, The Ankh is a student publication that publishes artwork created by students of color at Wesleyan. Although typically published as a print magazine, the recent fall semester issue was published digitally due to COVID-19. The Argus sat down with Olivia Najera-Garcia ’21, one of the editors of The Ankh, to discuss the latest issue, her experience as a long-standing member of the publication, and her artistic process over the past couple months. 

The Argus: Hello! Would you like to do a basic introduction about yourself? 

Olivia Najera-Garcia: My name is Olivia Najera-Garcia and I’m a senior, she/her pronouns, and I’m from Dallas, Texas, and I’m an American Studies major with a concentration in race, ethnicity, and nationality, and a Film minor. I’ve been in The Ankh since my freshman year, but I studied abroad during my junior year, so I wasn’t able to do it then. I also work at the Resource Center as a marketing intern. 

A: How’s it been being part of the team for a long time? 

ONG: I’ve been part of [The Ankh] for a while now, and it usually ends up being the seniors who do all the work, just because it’s a non-hierarchical group, so we don’t have defined positions. Because of that, [the responsibilities] fall to the seniors, just because they know more about the process and The Ankh. But every year I was involved in it, [the seniors] would make it a really good environment for freshmen and sophomores to learn about the process, editing, publication, etc. 

A: What got you initially interested in The Ankh? 

ONG: I initially joined because I do art and graphic design [in my free time], but I wasn’t involved in any [arts] classes on campus, so I joined The Ankh just to have a community of people to talk to and share [creative] ideas with. I also think at Wes it’s really hard if you aren’t an Art major to use the resources that the school has, so The Ankh was a way for me to access them to create projects and events. I also joined because it’s a student of color publication where [students of color] can talk about certain topics without feeling forced. I also felt like in most art spaces, because the majority of students are usually white, bringing up issues of race felt like [you were] being a buzzkill, but in The Ankh we are able to talk about those issues, because it’s what everybody went through and it’s a part of people’s lives. I really enjoyed being able to have a space like that. 

A: You talked about The Ankh being a space for students of color at Wes. What is The Ankh and what makes it such a unique publication at Wesleyan?

ONG: [The Ankh] started in 1985 as a newspaper. It actually began [as a publication that was] against the Argus, because the Argus was primarily white and only covered topics that were not centered around students of color. [The Ankh] would instead cover and include student artwork, poetry, and news of events happening on campus and mix them together. It wasn’t very formal, like the Argus was. Also, I don’t exactly remember when, but I think there was a pause for a few years, and then [The Ankh] was brought back as a magazine featuring works done by students of color. This past semester was the first time we had to make it digital, so [The Ankh] has taken a lot of different forms throughout the decades. It’s been really interesting to be a part of the [online] shift this year.

A: Talking about the different forms that The Ankh has taken, do you see a new direction for The Ankh in this upcoming issue or in the near future? 

ONG: So [until] a couple of years ago, The Ankh used to be an 8” by 12” magazine style publication, then we decided to make it smaller and into a 4” by 7” format, which was a huge shift for us because we were like, “woah, it’s a zine now.” Looking forward, I do enjoy the digital format, because it’s much easier to put people’s work in and you don’t have to wait for the printing process. It’s also much more accessible for people, since you don’t have to carry around a physical copy. But having said that, there’s something nice about a physical copy at a place like Wes where a lot of people hang up images and poems on their walls. I hope it remains as a print publication that also experiments with expanding into digital forms and online experiences. Even though making it online this year was really difficult, because everyone was apart from each other, I really encourage freshmen, sophomores, and juniors in The Ankh to experiment. 

A: Could you expand on how this year’s publication was different from past production processes, especially given all the events that happened this past year within communities of color all over the world?

ONG: When we came back for the fall semester, we were like “okay, we’ll just have to do it digitally,” which wasn’t that big of a deal because we’d already set up a website before. But [the website] was never a “main thing,” it was just a place where we would upload every once in a while and you could look through the archives. But what made [this issue] really hard was that The Ankh is usually made on campus, and when we have our weekly meetings there are more of us to talk about things other than the design process or the publication, which we don’t really talk about until the last few weeks [of the semester] when we have to start making it. It was kind of awkward sometimes being on Zoom with new members. It’s hard to talk to random people [on a video call]. We had to navigate the difficulties of online meetings and still foster a “community vibe” instead of focusing entirely on producing the publication itself. Honestly, it was really hard translating the community that we had on campus onto online Zoom meetings. But we got the publication out in the end (laughs).

A: Are there any overarching themes in the latest issue that you want to highlight? 

ONG: A lot of people have been in really difficult situations emotionally [this past year], and personally, the only way to get through those times was to choose to create. The alternative is just sitting there and waiting for something to happen. So when I saw that people were still creating works of art, I wanted to take all those creative pieces and emphasize the very specific time in which these works were being created, a time that’s been full of grieving. I also wanted to emphasize allowing ourselves to grieve the lost moments while [learning] how we can use those feelings to create new worlds. [The latest issue] was a kind of a call to action for people to express themselves, even in the midst of everything going on. 

A: Talking about the creative process, did you feel like it was a form of release, or did it feel like you were expressing yourself? 

ONG: I can see how [the creative process] can be interpreted as an escape tool, but don’t think I see it that way because if you think about our reality it’s all about the stories we tell. I just started noticing on social media how all the news stories had specific words that were meant to scare us because that will make us click on them, and I started to get overwhelmed with all the stories because I was like “oh my god, the world is horrible,” and then I was like “wait, I don’t have to see the world this way,” because I can be grateful for the things I have in my life. Personally I paint and draw and I can be thankful for my abilities to express myself in that way and use that to not escape from reality, but envisioning the reality that I hope to see in the future. There’s something in the future and I think it’s up to us to find what we want to see. Especially for students of color who have been surviving in spite of really horrific events, I think there’s a lot in it for them.

A: As a student of color, how have your personal experiences affected your work, inside and outside of The Ankh? 

ONG: So with The Ankh specifically, I appreciated it when students of color submitted their work and allowed us to showcase their work, which allowed other students to see things in a new perspective and connect with it. It’s not just about seeing it and saying “wow, they are so good, I’ll never be that good,” but I wanted people to see it and feel like they could also create amazing work. And I think this ties back to the intro paragraph in the new issue, which we weren’t going to originally include, but we decided to because it really does change the experience. It’s not just a little Instagram feed of people’s work, it’s something you can use to fuel your own creative energy. 

A: I thought it was interesting how you talked about other students of color reading The Ankh and feeling inspired. Would you mind clarifying a bit more about that? 

ONG: For me, whenever I consume media now, it feels kind of dishonest when I’m watching something and it’s not addressing the pandemic. So we wanted to address that in the issue. And students of color, especially Black students during the summer, have had to explain a lot about their history and their life for no other reason than for everyone else to learn and be re-traumatized all over again. I just hope that pieces from The Ankh can be inspiring by turning a traumatic experience into something hopeful for other people. Because The Ankh is a student of color publication, it serves the people who need the most right now, giving them hope and something to create from. Especially at a place like Wesleyan, where it’s majority white, although most of them are well-intentioned, it can be overwhelming at times to retell the same story of tragedy. I think [The Ankh] allows [students of color] to create something else since they don’t have to explain their story anymore. And because all students of color are different, we can all appreciate each others’ stories and point of view. Being in a white organization when you’re a student of color, you are placed into a separate group apart from the white people, and because of that a lot of people don’t realize how students of color are entirely different from each other. 

A: So on the student of color experience, you don’t have to feel like a “student of color” when you’re in The Ankh, as opposed to other settings.

ONG: Yeah, we don’t always have to talk about being a student of color, whereas in white spaces you always have to explain [it]. Because when we are in The Ankh we’ll talk about racial issues, but we’ll also talk about random stupid little stuff. Even though it’s such an intrinsic part of our lives, whenever we are at Wesleyan we have to always remember that we are “students of color,” since many of us never identified ourselves that way until we came here. In other spaces, whenever you talk, it feels like you have to be the voice of every marginalized person, and that gets really exhausting. 

A: Do you have any specific ideas about what the next issue is going to look like?

ONG: Before designing the spring issue, I think we are going to have to look at the moment we are in right now, because everything can change in a week. Living in Texas right now, it’s kind of surreal how one week I finished The Ankh and then a lot just happened the next week. So for me, I’m just thinking about it moment by moment.

A: Is there anything else you would like to add before we wrap up our conversation?

ONG: I want to shout out the Resource Center and Demetrius Colvin, who paid for our website. Shoutout to all the editors, you can see their names on The Ankh website. I’m really thankful for all the submissions we got for The Ankh, because it was really amazing seeing all the work that was submitted, and it even inspired me to start creating. 

The latest issue of The Ankh can be found here. 

 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Will Lee can be reached at swlee@wesleyan.edu.