Some 36,000 slave ships had crossed the Atlantic Ocean in over four hundred years, with a revolt happening on 1 in 10 of these voyages. What did the ones fighting back have in common? “The more women on board a slave ship, the more likely a revolt would occur,” Rebecca Hall writes.

In her partial memoir mixed with reconstructed events based on her scholarly knowledge, Hall takes readers along on an illustrated journey of a historian trying to discover the truth behind women-led slave revolts. Existing evidence omits the role women had in fighting back during slavery, and some companies are not eager to change that. Hall has been on a quest to discover the truth, ending up finding women warriors everywhere, including her grandmother.

While the book may not have all the answers (and actually thanks to that), Wake delivers an important lesson about why it is so difficult for historians to trace historical events—especially the ones involving slaves, especially the ones involving women.

Oftentimes with only a few words to a page, Hugo Martínez’s illustrations speak volumes. Maybe the choice of font was not the luckiest for it’s not easy to quickly decipher, but if anything, it makes you slow down and read more carefully. There is power in the black-and-white finish. At first glance, it is sometimes difficult to divide between illustrations from the present and the past where both collide in a single graphic, but it emphasizes the truth that we are still not completely free of the past (whether that was intentional or not).

The idea to devise Wake as a graphic novel is phenomenal. Reducing word count turns every sentence central, with no unnecessary descriptions and storylines. It makes both history and the historian’s story easily digestible and vivid, engaging readers who may not otherwise reach for a historical book or a scholarly article while also attracting those who may not be graphic-novel fans otherwise (like me).

In a very easily digestible format, Hall shows us how much we still don’t know while she showed up to change that.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
ARC | NetGalley | Simon & Schuster