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Reviews tagging 'Death'
Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga by Lee Francis IV, Weshoyot Alvitre
1 review
seawarrior's review
challenging
dark
hopeful
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Ghost River: The Fall and Rise of the Conestoga is not only a graphic novel, but the result of an exhaustive and collaborative research project undertaken to highlight the perspective and humanity of the Conestoga people with the help of an impressive number of archives, libraries, historians and Indigenous storytellers and community members. The narrative of the Conestoga massacre is told through the eyes of the Conestoga themselves, through the remembrance of their ancestors who remain with us today, and through the experiences of the book's creators as they researched and assessed how this story needed to be told.
Portraying the creators of this graphic novel like characters within it was a wise decision that provides readers with a greater understanding their efforts, both in terms of accuracy and artistry. The full book also includes a variety of supplemental materials, such as introductions and script notes, for this purpose. Francis IV mentions in his script annotations how the time-skips throughout the book are purposefully done to contrast with Western linear narrative structure, as Native stories are often instead "cyclical and contextual". This alternate structure not only frames this historical retelling through a Native understanding, but heightens the emotion of Francis IV and Alvitre's work. Similarly, Alvitre mentions in her introduction how her choice of artistic tools was done to deliberately mimic the style of the political cartoons stemming from the massacre, while instead "reclaim[ing] that period with fresh representational art of the Native Americans who lived and died during this period of history". Her choice of earth tone pigments intends to tie her artwork to the land the Conestoga would have felt intrinsically connected to, and creates a deep and resounding tone for the book, at least in my opinion.
This work is a shining example of how graphic novels can be utilized as a medium for accurate and empathetic historical retellings, while also transcending the medium itself. Half the book is actually made up of notes from the creators and researchers, alongside scans of primary sources they worked from and lesson plans educators can use through a series of classes. If you would like to learn even more, recommendations for further reading are also included alongside links to digital archives of the materials used for research. I feel very privileged to exist in a time in history where I was able to read and absorb this book and appreciate the resilience of the Conestoga hundreds of years after their story was wrongfully believed to have ended. Seeing the amount of work, and the methods, of researching accurate and fair records for the book was also very rewarding for me, since the value of libraries and archives are something I'm working towards being a part of myself. I highly recommend this graphic novel to other readers, but please mind the content warnings below.
Portraying the creators of this graphic novel like characters within it was a wise decision that provides readers with a greater understanding their efforts, both in terms of accuracy and artistry. The full book also includes a variety of supplemental materials, such as introductions and script notes, for this purpose. Francis IV mentions in his script annotations how the time-skips throughout the book are purposefully done to contrast with Western linear narrative structure, as Native stories are often instead "cyclical and contextual". This alternate structure not only frames this historical retelling through a Native understanding, but heightens the emotion of Francis IV and Alvitre's work. Similarly, Alvitre mentions in her introduction how her choice of artistic tools was done to deliberately mimic the style of the political cartoons stemming from the massacre, while instead "reclaim[ing] that period with fresh representational art of the Native Americans who lived and died during this period of history". Her choice of earth tone pigments intends to tie her artwork to the land the Conestoga would have felt intrinsically connected to, and creates a deep and resounding tone for the book, at least in my opinion.
This work is a shining example of how graphic novels can be utilized as a medium for accurate and empathetic historical retellings, while also transcending the medium itself. Half the book is actually made up of notes from the creators and researchers, alongside scans of primary sources they worked from and lesson plans educators can use through a series of classes. If you would like to learn even more, recommendations for further reading are also included alongside links to digital archives of the materials used for research. I feel very privileged to exist in a time in history where I was able to read and absorb this book and appreciate the resilience of the Conestoga hundreds of years after their story was wrongfully believed to have ended. Seeing the amount of work, and the methods, of researching accurate and fair records for the book was also very rewarding for me, since the value of libraries and archives are something I'm working towards being a part of myself. I highly recommend this graphic novel to other readers, but please mind the content warnings below.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Child death, Confinement, Colonisation, Death, Grief, Hate crime, Murder, Racism, and Violence
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