The F Word Project: Five Feminist Fables for the Twenty-first Century is a body of art, collected in a series of feminist graphic novellas by Maureen Burdock. Each novella features a superheroine originating from a culture whose current traditions cause women hardship, despite which they emerge strong and triumphant. The F Word Project increases awareness of women’s struggles worldwide and the need for elimination of the injustices they experience. It provides inspirational role models for women by focusing on archetypes of strong women with solutions. In addition to the depiction of problems, the intelligence and goodness of human nature that make change possible are emphasized through the use of humor and engaging artwork.

The F Word Project novellas can be published individually as graphic novellas, as a series, as a boxed set, or as an anthology. Each is thirty-two pages long and presently has a format of 8.5 x 11 inches. The drawings and paintings for each novella are created as 18 x 24” oil paintings and framed panels, with the intention of being shown as fine art. The art from the first two books, which were independently published, has been exhibited in Mexico and the United States, and received numerous positive reviews.

Burdock received a Feminist Artists Under 40 Award from Judy Chicago/Through the Flower in 2008.

Selection of drawings for F Word Fable #3, "MAISA & the Bad Muslim Girls," gets a shortlist award from the Second London International Creative Competition. http://licc.us/winners/shortlist.php

Marta & the Missing deals with the periodic rape and murder of girls and women in Juarez, Mexico, over the last decade.

In this novella, Marta and Pepito, a dog with a strong sense of ethics and humor, are visited by Alma, a ghost of the disappeared, who leads them to sites where violence is about to occur. Marta learns that, by standing together, the victims and their families can end this nightmare.

Marta & the Missing opens and closes with oil portraits of some of the actual girls and women involved in the atrocities, depicted as they were before becoming victims, as seen in snapshots posted on the Internet. The intimate and upbeat portraits are meant to celebrate the women’s memories and increase awareness of the beauty and humanity being lost as a result of such violence.

The art has been exhibited in Juarez, Mexico; in Belen, Albuquerque, and Santa Fe, New Mexico; and in Chicago, Illinois.

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Mona & the Little Smile is the story of a German immigrant who comes to America, where she survives sexual molestation and incest.

According to the U.S. Justice Department, about 33 percent of girls are sexually molested before the age of eighteen in the United States.

As the novella progresses, Mona reshapes herself into a superheroine who helps other children transmute their experiences of childhood sexual abuse by honing their magical skills and turning the perpetrators into mushrooms. This novella opens and closes with oil portraits of pedophiles as mushrooms.

The art has been exhibited in Belen and Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Maisa & the Bad Muslim Girls PRESS DATE SEPT. 2010 addresses oppression of Islamic women. More specifically, it focuses on “honor killing” perpetrated by Muslim male family members when they feel that a sister, daughter, or other female relative is threatening the family’s honor by being sexually independent, having relationships not approved of by father/family, or by adopting emancipated “Western” behaviors—and consequently being a bad Muslim girl. Although this type of violence against women occurs most often in Islamic countries, several cases have been documented recently in the United States.

In this novella, Maisa, the ghost of a Turkish immigrant woman, struggles to protect her daughter, whose life is threatened by her uncle and male cousins when they find out she has a Jewish boyfriend. Maisa, with help from the spirits, teaches her daughter and other Muslim women recipes from their countries of origin—Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan—with which the women can make themselves invisible to escape their oppressors. But in order to become visible again, they must find each other and share their recipes. The art draws on traditional illustrative motifs from these countries.

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum

Graphic Novels: A Brief History and How-To
Art & Leadership Program for Girls
July 20-22