An Illustration is Worth a Thousand Words

Expand your reading of American history with these visually powerful graphic novel memoirs, biographies and historical fiction.

Then celebrate Black History Month at Arlington’s 23rd annual Feel the Heritage Festival on Saturday, February 28, 2015 from 1-6 p.m. at Drew Community Center. 

 

Harlem Hellfighters
by Max Brooks, illustrated by Caanan White

A fictionalized account of the 369th Infantry Regiment, the first African American regiment mustered to fight in World War I, who spent more time in combat than any other American unit – but have never received their due. Intense black-and-white illustrations throughout.

 

 

 

Incognegro
by Mat Johnson, illustrated by Warren Pleece

Inspired by the real-life Walter White, who passed as white in the Deep South to sleuth out lynchings in the 1930s. The fictional Zane Pinchback writes a Harlem “Incognegro” column that similarly exposes racist atrocities. He is about to trade his column for an editor job when he hears that his brother has been set up for murder in Tupelo, so he heads south one last time for an investigative gig too close for comfort.

 

 

I See the Promised Land
text by Arthur Flowers, illustrations by Manu Chitrakar, design by Guglielmo Rossi

African American writer, griot and blues singer Arthur Flowers tells a masterful story in musical prose, while Manu Chitrakar, scroll-painter from Bengal, carries the tale confidently into the vivid idiom of Patua art, turning King’s journey into a truly universal legacy.

 

 

Bayou
created by Jeremy Love, colors by Patrick Morgan

Lee Wagstaff is the daughter of a black sharecropper in the depression-era town of Charon, Mississippi. When Lily Westmoreland, her white playmate, is snatched by agents of an evil creature known as Bog, Lee’s father is accused of kidnapping. Lee’s only hope to save her father from lynching is to follow Lily’s trail into this fantastic and frightening alternate world.

 

 

The Silence of Our Friends
by Mark Long and Jim Demonakos, illustrations by Nate Powell

The story unfolds from two sets of eyes, those of a white TV reporter (Long’s father) and a black demonstration leader. Deciding that “men of conscience have got to join together,” the two forge a friendship that crosses the color line, is not looked upon favorably by either of their communities, and gets tested when a demonstration involving Stokely Carmichael’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee turns ugly.

 

 

 

Bluesman
by Rob Vollmar & Pablo C. Callejo

One of America’s most celebrated creations, the blues grew out of an African-American experience rife with poverty and oppression. This “twelve bar graphic narrative in the key of life and death” tells a true story of the blues through the fictional Lem Taylor and Ironwood Malcott, a pair of early 20th-century bluesmen wandering Arkansas’ cornfields in search of backwoods juke joints, pliant women and their next meal.

 

 

 

March
by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, art by Nate Powell

A vivid first-hand account of Congressman John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, this trilogy paints a devastating picture of America in the 1960s, taking to task those who attacked peaceful protestors, and politicians who were desperate to maintain segregation. Volume 3 is not yet published.