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nerdese 's review for:
Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts
by Rebecca Hall
3.5/5
This is a well-researched and told story, but I'm not convinced that a graphic novel was the best format to convey the information. Dr. Rebecca Hall seems like an incredible scholar and person, and I'd love to read more of her work, but I think this story may have been more effective if it were a slightly deeper dive into both her memoir aspects and the research she is doing into the women-led slave revolts. Perhaps a nonfiction narrative that follows her to important sites and archives as she tries to piece this together (this is fresh in my mind, having just listened to Clint Smith's How the Word is Passed, which used this format to great effect). I did also come in with the expectation that the book was going to cover documented revolts that may not have gotten their due in historical conversations (an overview of sorts, in the vein of Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists), and while I was quite interested in how deep Dr. Hall had to go to even find documentation of women at all, that history didn't feel totally balanced with her present-day story, and the recreation that has to happen, while not entirely surprising given the available resources, didn't necessarily provide the narrative I was expecting.
While the historical/research aspects of this book did benefit to a certain degree from being illustrated, I wasn't sure that this was a story that HAD to be told in graphic format. It brings an accessibility to it, for sure, but the book was very text/caption-heavy, which to me meant that the illustration wasn't sharing equal weight in the telling of the story. I wasn't a fan of the art/illustrations, but that may just my personal preference. I find this sketchy style harder for my eyes to follow, though I do think it was an effective choice given the subject matter.
It is a fairly quick (though intense) read, so I'd still recommend it for readers looking for an entry-point into stories about the massive global scale of the Atlantic slave trade, and some of the lesser-known stories or impacts of that trade on the lives of enslaved people and their future generations in America.
This is a well-researched and told story, but I'm not convinced that a graphic novel was the best format to convey the information. Dr. Rebecca Hall seems like an incredible scholar and person, and I'd love to read more of her work, but I think this story may have been more effective if it were a slightly deeper dive into both her memoir aspects and the research she is doing into the women-led slave revolts. Perhaps a nonfiction narrative that follows her to important sites and archives as she tries to piece this together (this is fresh in my mind, having just listened to Clint Smith's How the Word is Passed, which used this format to great effect). I did also come in with the expectation that the book was going to cover documented revolts that may not have gotten their due in historical conversations (an overview of sorts, in the vein of Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists), and while I was quite interested in how deep Dr. Hall had to go to even find documentation of women at all, that history didn't feel totally balanced with her present-day story, and the recreation that has to happen, while not entirely surprising given the available resources, didn't necessarily provide the narrative I was expecting.
While the historical/research aspects of this book did benefit to a certain degree from being illustrated, I wasn't sure that this was a story that HAD to be told in graphic format. It brings an accessibility to it, for sure, but the book was very text/caption-heavy, which to me meant that the illustration wasn't sharing equal weight in the telling of the story. I wasn't a fan of the art/illustrations, but that may just my personal preference. I find this sketchy style harder for my eyes to follow, though I do think it was an effective choice given the subject matter.
It is a fairly quick (though intense) read, so I'd still recommend it for readers looking for an entry-point into stories about the massive global scale of the Atlantic slave trade, and some of the lesser-known stories or impacts of that trade on the lives of enslaved people and their future generations in America.