by Felix Cheong War memoirs usually announce their scars, complete with bandaged words that barely conceal old wounds. Elisa Macellari’s Papaya Salad does something quieter, and perhaps more effectively. Her debut graphic biography retells the picaresque life of Sompong, her Thai great-uncle. When the young Macellari meets him at a family gathering, he regales her with his rags-to-rattled story—one so dramatic that it could only be true. Born to a humble family, Sompong applies for and lands a Thai military scholarship. But before he can be sent abroad to a military academy in Berlin, World War II breaks out,… Read More
The Black Schooner: Rebellion on the Amistad
by Victoria James The Black Schooner: Rebellion on the Amistad, by David Lester and Marcus Rediker with an Afterword by Paul Buhle, is a striking graphic retelling of a significant moment of collective resistance in the history of the transatlantic slave trade. Adapted from Rediker’s historical study The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom, this graphic novel brings the 1839 uprising into vivid focus, restoring the fifty‑three enslaved African people onboard La Amistad to the center of their own narrative. By situating the graphic novel within a “history-from-below” (p. 117, Afterword) framework, the authors successfully challenge the… Read More