Episode 11: Understanding student homelessness through comics

Recommended Reading:

• Where to find help at PSU and in the Portland Area 

• Changing the Narrative of Student Homelessness website

• Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison. By Sarah Mirk, Illustrator Various; Introduction by Omar El Akkad. 2020.

• El Viaje Más Caro/The Most Costly Journey: Stories of Migrant Farmworkers in Vermont Drawn by New England Cartoonists. Edited by: Marek Bennett, Julia Grand Doucet, Andy Kolovos, and Teresa Mares. 2021.

• PSU Housing and Food Insecurity Report

• The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice

Summary:

When Portland State University instructor Kacy McKinney got the idea to create a series of comics featuring PSU students with lived experiences of homelessness and housing insecurity, her goal was to change the narrative around homelessness. The project—which has blossomed into a 80-page printed comic collection and three gallery showings—has done that and much more.