Columns

How many women political cartoonists can you name? Past or present. 

Of course, there was Helen Hokinson (1899-1949). From 1925 to1949, she satirized middle-aged-plus clubwomen in The New Yorker magazine. Sixty-year old Cathy Lee Guisewite created the “Cathy” syndicated comic strip. In 1978 she wrote The Cathy Chronicles, which can be borrowed for you by the Berkeley and Alameda County public libraries via the LINK. 

Seventy-one year old Nicole Hollander, creator of the “Sylvia” strip, has published numerous "Sylvia" collections, including Never Take Your Cat to a Salad Bar, and Female Problems: An Unhelpful Guide, which was turned into a musical in 1998. She has also illustrated children's books. Her Tales of Graceful Aging from the Planet Denial is available in large print.  

Australian cartoonist Cathy Wilcox is best known for her work as a Sydney Morning Herald cartoonist. In 2007 she won the Walkley Award in Cartooning for a cartoon about Sheikh Taj el-Din al Hilaly's infamous “uncovered meat” remarks about Australian women.  

In 2008, of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists’ 185 members, 15 were women. 

Philadelphia Daily News editorial cartoonist Signe Wilkinson wonders if women just don’t stoop to juvenile humor. “You don’t find many women, or many thoughtful men, going into the political cartoon end of the print communications industry these days because this industry isn’t about communications. It’s about selling sports utility vehicles, not criticizing them. Partly because there are so few editorial page cartooning jobs available and partly because in a one-newspaper town, editors are often reluctant to hire too strong a voice in any ideological direction, young satirists of both sexes are either going directly to the Fox network or, like Nicole Hollander, piecing together a platform of magazines, alternative newspapers and book collections.” She added, not quite accurately, “Other women, like Gen Guracar, who signs her work Bulbul, publish almost exclusively in the feminist press.” Not quite accurately because Bulbul has always used her pen and palette to elucidate education, feminism, the media, masculinist culture, corporations, the economy, environment, government and health care while focusing on ageism and sexism, and she is widely published. She pokes serious fun at bureaucratic humbug, and her cartoons express great insights infrequently seen and read today. Throughout December, copies of Bulbul’s work — past and current cartoons and comic strips — will be displayed at the North Berkeley Senior Center. 

“A Nightingale Who Stings with Her Pen” was the way Peninsula Magazine described seventy-four year old, political cartoonist Genny Pilgrim Guracar. She uses the pen name Bulbul, the Turkish word for nightingale. According to legend, the nightingale’s troubles always stem from its sweet song. Bulbul is also the pseudonym for an even rarer bird: a woman political cartoonist. Bulbul’s cartoon song is sometimes sweet, sometimes troublemaking. Her goal? “Cartoons are one of the most powerful forces in the media to carry on stereotypes…I want mine to break some of those stereotypes.” 

Bulbul’s cartoons appear in such books as Ourselves Growing Older, Human Sexuality, Health in the Later Years, Sex Role Stereotypes, Aging: the Individual, and Society, Our Bodies Ourselves, Readings for Older Women, Justice Denied, and Social Justice. Drawing My Times: A Thirty Year Retrospective of Bulbul’s work and experiences is in the collections of the Berkeley Public and San Diego State University Libraries. 

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News from the home front: 

The UCB Resource Center on Aging e-Newsletter will resume publication at the end of November 2010. The Center’s new website is http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~aging/. 

The November Tri-Center Nugget seems to indicate that there is no computer learning/using scheduled at the North Berkeley Senior Center, and that South and West have some provision. 

Computer instruction and use in November is available at the Albany branch of the Alameda County Library and several branches of the Berkeley Public Library system.  

Most Berkeley senior center classes are taught by unpaid, capable volunteers like Lenore Waters, who coordinates (her word) French conversation at the North Berkeley Senior Center on Monday afternoons. Other languages staffed by NBSC volunteers include Italian, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, American Sign, and Latin. Volunteers rarely appear like magic—they need to be recruited and appreciated. 

Throughout December, copies of some of political cartoonist Bulbul past and current cartoons and comic strips will be displayed on North Berkeley Senior Center’s first floor corridor bulletin board. 

Helen Rippier Wheeler can be reached at pen136@dslextreme.com 

No email attachments; use “Senior Power” for subject.