Wake : the hidden history of women-led slave revolts / Rebecca Hall ; illustrated by Hugo Martínez ; lettered by Sarula Bao.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York, NY : Simon & Schuster, 2021Copyright date: ©2021Edition: First Simon & Schuster hardcover editionDescription: 1 volume (unpaged) : chiefly illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cmContent type: - text
- still image
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781982115180
- 1982115181
- 9781982115197
- 198211519X
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
YA Book
|
Dr. James Carlson Library | YA Graphic Novel | HALL, REBECCA | Available | 33111010585210 | ||||
|
YA Book
|
Main Library | YA Graphic Novel | HALL, REBECCA | Available | 33111010526859 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and The Washington Post
Part graphic novel, part memoir, Wake is an imaginative tour-de-force that tells the "powerful" ( The New York Times Book Review ) story of women-led slave revolts and chronicles scholar Rebecca Hall's efforts to uncover the truth about these women warriors who, until now, have been left out of the historical record.
Women warriors planned and led revolts on slave ships during the Middle Passage. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas. And then they were erased from history.
Wake tells the "riveting" (Angela Y. Davis) story of Dr. Rebecca Hall, a historian, granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy of slavery. The accepted history of slave revolts has always told her that enslaved women took a back seat. But Rebecca decides to look deeper, and her journey takes her through old court records, slave ship captain's logs, crumbling correspondence, and even the forensic evidence from the bones of enslaved women from the "negro burying ground" uncovered in Manhattan. She finds women warriors everywhere.
Using a "remarkable blend of passion and fact, action and reflection" (NPR), Rebecca constructs the likely pasts of Adono and Alele, women rebels who fought for freedom during the Middle Passage, as well as the stories of women who led slave revolts in Colonial New York. We also follow Rebecca's own story as the legacy of slavery shapes her life, both during her time as a successful attorney and later as a historian seeking the past that haunts her.
Illustrated beautifully in black and white, Wake will take its place alongside classics of the graphic novel genre, like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Art Spiegelman's Maus . This story of a personal and national legacy is a powerful reminder that while the past is gone, we still live in its wake.
Includes bibliographical references.
Written "for my grandmother Harriet Thorpe Hall (1860-1927), for all the women who fought slavery, and for all of us living in its afterlife."-- Acknowledgments, Rebecca Hall.
"An historical and imaginative tour-de-force, WAKE brings to light for the first time the existence of enslaved black women warriors, whose stories can be traced by carefully scrutinizing historical records; and where the historical record goes silent, WAKE reconstructs the likely past of two female rebels, Adono and Alele, on the slave ship The Unity. WAKE is a graphic novel that offers invaluable insight into the struggle to survive whole as a black woman in today's America; it is a historiography that illuminates both the challenges and the necessity of uncovering the true stories of slavery; and it is an overdue reckoning with slavery in New York City where two of these armed revolts took place. It is, also, a transformative and transporting work of imaginative fiction, bringing to three-dimensional life Adono and Alele and their pasts as women warriors. In so doing, WAKE illustrates the humanity of the enslaved, the reality of their lived experiences, and the complexity of the history that has been, till now, so thoroughly erased"-- Provided by publisher.