New Yorker cartoonist Kaamran Hafeez delights in the droll. But getting his wry drawings into the ultimate high-brow cartoon publication was not a simple journey.
Hafeez’s own website features a nearly two-decade timeline chronicling his odyssey from cartoonist awaking to finally getting published by The New Yorker. And his recently published debut book features a title that celebrates breaking through at last: You Only Need One ‘Yes’.
The collection, published by Authorhouse, features dozens of Hafeez’s cartoons, which offer quirky takes on work, politics, technology, religion, and human communication. Many deal with the quixotic struggles to achieve personal growth in the modern era.
For years, Hafeez could not support himself on his art alone. Early in his career he tried submitting to The New Yorker, but the cartoons were rejected. Stints trying to become an architect and working as a pharmacy technician also failed. So he returned to his native Vancouver to try his hand again as a professional cartoonist.
You Only Need One ‘Yes’ references the classic struggle many artists face: receiving rejection after rejection until finally one breakthrough. For Hafeez, the opening was a digital syndication deal drawing the comic “Bozo” for Universal Uclick.
Then Hafeez managed to make the jump to magazines. Doors opened at venues like Reader’s Digest and The Wall Street Journal – not to mention The New Yorker, which had been his original dream publication.
“Many New Yorker cartoonists have a second job,” Hafeez says. “I heard that being a cartoonist for the New Yorker is like being a poet. You do it for the love of it. In fact, I always think of the advice Oscar Wilde gave to a young writer. He encouraged the aspiring author to find a job that would allow his creativity to be free of the burden of having to earn the loaf.”
Through his unusual career, Hafeez turns to his art to process what makes human beings grow – or fail to grow – in the 21st Century. Though gentle in its approach, You Only Need One ‘Yes’ offers a provocative exploration of what it takes to evolve.
