You’ve been building toward Worm for some years now. Why did this feel like the right time to tell this story?

Yes, I’d been making notes, interviewing family members, and figuring out the structure and narrative of my book for about eight years. At some point, there seemed to be an urgency to put it all together. There are many social and political events going on at the moment that overlap with my story of migration. I felt that my story could be enlightening at this moment in time. I wanted to put my story out there so that readers would better understand the difficult decisions that go into leaving one’s homeland.

With so much fear, suffering, indignities and dehumanization endured, Worm is a painful read at times. Was it hard to tell?

Many parts of the story were difficult to write down, especially when talking about family members left behind, about my grandmother or grandfather. The delay in finishing the book sometimes came to that. I’d get to a certain moment and would have to stop writing; it was too difficult. I felt it was essential to continue with it because these are stories that are rarely told.

Cubans who have left the island don’t want to recount them because they are too painful, often choosing to start a new life and never looking back. This lack of storytelling creates a vacuum and a misunderstanding of who Cuban Americans are, and I wanted to fill the void.

Given the dark context, the title—Worm—feels pointed. Can you talk about why you chose it, and the sense of betrayal inherent in it?

Yes, the title is a bit about the betrayal, not just by the government, but by the people themselves, who were often friends or neighbors. The term worm was used by the government to demean and attack those who weren’t with the program and who had had enough and wanted to leave the country. But it was [also] used by the people at government-sponsored protests and by squads who showed up at people’s houses chanting that word. I was a kid and didn’t understand why we were called worms.

The book's cover has stayed the same since I first sketched it years ago—just a boy in his government-mandated uniform with the word Worm hovering above. I liked the juxtaposition from the beginning.

The “Enemy of the People” chapter, which covers former President Trump's inflammatory rhetoric during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, is heartbreaking, especially the whispering woman afraid to voice her thoughts about your art. This media scrutiny of your work must have been a challenging time.

The whispers of that woman are one of the main reasons why I set off on a campaign to be as loud as possible during the 2016 election. I was shocked that someone was speaking to me in the same hushed manner in the U.S. that others had done in the past in the Cuban dictatorship. I felt I had to use my voice to let others know that they should not stay quiet.

Some early media scrutiny about my work was whether I was being fair. I was on several news shows and that came up often. I have a right to my opinion in this country; I was speaking out from my point of view as an immigrant and refugee. The criticisms eventually died down because the media came to see that my images were accurate and, at times, prescient of things to come, the most notorious being the attack on Congress on January 6, 2021.

Worm grapples with many mixed feelings, including love of country and heritage, but also the anger at what the government has wrought.

Yes, but it’s more about the love of the people that make up a country and the betrayal that one feels when those people do things that run counter to who you thought they were, both here and back in my homeland. I do have a love of Cuba—the places, the food, the music and the culture—and I share much of that in the book. Governments often wrap themselves up in culture to espouse a certain kind of nationalism and treat anyone who disagrees with policies as an enemy of the homeland. This is a dangerous trend worldwide.

The book is dark; the things that you and your family endured and millions of other Cuban refugees and exiles are horrifying, but there’s also a sense of resilience. Can you speak to what you hope the reader takes away from the book?

My hope is that the book brings more understanding and empathy to the plight of refugees and migrants—a better understanding of what immigrants go through to get to a new land and the lives, people and histories they leave behind. We sometimes look at migrants as numbers or people who want something and don’t delve deeper into their stories. I wanted to write a book that helped fill that gap.

Worm is available in bookstores and digital retailers now.

Features

The acclaimed artist and illustrator talks about his latest book, a personal account of his family’s exile from Cuba.