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A History of Black Resistance (Pantheon Graphic Library)
by Ben Passmore
From the Ignatz and Eisner Award-winning cartoonist Ben Passmore comes a whirlwind graphic history of Black life, taken by force.
It's the summer of 2020, and downtown Philly is up in flames. "You're not out in the streets with everyone else?" Ronnie asks his ambivalent son, Ben, shambling in with arms full of used books: the works of Malcom X, Robert F. Williams, Assata and Sanyika Shakur, among others. "Black liberation is your fight, too."
So begins Black Arms to Hold You Up, a boisterous, darkly funny, and sobering march through Black militant history by political cartoonist Ben Passmore. From Robert Charles's shootout with the police in 1900, to the Black Power movement in the 1960s, to the Los Angeles and George Floyd uprisings of the 1990s and 2020, readers will tumble through more than a century of armed resistance against the racist state alongside Ben—and meet firsthand the mothers and fathers of the movement, whose stories were as tragic as they were heroic.
What, after so many decades lost to state violence, is there left to fight for? Deeply researched, vibrantly drawn, and bracingly introspective, Black Arms to Hold You Up dares to find the answer.
"A mordant and highly original graphic novel that has readers reconsider Black resistance." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The cartoonish art has a daring quality that leavens the text's treatment of more heady topics. Passmore's sharp humor and refusal to blindly parrot any prescribed narrative make for a necessary reckoning." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Passmore's wildly expressive visual storytelling makes every page bristle with urgency, perfectly matched to his narrative voice as he mixes careful research, biting humor, and an interrogation of generational struggle and personal responsibility...This is an essential work of uncompromisingly political graphic nonfiction that is provocative, funny, devastating, and rich with historical insight." —Library Journal (starred review)
"Ben Passmore has entered a realm where personal creative brilliance intersects the historically profound, and in doing so he's created a masterpiece." —David F. Walker, author of The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History
"Black Arms To Hold You Up stays with you long after reading it. Ben Passmore's mastery of the comics medium is evident in every panel of this journey through Black history, struggle, and resistance—made all the more compelling by his personal lens. This book is necessary at this particular moment in history, and it powerfully makes the case for its relevance in any moment in history." —Marcus Kwame Anderson, illustrator of The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History
This information about Black Arms to Hold You Up was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ben Passmore is the author of the ongoing comic book series Daygloayhole, as well as the Eisner Award-nominated and Ignatz Award-winning comic collection Your Black Friend. He also wrote and illustrated Sports Is Hell (Koyama Press), collaborated with Ezra Claytan Daniels on BTTM FDRS (Fantagraphics), and contributes to publications such as The Nib and the New York Times. He lives in Philadelphia.
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