La Borinqueña: The Necessity of the Unsaid

“Is the future something that happens to you, or something you actively create?” These were the words displayed as open arms at the doors of the Ctrl+Alt: A Culture Lab on Imagined Futures Exhibit in Chinatown, New York City. The exhibit, presented by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, showcased the work of more than 40 artists across a diverse set of artistic disciplines. Ranging from visual to digital art, interactive gaming to academic lecture, and meditative to exercise inducing, each artist pushed us to imagine a future where people of color were both at the forefront and at the center.

Amidst this throng of powerful work, the sounds of Puerto Rico could be heard. At the center of the two-floor space was Bomba Yo playing the African born, Puerto Rican cultivated rhythms of Bomba. Around them hung images of brightly painted character cutouts and framed storyboards from the comic book, La Borinqueña. Nestled behind a table at the center of it all was Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez: steel glasses, black fedora, and a smile as inviting as the characters who surrounded him. For this exhibit, Miranda-Rodriguez had been asked to write a 12-page story about La Borinqueña’s best friend, Lauren “La-La” Liu, a Chinese-Dominican college student living in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. While this short suffers from a fast paced and strung together overtly political plot, Miranda-Rodriguez does his best beneath the surface: strong character backstory fil…