“Earth Girl Won’t Stand For It!”: Representations of Environmental (In)Justice in Mayah’s Lot (2012) THE COMICS GRID

As the global climate crisis escalates, environmental disaster and extreme weather will play a defining role in the lives of many of today’s children, particularly those from impoverished communities and communities of color. However, environmental children’s literature has overwhelmingly failed to educate readers about environmental injustice or equip them with the tools to combat these pressing issues. Rebecca Bratspies and Charlie La Greca’s comic Mayah’s Lot (2012) counters this troubling silence by empowering children to pursue environmental justice. The comic centers on Mayah, a young black girl who discovers that a corporation plans to transform a vacant lot in her urban neighborhood into a toxic waste storage facility. Mayah joins forces with her neighbors to halt the development, participating in protests, community meetings, and legal action. The comic concludes with the community defeating the corporation and collaborating to turn the lot into public green space. By highlighting the intersections between environmental and racial inequalities, along with showcasing a range of viable community activist strategies, I argue that Mayah’s Lot demonstrates how environmental justice-oriented comics can empower young readers to participate in environmental advocacy and develop resilience in the face of environmental disruption.

In the last two decades, well-documented disasters such as the Flint water crisis and Hurricane Katrina have highlighted the disproportionate and unfair impact of climate change and environmental issues on vulnerable populations (Adeola and Picou 2016;Agyeman et al. 2016;Versey 2021). Communities of color (Parris et al 2020), impoverished people (Cureton 2011;Willett 2015), Indigenous communities (Bray 2020;Paul and Caplins 2020), and residents of the Global South (Givens et al. 2019) frequently suffer the greatest harm from environmental problems and often lack the resources to effectively prepare for and recover from devastating crises like extreme weather events fueled by climate change. Frequently, marginalized communities also suffer from more insidious forms of environmental harm that do not always attract widespread media attention, such as air pollution and exposure to pesticides. Bryce Covert reports that " [r]ace is the most significant predictor of a person living near contaminated air, water, or soil," and the Environmental Protection Agency has denied 95 percent of claims that communities of color have brought against polluters (Covert 2016). As a result, it is important to educate young people-particularly those from vulnerable communities-about environmental injustices and empower them to participate in social justice-oriented community activism. However, environmental children's media has largely failed to prepare readers to confront these pressing issues. As Clare Echterling contends, green children's texts "overwhelmingly choose to avoid discussing the relationships between environmental issues and social inequalities, corporate/industrial culpability, and the necessity of far stricter government regulation" (Echterling 2016: 290). For instance, Rachel Hope Allison's graphic novel I'm Not a Plastic Bag (2012) explores the horrifying slow violence that plastic pollution inflicts on marine animals, but the narrative and its paratexts elide the humanmade, capitalist systems that create this waste and do not address the unequal impact of marine debris on residents of the Global South.
Likewise, Michelle Lord and Julia Blattman's picture book The Mess That We Made (2020) examines the effects of marine pollution, but it does not acknowledge that "we" do not all contribute equally to the production of waste, with industrialized countries like China and the United States producing far more trash than other nations.     The use of different fonts further attunes children to the ways that corporations use greenwashing perpetuate environmental injustices. After Mayah discovers the company's plans, Green Solutions sends a representative, Lulu-a white businesswoman whose name stands as an acronym for the environmental justice term "locally undesirable land use"-to a permit hearing to seek approval for the waste facility (LaGreca 2012: backmatter). In dense speech bubbles filled with bolded and italicized words, Lulu tells the assembled neighborhood residents, "Green Solutions is offering Forestville an exciting redevelopment initiative. It'll bring much-needed investment and will revitalize a blighted, vacant lot. We take tremendous pride in our ability to generate jobs in our partner communities while protecting the character of the neighborhoods we join" (Figure 3) (LaGreca and Bratspies 2012:14). Of course, the corporation has no intention of protecting or improving Forestville; instead, a preceding scene at the company headquarters reveals that its executives have selected the city based on its "demographics," or large population of impoverished renters who they believe won't fight the facility (LaGreca and Bratspies 2012: 13). The comic uses different font weights to spotlight the corporation's deceptive language, bolding false terms like "redevelopment" and "partner" and italicizing ambiguous buzzwords such as "revitalize" and "character." These visual cues train young readers to scrutinize Lulu's empty promises with a critical eye and provide tangible examples of misleading language that real corporations may use to deceive consumers. Though many of the Forestville residents react to Green Solutions' proposed plans with disinterest or resignation, Mayah immediately recognizes the dangers posed by the planned waste facility. She fantasizes about transforming into Earth Girl, an environmental superhero. A splash page depicts the costumed girl brandishing a lasershooting gun as she stands atop barrels of toxic waste that emanate green chemicals.
Three small panels at the top of the page contain her internal monologue: "There comes a point where you can't take it anymore… Others sit idly by while people who don't even live in our hood decide to put liquid death on our land. Next to our shops, cafes, and schools. But not anymore cuz… Earth Girl won't stand for it!!" (emphasis in original) (Figure 4) (LaGreca and Bratspies 2012: 10). Significantly, this sequence depicts Mayah smashing the same padlock wielded earlier by the police officer, a defiant act of resistance against an unequal system that fails to protect both black youth and the environment. Bratspies attributes this scene to the comic's middle school collaborators, writing, "Based on student advice, we also added a daydream sequence to the middle of the book in which Mayah imagines herself as EarthGirl. The students thought the story dragged at that point and suggested that we add some laser guns to liven it up" (Bratspies 2019: 512). By encouraging the adult creators to re-envision Mayah as the heroic Earth Girl, the youth collaborators remix the heavily    about practical forms of local activism that they could plausibly undertake in their own communities, while the visual narrative counters mainstream depictions of environmental activists as middle class and white by portraying predominately black people participants. At the final council meeting, Mayah and the other activists reveal the results of their research in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the construction of the waste facility. For instance, Troop tells the council, "According to EPA.gov, we're not in compliance for ozone, sulphur oxides, and particulate matter. This facility will make our air quality even worse!" (emphasis in original) (LaGreca and Bratspies 2012: 16).
Troop's oxygen nasal cannula features prominently in this panel. Though the comic never identifies the reason why he requires an oxygen tank, his comment implies that the existing air pollution in Forestville has contributed to his disability. This dialogue educates young readers about the grim consequences of pollution, as well as identifies accessible resources that the audience could use to research air quality rates in their own communities. Together, then, the activism montage and the council scene provide children with tangible avenues to learn about and confront environmental injustices.
The comic concludes with Mayah and the other activists successfully blocking the waste facility. In its place, the Forestville residents work together to transform the vacant lot into a vibrant public park. The comic's final page depicts the lush green space filled with plants and community members instead of trash and police officers. This upbeat ending demonstrates that marginalized communities can achieve environmental justice if they work together to oppose harmful corporations. Of course, in reality, attempts to oppose LULUs do not always succeed, and corporations often have many more resources than impoverished people and people of color. However, by depicting effective youth environmental activism and teaching readers about the systems of power contributing to injustices, Mayah's Lot does empower children to advocate for their communities.
Additionally, by incorporating the input of middle school collaborators, the comic demonstrates how creators can amplify youth voices and produce more inclusive media that features youth of color in heroic roles. Ultimately, then, Mayah's Lot indicates that comics can serve as a productive medium for educating young readers about pressing environmental issues and helping them develop the agency needed to confront these problems.