We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Breena Nuñez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Breena below.

Breena , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

One project that I started years ago as a perzine/me-search zine was called “Colocha-Head”. I wanted to create a zine that answered some pretty difficult questions surrounding African heritage in El Salvador, and part of that was inspired by being a part of a collective that created a Latinx solidarity zine for Black Lives Matter. That zine helped me gain visibility from other Salvadorans who wanted to support my work, but to also hold our community accountable for the erasure of Black history and heritage within the culture.

That project was essential to also somewhat outline my first journalism comic I created for The Nib during Black History Month in 2020. Then a month later the Bay Area was on lockdown during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, so it felt like many more eyes were reading that Nib comic while we were also witnessing nation to global-wide protests for Black life. This project was probably one of the most vulnerable journalism/memoir comics I’ve made about identity, because it took me years to create room to acknowledge and to love this part of me I denied for so long due to the influence of anti-black practices in Latin American cultures. I also did not want this comic to be just about my experience, but to also show readers that AfroSalvadorans based in El Salvador and in the United States exist. The comic itself was a tribute to the AfroSalvadorans like Carlos Lara and Zaira Miluska who have made me feel less alone in my personal “homecoming” to reclaiming Blackness while crediting beloved friends and community who have also been a huge contribution to my self-discovery journey.

Breena , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have been a freelance illustrator/cartoonist probably since 2014-2015 (honestly the pandemic and being a new mom has really messed up my sense of time). I was a undergrad at SFSU and graduated with a graphic design degree in 2012, and thought that was going to be the most lucrative direction for me since I could not imagine myself doing any other type of work that did not involve creating images. But I didn’t really gain much experience as a graphic designer and as you can imagine, I wasn’t considered to be qualified by industry standards. During those years I also tried to do the things I didn’t necessarily get to do in college, like drawing comics or cartoon characters with my friends who rekindled my love of comics and introduced me to creative events like San Francisco Zine Fest. Going as an attendee was the best choice I’ve made because I would not have run into a table adorned in a serape with a collection of autobio comics by Jaime Crespo. His work just helped me see the possibility of creating stories about the Bay Area from a person of color’s perspective.

After attending zine fest I just tried to get my hands on any comics that was by an author/artist of color and studied how they shared their personal narrative. I also used Instagram originally to share anything that I was working on for fun, but in the early days of social media I had no idea that it was going to connect me to illustration gigs I got to do for local organizations based in Oakland. I was really fortunate that I was being reached out to by other queer and trans folks of color to create work that illustrated local causes and social movements. What I was also doing at the same time was teaching youth in San Francisco how to make zines and comics, since I felt like I needed to connect comics and community work in the same setting.

Then during the course of my grad schooling at CCA’s MFA in Comics program I toured to different festivals outside of California to sell zines and comics alongside my spouse. I heavily relied on those types of interactions to not just sell my comics, but to build a community across state lines and to also get inspired by other cartoonists outside of my social circles. These festivals helped me gain some valuable friendships with cartoonists who I would consider to be another kind of chosen family where we can talk about navigating the industry and also being a part of an emotional support group when navigating moments of insecurity (which has consistently been my biggest challenge I face with). What also keeps me going with creating such vulnerable work like memoir/autobio comics are the readers who do message me and tell me things like “I wish we had stuff to read like this when we were kids”.

I write for that younger me who wanted to read about real people like herself who might have felt awkward or too different in spaces that didn’t know how to welcome her. My hope is that my comics reduce the idea that you might be the only person feeling that way in relation to your identity, and I would also hope that you (as the reader) would feel compelled to create your own story in whatever shape or form that may take. That same hope applies to myself and the comics I create for the small press my spouse and I co-founded together. Laneha House is a creative space just for us to make comics on our own time and without needing to focus on marketability, because that’s what zine fest culture taught us to do when we both first shown our zines in our respected local zine fests. We want to be excitable when creating stories that allow us to play, experiment and discover newer ways we can have fun with the comics medium.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I think for me it continues to help people from my community feel seen or heard, because for so long we as Central Americans (of all definitions) have tried so hard to find some semblance of belonging or to find stories that feel authentic to us.

Another thing I find truly rewarding are the friendships you make along the way as you move on as a cartoonist. I cannot stress how much they have been essential to not just being people I can nerd out with, but as chosen family who make the time just to check in and see how your days been going.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

What I want to see are more opportunities for cartoonists to be syndicated or to be getting paid regularly at some capacity for their work. There are avenues for cartoonists to be getting that money via Patreon or Ko-Fi, but ideally I would one day want to be working full-time as a cartoonist who can be able to afford to continue to live in California without any emotional strain stemming from the cost of living here. Plus I just had my baby, so I have to consider how I can continue to financially support her, and sadly that doesn’t always look like investing in creating my personal stories all the time.

I’m more compelled to invest creative energy in making lesson plans and lecturing on comics over personal work because (in my case) it’s difficult to be getting a regular paycheck as a freelance cartoonist. Don’t get me wrong, I love being in an educational setting because I a kick out of introducing students to comics, especially if they are just starting to be open to learning about the form.

I think what I also would hope for is a future where artists, writers, creative people don’t have to compete against each other to receive big grants. We deserve to create our art without feeling the stressors of capitalism. I’m not sure what that future would look like, but I would just want people to also create without needing to surrender rest for the sake of a paycheck.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.breenache.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breenache/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/breena-nu%C3%B1ez-54592256/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/breenache
• Other: Laneha House is also where my husband and I publish our own comics while also creating a space where some of our favorite cartoonists get to share their work: https://www.lanehahouse.com/