Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts
- ISBN-10
- 1982115203
- ISBN-13
- 9781982115203
- Series
- Wake
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 208
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-06-01
- Publisher
- Simon and Schuster
- Author
- Rebecca Hall
Description
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.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2022-06-21
- 224 pages
- Paperback
- Simon and Schuster
Similar books
-
The Wake: A Novel
By Paul KingsnorthIn The Wake, a postapocalyptic novel set a thousand years in the past, Paul Kingsnorth brings this dire scenario back to us through the eyes of the unforgettable Buccmaster, a proud landowner bearing witness to the end of his world.
-
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
By Christina SharpeIn this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake.
-
Finnegans Wake
By James JoyceIn Chapelizod, a suburb of Dublin, an innkeeper and his family are sleeping.
-
Sometimes I Wake Up in the Middle of the Night: A Collection of Scenes and Monologues in Two Acts
Sometimes I Wake Up in the Middle of the Night: A Collection of Scenes and Monologues in Two Acts
-
Wake Up, Stupid
By Mark HarrisOriginally written in 1959, this is the hilariously explosive account of Youngdahl, a novelist, playwright, ex-Mormon, and father of seven.
-
Alan Wake
By Rick BurroughsWelcome to Bright Falls-a seemingly idyllic small town in the Pacific Northwest. The perfect place for Alan Wake, a bestselling crime novelist, and his wife, Alice, to relax for a few weeks.
-
In Her Wake
By Amanda JenningsChilling, complex and profoundly moving, In Her Wake is a gripping psychological thriller that questions the nature of family – and reminds us that sometimes the most shocking crimes are committed closest to home. ...
-
Sleepers, Wake
By Paul Samuel JacobsDody, a space pioneer of the future, wakes long before anyone else during his ship's journey and grows old while his family continues to sleep.
-
Wake Up!
By Helen FrostSimple poetic language and close-up photographs invite readers to explore all the baby animals who are born during spring.
-
WAKE: A Novel
By Shelley Burr"Politically savvy, cleverly plotted...the kind of book that invites the ravenous language of binge reading: compulsive, propulsive, addictive.