La Borinqueña Doll Creates Latina Superhero Representation

Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez nonetheless feels the strain of being a one-man military in terms of selling the crown jewel of Somos Arte, his impartial artistic studio. Since 2016 he is been on the forefront of each marketing campaign surrounding his creation La Borinqueña. The Puerto Rican superheroine has been the star of a collection of self-titled graphic novels which have straight tackled cultural matters and present occasions on the forefront of the island, all by way of the lens of a superhero yarn. It’s an effort that is earned him a humanitarian award on the 2019 Eisner Awards (the comics trade’s Academy Awards), collaborations with Hollywood stars akin to Rosario Dawson, and crossovers with DC Comics’s largest characters like Wonder Woman. But even with all of the accolades, he makes it clear, it is at all times been an uphill battle.

“There’s so many moving pieces when you’re something as big as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, when you’re something as big as Star Wars,” Miranda-Rodriguez tells POPSUGAR. “But [how about] when you’re something as tiny as a freaking sorullito called La Borinqueña? You have me, and I literally feel like your abuela in the kitchen doing a gazillion things at the same time. I’m making the bacalaitos while I’m tending to the rice, while I’m checking on the habichuelas, while I’m flipping over tostones, all while I’m carving up the pernil.”

But even whereas acknowledging the workload, Miranda-Rodriguez sees it as a duty he fortunately carries. Last yr, on the fifth anniversary of the devastating passage of Hurricane María over Puerto Rico, he launched a particular version of “La Borinqueña” with a commemorative cowl. The funds from these gross sales went to varied philanthropic organizations that Somos Arte helps, most of them grassroots organizations concerned in serving to causes related to Puerto Rico and its diaspora inhabitants.

Recently, he concocted and enforce his latest growth of the Borinqueña model: motion figures, with a number of factors of articulation with a purpose to make them posable. While nonetheless eminently in style with youngsters, motion figures — particularly these of popular culture characters — have change into a big marketplace for collectors and fans. Having launched a brand-new superhero group known as the Nitaínos within the newest installment of “La Borinqueña,” he now had a roster of characters to drag from to fill out followers’ cabinets.

Ever cognizant of his group’s wants, Miranda-Rodriguez determined to go additional. He teamed up with the identical firm that manufactured the motion figures, Boss Fight Studios, to launch a doll primarily based on La Borinqueña, obtainable for preorder on their web site.

“They’re doing something they’ve never done before. They’re actually making toys for children, and they created a line of dolls for girls called I Am Brilliance,” he says. “The first wave of these dolls actually have two luchadoras from the Masked Republic, which is a wrestling franchise that exists. But La Borinqueña is actually part of that wave as well, which is separate from las luchadoras.”

Miranda-Rodriguez has studied the sociopolitical construction of race and ethnicity and its affect on Black and brown communities, and he has at all times had an eye fixed for contemplating them with all his initiatives. In this case, the doll will replicate La Borinqueña’s id as a Black Latina, from the colour of her pores and skin to her curly hair. This is completed with intent.

“This has a lot to do with how young girls, especially, are conditioned through play,” he explains. “Conditioning in terms of the roles they play, the gender roles they play, the class roles they play, and even the roles they play in identifying themselves racially.”

An enormous inspiration for his impetus to make the Borinqueña doll is a now-infamous experiment carried out in 1939 referred to as the Clark doll take a look at, named after the psychologists who carried it out.

“The Clark experiment pretty much cemented the idea that many [African-American] children had an internalized self-hatred of their own complexion — of their own identity,” Miranda-Rodriguez says. “And when they were given the choice to choose between a white baby doll and a Black baby doll, they played with the white doll. And when they weren’t allowed to play with the white doll and were only given a chance to play with the Black doll, they were very upset.”

This is the extent of care and a spotlight to element Miranda-Rodriguez imbues his tales with as nicely, at all times on the lookout for a solution to intersect the escapism of comedian books with a aware finger on the heart beat of what real-world matters should be highlighted.

“Introducing this character to a child, particularly little girls, to me is revolutionary because I’m giving [them] a choice between ‘Do you want to play with the baby doll or the fashion doll?’ [or] ‘Do you want to actually play with the superhero?'” he says. “The superhero that looks like you, the superhero that actually speaks to your heritage, the superhero that has your hair color, your mother’s hair texture, [and] your skin color. A superhero that actually comes from a real place. A superhero that affirms their identity, that affirms their place and affirms their visibility.”

Representation and inclusiveness is a subject he is fastidiously touched on earlier than within the “La Borinqueña” collection and arguably serves because the thematic throughline for it as an entire.

The objective, he expresses, is to deal with not solely the internalized racism that the Clark take a look at demonstrated but additionally an “internalized colonialism” that he surmises exists inside some Puerto Ricans as nicely. The nation as soon as banned its personal flag and demonized its nationalist heroes, and that has led to what he says is the painful impact that some “don’t see the value in our heritage, we don’t see the value in our heroes.” Adorning La Borinqueña within the Puerto Rican colours is a solution to counteract that.

The hope for Miranda-Rodriguez and Boss Fight Studios is to have the dolls prepared on the market by Día de los Reyes — January. It’s an vital vacation in Latin America, significantly in Puerto Rico, which is understood for its prolonged Christmas vacation season. The doll will likely be distributed on-line and obtainable in sure shops throughout the East Coast.

“Our hope is that we’re entering into a space that’s dominated by multibillion-dollar corporations so that big stores like Walmart or Target see the value of La Borinqueña action figures [and] La Borinqueña dolls and put them on the shelves,” Miranda-Rodriguez says.

The endeavor was preceded by a profitable marketing campaign with Puerto Rican cocoa processor Chocolate Cortés, which bought limited-edition chocolate bars with La Borinqueña comedian strips printed on the wrappers. The run exhausted the Puerto Rico stock and compelled Chocolate Cortés to faucet into its Florida-based distribution level. It validated Miranda-Rodriguez’s long-held aspiration to work with and help native companies,

As at all times, he and his group at Somos Arte (which incorporates his spouse, Kyung Jeon-Miranda, as initiatives director) will proceed to push ahead with larger plans for his or her works and try to get them in entrance of latest audiences.

“There is a necessity for us as Latin people to see the value in our own intellectual properties, and our own art, and our own stories,” he says. “So that we can show the rest of the world that our stories, our characters, and our toys need to be on the same shelves as other heroes as well.”