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4.34 AVERAGE
4.34 AVERAGE
This is one of those books that you want to like, because it's important, but the delivery is dry and choppy, and the art is sketchy and inconsistent. I feel for Ms Hall when she runs into endless roadblocks in her research - it's awful that this history is hidden or list - but it's not a satisfying read, or maybe I just didn't feel that she made it a satisfying read. Maybe I expected more history and less frustrated memoir. I'm glad people like Rebecca Hall are pursuing these stories. I wish she were able to tell more of them.
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Was really interested in the premise of this book. It was fascinating and well done, but I was kind of hoping to have more real life details about women-led slave revolts. Instead, the book is mostly what the author calls "the measured use of historical imagination" simply because these women were almost entirely erased from the historical record, and this book is the author's attempt to insert them back into the narrative. The book reminded me a lot of "Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals," which is a book I really wanted to like but ended up on my DNF shelf because I just couldn't get into it. Both books took brief historical references of women and created narratives around it, imagining what could have happened.
With Wayward Lives, I liked the concept, but struggled with the flowery prose. With Wake, I thought having it in a graphic novel medium was really effective. I especially liked the pages where we see present-day NYC, but the past is reflected in the windows or the puddles on the street, showing how the author feels haunted by history. In the beginning, she says "Have you ever seen something out of the corner of your eye, but when you turn your head to focus, it's gone? Like invisible forces have shaped everything around you, but you've lost the words to describe them. This is what it means to live in the wake of slavery." This concept was really powerful throughout the whole book.
With Wayward Lives, I liked the concept, but struggled with the flowery prose. With Wake, I thought having it in a graphic novel medium was really effective. I especially liked the pages where we see present-day NYC, but the past is reflected in the windows or the puddles on the street, showing how the author feels haunted by history. In the beginning, she says "Have you ever seen something out of the corner of your eye, but when you turn your head to focus, it's gone? Like invisible forces have shaped everything around you, but you've lost the words to describe them. This is what it means to live in the wake of slavery." This concept was really powerful throughout the whole book.
Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy of this book.
This was kind of hard to read; the author put so much emotion into it that it didn't go down easily. But I don't think it was meant to at all; it SHOULD make us sorrowful. There was so much here I did not know, and it is the kind of stuff that we OUGHT to know, that we really can't move forward unless we try to understand. I liked the graphic format and illustrations, they seemed to fit the subject matter well. Very well done.
This was kind of hard to read; the author put so much emotion into it that it didn't go down easily. But I don't think it was meant to at all; it SHOULD make us sorrowful. There was so much here I did not know, and it is the kind of stuff that we OUGHT to know, that we really can't move forward unless we try to understand. I liked the graphic format and illustrations, they seemed to fit the subject matter well. Very well done.
fast-paced
"History written by the victors always erases resistance. And those of us who live in the wake/ruins learn that we were inferior and needed to be conquered and enslaved. This is the afterlife of slavery that the victors need us to inhabit. One in which we have always already lost and have accepted our fate as handed to us. But we always resisted slavery. Our constant resistance was central to bringing about slavery's end."
This graphic novel is part memoir part nonfiction stories of what author Rebecca Hall believes happened during some of the earliest women-led slave revolts. Of course, we will probably never know what happened because records about enslaved people are short, at best. Hall shared many records where all we know about a person is they were numbered and they died at some point from their journey from Africa to the Americas. This book was difficult to read, for this reason, but I do have to admit I was expecting more nonfiction stories about these revolts rather than these stories mixed in with Hall's memoirs of going about writing this book and doing this research. I felt this damped the story and made it less effective, in my eyes. Regardless, this was an interesting graphic novel to read and I appreciated all of the details in the illustrations. It was really quite something.
TW: slavery, violence
**Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
This graphic novel is part memoir part nonfiction stories of what author Rebecca Hall believes happened during some of the earliest women-led slave revolts. Of course, we will probably never know what happened because records about enslaved people are short, at best. Hall shared many records where all we know about a person is they were numbered and they died at some point from their journey from Africa to the Americas. This book was difficult to read, for this reason, but I do have to admit I was expecting more nonfiction stories about these revolts rather than these stories mixed in with Hall's memoirs of going about writing this book and doing this research. I felt this damped the story and made it less effective, in my eyes. Regardless, this was an interesting graphic novel to read and I appreciated all of the details in the illustrations. It was really quite something.
TW: slavery, violence
**Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Wow! I didn’t realize this was a graphic memoir when I grabbed the ebook, thinking it was an academic look at the ways female slaves instigated revolts (it is Nonfiction November, after all.)
Reading about and seeing Hall’s struggles to actually FIND information and then extrapolating from the information she does find to tell stories. Just so good. The art really fit the story. So good.
Reading about and seeing Hall’s struggles to actually FIND information and then extrapolating from the information she does find to tell stories. Just so good. The art really fit the story. So good.
challenging
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
