The following piece was commissioned as part of the Illustrated PEN‘s State of Emergency feature, intended to bring forward the voices and stories of communities whose concerns and lives may be most at risk under the new administration. Our hope is that the stories created for this series will help empower and inspire people to stand up and speak out and to begin to repair what’s been so thoroughly broken.



Tyler Cohen is a cartoonist who uses autobiography and surrealism to explore gender, parenthood, race, and female experience in her book Primahood: Magenta. Her work has appeared in the Ignatz Award-winning anthology, Qu33rAlphabetThe Feminist Utopia ProjectWhat’s Your Sign, Girl? and online at MuthaMagazine.com. Tyler also illustrated her sister Kerry’s memoir, Girl Troublewww.primazonia.com