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tangleroot_eli's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
(Review of all 3 volumes) These aren't easy books to read, but they're important. Perhaps envisioned as a snapshot of where racism stood in the 40s-60s and how far we've come, right now the series reads like a blueprint for what US citizens of conscience will need to do as the government erodes civil rights for people of pretty much every identity and police and private violence continues to run rampant (and seems to increase every day).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Fire/Fire injury, Racism, Child death, Racial slurs, Murder, and Police brutality
Moderate: Animal death
Minor: Medical content
ehmannky's review
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
5.0
This is by far the best of this trilogy of graphic memoirs, and this is high praise given that I think that the other two are some of the best that the genre has produced. There is so much death and violence and pain in this one, so much suffering, and yet Lewis, his co-author, and illustrator do not frame it as a story of despair, but as a story of hope and triumph over the forces of white supremacy and white liberal complacency that would create such a monstrous system that was and is systemic white supremacy in America. It's an incredibly moving work, and I had to stop multiple times to just let the words and the art sink in. It's so much to take in, and I cannot recommend it enough.
I read the first of this series before much of the social unrest of 2020 occurred, and it struck me now as I finish it just how unfair it is that Lewis never got to rest. That he spent his final years battling the same white supremacists and their ilk that physically beat him as a young man. And how unfair it is that we're creating a world where Black people and their allies continually have to stand up to this. It makes me want to go out and push for a better world, even as it becomes clear that it won't happen within my lifetime. Which is what I hope John Lewis would have wanted.
I read the first of this series before much of the social unrest of 2020 occurred, and it struck me now as I finish it just how unfair it is that Lewis never got to rest. That he spent his final years battling the same white supremacists and their ilk that physically beat him as a young man. And how unfair it is that we're creating a world where Black people and their allies continually have to stand up to this. It makes me want to go out and push for a better world, even as it becomes clear that it won't happen within my lifetime. Which is what I hope John Lewis would have wanted.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Racism, Racial slurs, Police brutality, Physical abuse, Murder, Medical content, Hate crime, Gun violence, Grief, Death, Car accident, and Blood
Minor: Sexism
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