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The New Yorker Cartoonist On A Mission To Show The Mundane Moments Of Black Life

My cartoonist career began by accident, at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. I had recently moved back home, was made redundant, recently dumped, and had never felt more directionless. I always loved art and story-telling and was no stranger to sharing my work on my social media channels even with the small following I had at the time. Needing a distraction from the chaos and uncertainty of the world and my personal life, I dusted off my unused Wacom drawing tablet and started my online cartoon, Oyin and Kojo.

As a millennial black British woman, I craved more British media that centred our experience, and more specifically, media that portrayed ordinary, healthy black couples. As I developed the relationship between the two fictional characters, I noticed there were very few movies, shows, or stories to reference when it came to modern black British cis-hetero relationships. My inspiration had to come from my own experiences and imagination. The ultimate goal was to showcase a healthy, humorous, and relatable relationship dynamic through single panel cartoons of the mundane moments in their lives. With this vision in mind, I committed to posting one cartoon each day on the Instagram page, and was surprised how quickly the cartoon gained popularity.