Giovan Michael’s Unflinchingly Honest Expression of Identity

While many shy away from taboo subjects, writer, artist and San Diego State University lecturer Giovan Michael dives headfirst into those themes with creative honesty. 

Michael’s novels, short stories and comics are a deeply personal reflection of himself and the struggles he has faced throughout his life. 

“There are four seeds to my writing,” Michael said. “There’s sex, and my relationship with it, there’s depression and mental illness in general, there’s Catholicism and then there’s my Mexican American heritage.”

Growing up in a strict Catholic household had an immense impact on Michael’s perception of the world. 

 “A lot of my mental health issues are tied to Catholicism because of what God wanted us to do,” Michael said. “But the only reason we were Catholic is because my mom was so f*cking Mexican.” 

Michael said that as a child he devoted himself to the Catholic religion. He knew every prayer and every principality of the angels and tried his hardest to be good in the ways that the church wanted him to. 

At 14, he began to question the existence of God. 

Sex, as a forbidden idea but a strong desire, was the catalyst that began his questioning of Catholicism.

“Because I was raised Catholic, I thought that if I had sex before marriage, I was going to go to hell,” Michael said. Being that premarital sex is a sin in Catholicism, the fact that he had these desires in the first place both made him feel ashamed and made him question his faith in the religion.

This loss of faith in God sent Michael into a mental spiral where he faced deep depression and suicidal thoughts. Michael said that as he grappled with the disbelief that God was real, a concept that he had been taught to equate with love, he found himself also questioning whether or not love was real.

Coupled with the weight of Catholic guilt, Michael’s desires for sexual expression were intertwined with his ideas of love in a convoluted manner, making his internal struggle all the more profound. When he attended state-mandated therapy, he was told that he couldn’t be helped because his issues were existential, Michael said.

Michael said that those existential issues surrounding religion, love and sex– those that the therapist couldn’t address– are precisely the aspects of himself that he uses writing to cope with.

“Sex is a huge part of my writing, all my characters have a sexuality,” Michael said. “I don’t write erotica, but I do focus on sexual themes, and the fact that characters have these sexual desires is a driving force for my writing. But, more than that, it’s their own judgments on their sexuality, which is something I’ve always had to deal with.”

“The Familial Conceal,” Michael’s collection of short stories he wrote as an undergraduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, serves as an example of Michael’s use of sexual themes in his writing. 

The second short story in “The Familial Conceal” titled “Damascus” dives into themes of sexual desires and Catholicism, and how the two conflict. Michael said that this story was based on a road trip he took on the way to his brother’s confirmation, which is a sacrament of the Catholic Church. The two characters in the story spend much of the road trip talking about Catholicism and the contradictions that exist within the religion. 

“See, that's the thing about Catholics. They're obsessed with sex, the way anorexics are obsessed with food,” Michael writes in the story. “There’s no aphrodisiac like a chastity belt.”

Quotes about the complexities of sex in the Catholic religion are embedded throughout this story and in all of his writing. He also discusses the topic of mental health, interweaving themes of depression and suicide with creative and witty honesty.

”I feel like Gio has this really admirable ability to balance dark energies with light energies. I feel like he's not afraid to look to his shadow and see how he can utilize that in an artistic way,” said Helena Westra, a former student of Michael. 

Westra also said that in both his conversations and his writing, Michael is unapologetically transparent and has a graceful yet humorous way of talking about taboo subjects, especially regarding religion, mental illness, and sexual desires. 

Michael’s Mexican American heritage is another aspect of his identity that has had a major influence on his writing. The novel he is currently writing, titled “Javier’s Labyrinth,” draws from his Mexican and American identities and examines how they intersect and contradict each other. 

Michael said that in “Javier’s Labyrinth” he employs his own identity in the creation and development of the main character, Javier. In the novel, Javier also comes from a Mexican American background and struggles with finding his place within either world. 

In “Javier’s Labrinth,” Javier is stuck in an elaborate and mythological maze and must declare magic words to unlock different doors and borders within the labyrinth. However, he must recite these words in Spanish. Despite Javier’s Mexican heritage, Javier doesn’t really know Spanish, which leaves him stuck in the labyrinth, Michael said. 

In one of Michael’s Instagram posts, @giovanmichael, he discussed the identity crisis and imposter syndrome he faced both in his childhood and today. Michael said that while trying to learn the Spanish language, both his friends and family laughed at him.

Navigating his multicultural identity is difficult, Michael said. While he wants to acknowledge his Mexican heritage, embracing it feels challenging because it may be perceived as seeking validation. He was constantly being told that he wasn’t a real Mexican by his classmates. Still, he didn’t want to whitewash himself by ignoring the Mexican aspects of his identity, leading to internal struggle. 

“I really want to explore that side without exploiting that side, so I always feel like I'm tippy-toeing because I do get white privilege and so much of my identity is white, but so much of my identity is Mexican too in these weird sneaky ways,” Michael said. 

Aspects of Michael’s Mexican American descent are found within his graphic design work and his series of one-page comics, titled “Vuelos.” His vibrantly colorful art plays with texture, movement and pattern, much of it inspired by stories of growing up alongside his Mexican family members. 

A comic from Michael’s “Vuelos” collection, courtesy of his Instagram, @giovanmichael

While he works through the editing stages of “Javier’s Labyrinth,” Michael creates and posts his “Vuelos” to keep himself motivated. 

“The comics are like little bits of medicine, of me getting that encouragement, because I think every writer needs that reward- you need that dopamine or you’re not going to keep doing it,” Michael said. 

With lighthearted energy and an honest depiction of the human condition, Michael’s writing and art intrinsically capture his personal struggles with identity, religion and depression. Michael says to other creators in this world, “The trick is to just get out of your own way. You will never create or write anything worth looking at if you can’t get out of your own way first.”