Tracing the lines from Mexican oral storytelling traditions to pre-Hispanic codices, colonial ex-voto paintings, satirical nineteenth-century grabados and twentieth-century superheroes, this interactive comic explores the shifts in perception from orality to visuality to ethnographically represent intergenerational storytelling and Mexican family myths. Produced by Sherwood González, this audio-visual multimodal ethnography explores different conceptions and perceptions of the stories told about how Chucho and Manuela (Sherwood Gonzalez’s great-grandparents) met. Anonymising family storytellers as calaveras and luchadores (skulls and Mexican wrestlers), this graphic narrative brings together audio from the first attempted ‘talking heads’ film that when viewed by the older generation of the family was disputed and said to be ‘untrue’ (see Sherwood González 2022). ‘Story of Mirrors: Together They Cross the Border’ is a radically empirical experiment (Jackson 1989) that allows the reader to piece together and navigate the inherently collaborative process of family storytelling. In doing so, it offers a shift in perception, from the one-sided view of the ethnographer to the multiple intersubjectivities of the storytellers involved.
Key Words comics, storytelling, borders, intergenerational, intersubjectivity