Pablo Leon is a veteran of the animation and comics industry, having worked by day for the likes of Netflix, Nickelodeon, Disney, and Scholastic (where he illustrated two graphic novels in the Miles Morales/Spider-Man series). By night, however, the Eisner Award–nominated author/illustrator has been laboring over a more intensely personal project:a graphic novel about an immigrant family in the United States affected by the horrors of the civil war in their homeland, Guatemala, that lasted from 1960 to 1996 and left more than 200,000 dead. (Leon himself was raised in Guatemala before coming to the U.S. in 1999 at age 14.) He recently spoke with Kirkus about Silenced Voices: Reclaiming Memories From the Guatemalan Genocide (HarperAlley, September 2) over Zoom; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Could you tell us about the genesis of this book?

My goal was always, first and foremost, to talk about these historical events that aren’t very well known outside our region. I’ve also done a short animated film on El Salvador, Remember Us. The general idea is: Look at this. Remember that this happened so it doesn’t happen again. I want to really hammer away at this topic until it gets talked about. 

How did you conduct your research?

Bits here and there are based on my grandmother’s life. She and her sister weren’t necessarily a part of the big conflict, but her family experienced a lot of turmoil and she and her sister did separate. They only found each other way later. I also read a lot of documented histories, a lot of official documents, and interviewed first- and second-generation immigrants. Then I just pieced things together.

I got really deep into the research. There was just so much. Even now I keep finding out more and more as I talk about the book or do other projects, stuff I wish I’d known when I was making this.

It seems there’s so much to say—so much happens in the novel.

Maybe there’s someone out there who experienced every single thing that happens in my book, but this is a story, a fictional story. For me it was less about trying to cram in the entire history of the conflict and more about portraying the human experience as realistically as I could to give readers context for what this war was like and about.

The protagonist, José, asks his mother, Clara, about the conflict, only to face her anger at his bringing up this painful period of her life. What was it like to ask other immigrants about their personal experiences?

I was interviewing people not just from Guatemala but around the world. The people I related to most were those from Vietnam. They had similar experiences, in that their parents left in a rush. The whole trip was so harrowing, but the kids didn’t know about everything until there was a bridge to talk about it.

In the book, Clara yells, “You know, you’re an American, what do you care about this?”That was an experience that I’d had; it was something that happened to me with my mom. I think it’s one of those things where she meant well, because she wanted us to, you know, have that separation. But one of my goals is to foster dialogue. It’s impossible to fully cover 36 years of conflict, but I hope this book can be a bridge for families to have this conversation.

Expressing a collective trauma through an individual story can take a toll. How did you yourself feel the effects of this trauma, and did anything change for you during the writing of your book?

I think it had felt like a part of me was denied. It’s like there’s this invisible force that is telling you it’s not for you, or that you shouldn’t do it, shouldn’t look into it, just stop. But all that made it feel like something was being taken away from me.

So as I was making this [book], I feel like I finally found a piece of myself, the piece that was missing. I also felt more and more that my generation has a responsibility to talk about the past—the people that we lost, the people that were never found—because I think that restores people’s dignity. We can then have an understanding of ourselves as Central Americans, as Guatemalans. An understanding of our land, our complexities, and the choices that our parents made, whether they were good choices or bad ones.

As a creative, you have the ability to tell a story in many different ways, and you’ve told the story of Central American conflict first with your film and now with this book. How do you decide what might be the best way for you to relate a certain story? What is it like to work on a graphic novel after working in teams for your other work?

I’ve always loved comics—that’s always been my go-to medium. I picked up a copy of Maus in high school, which just completely changed my life. I saw that you can talk about serious topics in this format.

Overall, I chose to do this as a graphic novel because I prefer comics, though I do also really enjoy the collaboration of animation. With film animation there’s a broader group to bounce ideas around with. I have people who can tell me, “Hey, this isn’t working.” And that’s not what comics are like. It’s a little more lonely. But I think there’s also something to knowing that this is all yours. To look at a book and think, I did that.

What does it feel like to juggle two such different types of projects—lighter entertainment and then the history of a tragedy?

I didn’t know how to approach certain things emotionally and would have moments of depression from taking on so much of what I was seeing and hearing. So being able to work on Spider-Man books and, in my day job, cartoons for 7-year olds was a really good balance. In my 9-to-5, I’d be working on wacky things and slapstick jokes, and then at night it would just be the work that is meaningful to me but very heavy. I love doing the lighter stuff, because it does provide emotional balance. With the heavy topics and heavy research, it’s hard—I joke about getting PTSD from the PTSD. But keep it inside, and it can be a little damaging. You need to give yourself open space to breathe.

What sort of reception has the book gotten so far?

A lot of people who’ve seen the advanced readers’ edition or the galley said they just weren’t aware of this war. They weren’t aware that this was a thing that had even happened. So now they’re using my book as a doorway to look into the history more, which I really like. I think that’s one of my ultimate goals, really. If you don’t know anything about this war, we’re not the historical source, but we’re the door.

Christine Gros-Loh is the author of Parenting Without Borders and The Path.