LibGuides: CIA Library Displays: Black History Month and Graphic Narratives (2024)

Hip Hop Family Tree (collected volumes) by Ed Piskor

The lore of the early days of hip hop has become the stuff of myth, so what better way to document this fascinating, epic true story than in another great American mythological medium -- the comic book? From exciting young talent and self-proclaimed hip hop nerd Ed Piskor, acclaimed for his hacker graphic novel Wizzywig, comes this explosively entertaining, encyclopedic history of the formative years of the music genre that changed global culture. Originally serialized on the hugely popular website Boing Boing, The Hip Hop Family Tree is now collected in a single volume cleverly presented and packaged in a style mimicking the Marvel comics of the same era. Piskor's exuberant yet controlled cartooning takes you from the parks and rec rooms of the South Bronx to the night clubs, recording studios, and radio stations where the scene started to boom, capturing the flavor of late-1970s New York City in panels bursting with obsessively authentic detail. With a painstaking, vigorous and engaging Ken Burns meets- Stan Lee approach, the battles and rivalries, the technical innovations, the triumphs and failures are all thoroughly researched and lovingly depicted.nbsp; plus the charismatic players behind the scenes like Russell Simmons, Sylvia Robinson and then-punker Rick Rubin. Piskor also traces graffiti master Fab 5 Freddy's rise in the art world, and Debbie Harry, Keith Haring, The Clash, and other luminaries make cameos as the music and culture begin to penetrate downtown Manhattan and the mainstream at large. Like the acclaimed hip hop documentaries Style Wars and Scratch, The Hip Hop Family Tree is an exciting and essential cultural chronicle and a must for hip hop fans, pop-culture addicts, and anyone who wants to know how it went down back in the day.

Call Number: eBook (Comics Plus)

ISBN: 9781683966029

Publication Date: 2013-12-06

Hot Comb by Ebony Flowers

Appeared on best of the year lists from The Washington Post, NPR, The Guardian, and more! Nominated for an NAACP Image Award and Winner of the Believer Book Award for Fiction! Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into Black women's lives and coming-of-age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn. The titular "Hot Comb" is about a young girl's first perm--a doomed ploy to look cool and stop seeming "too white" in the all-Black neighborhood her family has just moved into. In "Virgin Hair," taunts of "tender-headed" sting as much as the perm itself. "My Lil Sister Lena" shows the stress of being the only Black player on a white softball team. Lena's hair is the team curio, an object to be touched, a subject to be discussed and debated at the will of her teammates, leading Lena to develop an anxiety disorder of pulling her own hair out. Throughout Hot Comb, Ebony Flowers re-creates classic magazine ads idealizing women's need for hair relaxers and products. "Change your hair form to fit your life form" and "Kinks and Koils Forever" call customers from the page. Realizations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through these stories and ads, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking. Flowers began drawing comics while earning her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction, and her early mastery of sequential storytelling is nothing short of sublime. Hot Comb is a propitious display of talent from a new cartoonist who has already made her mark.

Call Number: CIArt Graphic Novels CT105 .F42 2019

ISBN: 9781770463486

Publication Date: 2019-06-18

Kindred: a Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia E. Butler; John Jennings (Illustrator); Damian Duffy (Adapted by); Nnedi Okorafor (Introduction by)

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller Octavia E. Butler's bestselling literary science-fiction masterpiece, Kindred, now in graphic novel format. More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day. Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler's mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century. Butler's most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre-Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana's own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him. Held up as an essential work in feminist, science-fiction, and fantasy genres, and a cornerstone of the Afrofuturism movement, there are over 500,000 copies of Kindred in print. The intersectionality of race, history, and the treatment of women addressed within the original work remain critical topics in contemporary dialogue, both in the classroom and in the public sphere. Frightening, compelling, and richly imagined, Kindred offers an unflinching look at our complicated social history, transformed by the graphic novel format into a visually stunning work for a new generation of readers.

Call Number: CIArt Graphic Novels PN6727.D836 K56 2017

ISBN: 9781419709470

Publication Date: 2017-01-10

King: the Complete Edition by Ho Che Anderson; Stanley Crouch (Introduction by)

This groundbreaking body of comics journalism collects Anderson's entire biography of the renowned civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Over a decade in the making, the saga has been praised for its vivid recreation of one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history and for its accuracy in depicting the personal and public lives of King, from his birth to his assassination. King probes the life story of one of America's greatest public figures with an unflinchingly critical eye, casting King as an ambitious, dichotomous figure deserving of his place in history but not above moral sacrifice to get there. Anderson's expressionistic visual style is wrought with dramatic energy; panels evoke a painterly attention to detail but juxtapose with one another in such a way as to propel King's story with cinematic momentum. Anderson's successful use of the graphic novel to tell a major work of nonfiction has drawn favorable comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Joe Sacco's Palestine, and Osamu Tezuka's Adolph. King not only recreates the major events in King's public life, but chronicles the daily, rough-and-tumble, behind-the-scenes political maneuverings and strategic compromises that were required to mobilize millions of people toward a common goal. His internal debates with Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson and his hardball negotiations with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson are dramatized. Anderson's achievement is not merely a political biography filled with names and dates, but a fully rounded portrait of a fallible human engaged in a superhuman effort his fears, his doubts, his relationship with his wife Coretta King, and his children are compassionately and truthfully rendered. Anderson's visual approach includes the use of photographs, realistic portraiture, and expressionistic imagery alternating between stark black and white chiaroscuro and painterly full color. The dialogue is unflinchingly naturalistic and accurately reflects the moral urgency and labyrinthine political and practical complexities that King was navigating, from his deeply felt, personal commitment to a public cause to the wider political eruptions the country was experiencing. This is a respectful, unsparing, truthful biography of a man and his times that captures the moral and political gravitas of the cause as well as its human dimension. A major work of comics, depicting a major work of history.

Call Number: eBook (Comics Plus)

ISBN: 9781683966166

Publication Date: 2005-02-17

Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson; Elizabeth Catlett (Illustrator)

Written by civil rights leader and poet James Weldon Johnson in 1899, "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" is sung in schools and churches throughout America. The popular, timeless song is recognized as a testimonial to the struggle and achievements of African-American people past, present, and future.

Call Number: PZ8.3.J6334 Li 1993

ISBN: 9780802782502

Publication Date: 1993-02-01

Run by John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; L. Fury (Illustrator); Nate Powell (Illustrator)

First you march, then you run. From the #1 bestselling, award-winning team behind March comes the first book in their new, groundbreaking graphic novel series, Run: Book One "Run recounts the lost history of what too often follows dramatic change-the pushback of those who refuse it and the resistance of those who believe change has not gone far enough. John Lewis's story has always been a complicated narrative of bravery, loss, and redemption, and Run gives vivid, energetic voice to a chapter of transformation in his young, already extraordinary life." -Stacey Abrams "In sharing my story, it is my hope that a new generation will be inspired by Run to actively participate in the democratic process and help build a more perfect Union here in America." -Congressman John Lewis The sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel series March-the continuation of the life story of John Lewis and the struggles seen across the United States after the Selma voting rights campaign. To John Lewis, the civil rights movement came to an end with the signing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. But that was after more than five years as one of the preeminent figures of the movement, leading sit-in protests and fighting segregation on interstate busways as an original Freedom Rider. It was after becoming chairman of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and being the youngest speaker at the March on Washington. It was after helping organize the Mississippi Freedom Summer and the ensuing delegate challenge at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. And after coleading the march from Selma to Montgomery on what became known as "Bloody Sunday." All too often, the depiction of history ends with a great victory. But John Lewis knew that victories are just the beginning. In Run: Book One, John Lewis and longtime collaborator Andrew Aydin reteam with Nate Powell-the award-winning illustrator of the March trilogy-and are joined by L. Fury-making an astonishing graphic novel debut-to tell this often overlooked chapter of civil rights history.

Call Number: CIArt Graphic Novels CT105 .L49 2021

ISBN: 9781419730696

Publication Date: 2021-08-03