“The World Stretched and Contracted Before Me:” Race, Reconciliation, and Resistance in Jim Terry’s Come Home, Indio

Abstract

This examination of Jim Terry’s 2020 graphic memoir, Come Home, Indio, places the comic within conversations about what Kate Polak has identified as comics potential to operate as access generators to complex political conversations regarding the inequities faced by Indigenous peoples in the United States. Making use of what comics scholar Barbara Postema has identified as “narrative weaving” in comics, Come Home, Indio explores complexity of racial and social injustice on both a micro and macro scale as well as how those who are confronted with such inequities might reconcile with others and form deeper bonds with their own communities through spiritual and political activism. Although much critical energy has been spent on graphic memoirs, this article emphasizes how Terry’s comic might be considered within the complexities of twenty-first century American life, adding to recent conversations, like Frederic Aldama’s 2020 edited collection, Graphic Indigeneity. To date, scholarly engagement with comics by Indigenous creators has been limited, which situates this article as part of an important step forward, moving beyond mere acknowledgement of Native creators and toward prioritizing the role of their political voices and experiences in comics.