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4.34 AVERAGE
4.34 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
such an interesting look at history. this is more about the author’s journey to discovering more about slave revolts, with historical elements also included. enjoyed learning about how women were disregarded as being leaders of revolts, and that’s why it’s not talked about often. some really powerful writing in this as well. definitely recommend!
I received this book as part of a book club and found it so engrossing that I read it in about 2 hours. It is a graphic novel and incorporates the author, Rebecca Hall’s, struggle to find some documentation that supports her hypothesis- that enslaved females led revolts. The book is filled with intriguing images by the illustrator, Hugo Martínez, who captures the emotional plight of both the slaves and a descendant. We see the turmoil the men and women went through in being transported to the Western Hemisphere while also bearing witness to the grief and frustration experienced by Ms. Hall as she finds that many of these women’s voices has been silenced by the white historians who documented the slavery era.
I will reread this book more slowly to take in the wealth of information presented. On the surface, it seems like a story about a woman looking for a story about women who were enslaved. However there are many layers to this novel- there are lessons about biases in historical records, connections between these events and how the world around us operates now, and even just rereading to take a closer look at the images presented to us by Hugo Martinez. I appreciate this book and look forward to passing it on to others in my circle of readers.
I will reread this book more slowly to take in the wealth of information presented. On the surface, it seems like a story about a woman looking for a story about women who were enslaved. However there are many layers to this novel- there are lessons about biases in historical records, connections between these events and how the world around us operates now, and even just rereading to take a closer look at the images presented to us by Hugo Martinez. I appreciate this book and look forward to passing it on to others in my circle of readers.
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
I wasn’t the intended audience for this but it’s very informative and provides a suggestion at the end for healing ancestral trauma.
Rebecca Hall decided to write her thesis on women-led slave revolts. She knew they happened but the historical record is incomplete and difficult to navigate. In this graphic memoir, she shares her struggle to find records and the history she was able to piece together.
I honestly expected to find more hard facts in the book than I did. But Dr. Hall addresses that. Even when she found records of revolts led by women, they rarely contained more than a first name. So she decided to make "measured use of historical imagination" and fill in the gaps. That's fair enough, especially since she's very clear about what she found in the historical record and what she imagined.
Some records that she wanted to investigate are held by private companies (Lloyd's of London used to insure slave ships against insurrection). They refused to give her access when they learned what her research topic was. Even public records were hard for her to access when they were stored in courthouses, behind security screening. She faced discrimination over and over.
But the history she pieces together is powerful. Slave ships that contained more women than men were more likely to have insurrections. She shares notes from captain's logs about deaths, revolts, and the brutal way they treated their captives. She imagines what life was like as an enslaved woman and what would finally drive them to revolt. In short, she shares and imagines the unimaginable.
I have mixed feelings about Hugo Martínez's illustrations. On the one hand, I felt the heavy shading/cross-hatching muddied the artwork and made it hard for me to get a good fix on what was going on. They almost felt like idea sketches instead of finished works. I'm not an artist so I don't have the vocabulary to say what I mean. I'm a fast reader and don't spend a lot of time really focusing on illustrations, so that could just be me. But the surprising ways that he finds to show that Dr. Hall is haunted by the past were ingenious.
I recommend this book for readers who want to learn more about the history of slavery and slave revolts and for those who seek to gain an appreciation for how difficult it is to research that history, both logistically and emotionally.
I honestly expected to find more hard facts in the book than I did. But Dr. Hall addresses that. Even when she found records of revolts led by women, they rarely contained more than a first name. So she decided to make "measured use of historical imagination" and fill in the gaps. That's fair enough, especially since she's very clear about what she found in the historical record and what she imagined.
Some records that she wanted to investigate are held by private companies (Lloyd's of London used to insure slave ships against insurrection). They refused to give her access when they learned what her research topic was. Even public records were hard for her to access when they were stored in courthouses, behind security screening. She faced discrimination over and over.
But the history she pieces together is powerful. Slave ships that contained more women than men were more likely to have insurrections. She shares notes from captain's logs about deaths, revolts, and the brutal way they treated their captives. She imagines what life was like as an enslaved woman and what would finally drive them to revolt. In short, she shares and imagines the unimaginable.
I have mixed feelings about Hugo Martínez's illustrations. On the one hand, I felt the heavy shading/cross-hatching muddied the artwork and made it hard for me to get a good fix on what was going on. They almost felt like idea sketches instead of finished works. I'm not an artist so I don't have the vocabulary to say what I mean. I'm a fast reader and don't spend a lot of time really focusing on illustrations, so that could just be me. But the surprising ways that he finds to show that Dr. Hall is haunted by the past were ingenious.
I recommend this book for readers who want to learn more about the history of slavery and slave revolts and for those who seek to gain an appreciation for how difficult it is to research that history, both logistically and emotionally.
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
challenging
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced