A narrative of enslavement, a satire on colonialism, and a court battle for justice by those tortured and detained during the fight for independence from colonial rule: three comics depict key moments in African history.
Three unique narratives depicted in comic-book form introduce readers to African historical narratives. In one, readers are offered a translation of a short story, turned into a comic, that satirizes the colonization of Africa by depicting Europeans as cats and Africans as mice. The cats wish to feast on the mice and so create an elaborate ruse by proclaiming that they can turn the inferior mice into cats via education and medication, a ruse that is finally discovered by the mice, who rise up against the cats. In a second, readers are offered a deconstruction of a slave narrative, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano. Several historians weigh in to evaluate the memoirs of Olaudah Equiana and decipher whether his claims are true or false; nevertheless, despite some problematic aspects of his narrative and questions that remain as to its veracity, the effect it had on the abolitionist movement is without question. And finally, the third comic details how ordinary Kenyans who had been tortured and abused by the British government during the Kenyan fight for independent from colonial rule were able to obtain justice, decades later, from a British court of law.
Trevor R. Getz is a Professor of African and World History at San Francisco State University. He is the author or co-author of eleven volumes, including Abina and the Important Men, which won the 2014 James Harvey Robinson Prize. Trevor has also written and produced a number of documentaries and historical films which have garnered festival prizes, and has held Visiting Professorships at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. He is the recipient of the American Historical Association's 2020 Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award.
Audra A. Diptée is a history professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. She's a historian, author, and educator who studies the ways in which historical thinking can advance social justice issues today. Her research focuses on the Caribbean and Africa.
Liz Clarke lives in Cape Town, where she works as an illustrator. She has contributed to the genre of graphic history internationally, and her work is featured in nine books published by Oxford University Press USA--including Witness to the Age of Revolution (written by Charles F. Walker), which won the Association of American Publishers PROSE Award for Nonfiction Graphic Novels, and Abina and the Important Men (written by Trevor R. Getz), which won the American Historical Association's James Harvey Robinson Prize.
Fanuel Leul is a digital artist who lives and works in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Even though he earned his bachelor's degree in fine arts from Alle School of Fine Arts, he considers himself a self-taught artist. His distinctive personal style emanates joy and peace and expresses the vibrant spirit and atmosphere of the African culture.
Hewan Semon is a junior professor of Ethiopian studies at the Hiob Ludolf Center for Ethiopian and Eritrean Studies at Universität Hamburg. Her works have thus far focused on the cultural history of Addis Ababa. She is also engaged in the translation of fiction and non-fiction works from English to Amharic and vice versa. Her latest translation work is the English-to-Amharic translation of Professor Haggai Erlich's book Haile Selassie: His Rise, His Fall.
