Cassandra Calin on creating a comic book about the immigrant experience — and her favourite Romanian snacks
The Montreal-based creator of The New Girl spoke with Ali Hassan on The Next Chapter
Cartoonist Cassandra Calin has reached a level of Internet stardom for her autobiographical webcomics Cassandra Comics, that explore her experiences as a young woman living her life.
Now, she's brought her skills to a middle-grade graphic novel called The New Girl, which follows a young girl named Lia as she navigates her family's move from Romania to Montreal.
Drawing from Calin's own experiences immigrating to Canada when she was 10, The New Girl explores these big changes in Lia's life — including what's happening to her own body — and how she begins to feel like herself again.
She joined Ali Hassan on The Next Chapter to chat about her book and it relates to her own experiences growing up in both Romania and Montreal.
Cassandra Comics is your web comic series about somebody like you, a young woman living her life, so this is a slight shift. What appealed to you about making a story for children 8 to 12 years old?
I think writing for adults was always easy for me because I am an adult and my series is basically my own experiences going through relationships, going through adulthood and having to make phone calls, even though I'm very uncomfortable with phone calls. But I'm an adult, I have no choice. So I think a lot of adults can relate to those experiences and it's pretty easy to resonate with them.
But with a children's book, it was more of a challenge. And I also wanted to write a book that I wish I had growing up. And I feel like reading this book while I was growing through all these experiences and all these changes, it would have really impacted me a lot and it would have helped me. And especially talking about periods, because as much as I knew about it and I had the talk with my mom and my grandma and every woman in my life, it was still kind of foreign to me. I feel like I didn't know a lot of stuff.
I didn't know how to cope with really bad cramps. I didn't know about different kinds of period products. I didn't know about a lot of stuff.
I also wanted to write a book that I wish I had growing up.- Cassandra Calin
And I wish I had this book as kind of like a big sister that I never had and just knowing about all of these things and feeling a bit more reassured and more comforted.
In The New Girl, Lia walks into her new school in Montreal on the first day and she doesn't speak any French, very limited English. Set that scene and how it would feel to a 12-year-old girl. Clearly not the easiest time in life for a massive relocation.
I mean, just imagine going to a new school even if you speak the language. It's tough. It's tough. Like it's completely new. So add on the new language, the fact that you're in a new country, and you see so many students from all over the world. But what I try to do with this book is also modernize it a little bit. So they have translation apps, they have ways to communicate via Google Translate or things like that.
So at least it eases a little bit of that stress, maybe. We didn't have that back in my day — I sound very old — back in 2005. We didn't have translation apps. We really had to talk through gestures or be like showing directions … so yeah, it was a bit tricky. I'm not going to lie.
One of the ways they bond is over snacks that they have from their own home countries. Why do you think that food has this way of bringing young people together?
To me, food is my love language. It's easy. If you give me food, I'll be happy. And I also like the fact that you can discover a lot about the culture and what people like there. And I remember when with my own friends, we used to exchange snacks a lot or we used to go to each other's places and eat the cuisines from their culture, from their nationality.
And it was so much fun to just discover so much and to discover what they like and what their childhood snacks are — it can reveal a lot about a person.
Do you have a memory of when you ate something in Montreal that made you feel at home as a young person?
Yeah. So we had this kind of little grocery store that had Eastern European products, a lot of Russian, Polish, Romanian products. So we went there for the first time with my parents, and I saw so many snacks that I loved as a kid.
I felt like a piece of home was here with me. And it was such a nice feeling.- Cassandra Calin
And even in the book, Lia is eating a bag of Viva pillows. And that was my favourite snack growing up. Obviously, I changed the name a little bit for copyright purposes, but I remember seeing it and I never thought I would eat it again.
I thought, 'We're living in Canada. There's no way I can find it here.' And when I did, I felt like a piece of home was here with me. And it was such a nice feeling.
In the book, art plays an important role in Lia's life. It's a gateway to meeting others. How did you relate to that?
I think also when I moved here, a lot of things were changing, of course, but I think the one thing that always stayed with me was my passion for art. I feel like no matter where I was, drawing was always going to stay with me. And it brought me a sense of comfort and a sense of self and of identity.
You don't have to change yourself when you go through these changes, you can still stay the same, but embrace the change that's happening around you at the same time.- Cassandra Calin
And I feel like Lia had that too. And as much as there were so many things changing in her life, that's the one thing that stayed consistent and constant.
So it was important for me to show that in the book — that you don't have to change yourself when you go through these changes, you can still stay the same, but embrace the change that's happening around you at the same time.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
