On drawing graphic industrial disasters: an interview with Sean Michael Wilson

Abstract

ABSTRACT Of late there have been a plethora of graphic narratives which deal with industrial disasters—for instance, Adam Stone’s The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (2010), Nick Hayes’s Rime of the Modern Mariner (2011), Pablo Fajardo and Sophie Tardy Jouber’s Crude: A Memoir (2021), Helen Bate’s The Lost Child of Chernobyl: A Graphic Novel (2021) among others. These graphic narratives while remembering the industrial disasters also invoke issues related to social accountability, stir the erased chapters of ecological violence, and more importantly, tease out the tensions between the State records/archives and the testimonies/ memories of the affected community. In so doing, these graphic narratives, at once function as memorials that document, commemorate and globalize the sufferings of the victims. Published in 2021 and drawn in Manga style, The Minamata Story: An Eco Tragedy is one such graphic narrative that recounts the Minamata industrial disaster in Japan. Minamata industrial disaster (1956) was caused by the continual release of methylmercury to waterbodies from the factories owned by Chisso Corporation. In this context, Sean Michael Wilson, the author of The Minamata Story: An Eco Tragedy, in an email interview shares his views on graphic narratives on industrial disasters, Manga, and implications and social stigma associated with the Minamata disease.