Strange fruit

A brightly coloured collection of short biographies, the tone of this first volume of Strange Fruit is very optimistic and strong. Not flinching away from the (to put it lightly) hardships of black history in America this is a very celebratory book. Certainly not more important or better then any book about black history that leaves me with my blood boiling but a fine addition, it would seem to me, to the spectrum of comics on the black diaspora - especially the lesser known parts of it.

Within 172 pages Gill covers the stories of Henry "Box" Brown, Hary "Bucky" Lew, Richard Potter, Theophilus Thompson, Benjamin Darling, the Noyes Academy, Marshall "Major" Taylor, Spottswood Rice, and Bass Reeves. Covering everything from the eviction of a biracial community from Maine to the exploits of a little known chess master. From a magician to a professional bicyclist and not least of all the real person behind the lone ranger (although his indigenous peers still get the short end of the stick).

Comparing this to other nonfiction books I've read and reviewed the fact that this book includes a bibliography for further reading is awesome, that said this book does suffer a bit for being so focused almost exclusively on the cis straight black male perspective - or at least as far as I can tell, if anyone fell outside of that mold it was not highlighted. Looking over the description for volume two it appears as if there will be at least more of a balance between cis male and females, but I can't yet tell if there will be any none cis, none binary or none hetero individuals highlighted.

Moving back to at least the more positive side I did feel like the depiction of some of the poorer characters was pretty decent, for a book that wasn't focused on working class and/or anti-capitalist struggle. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, there was an outbreak of what might be called lateral violence in the final story. Obviously as a settler who has learned mostly about the indigenous experience in the north eastern portion of Turtle Island I don't get to say what is horrible representation of western indigenous culture or not, that said I am very suspicious of the way in which the indigenous characters were represented and looking through that part of the bibliography was cold comfort. To conclude I would highly recommend that you check out my good reads list of indigenous own voices comic books - it's a booming genre right now with new stuff coming out all the time!

Focusing in on the art of the book, Gills' style was a big part of how light the stories themselves ended up feeling. Rich in colour and expressive character designs, the variety of easy to follow page layouts kept the book moving at an optimistic clip. The use of more fantastic imagry is limited to the few times Jim Crow shows up as a crow, and while I would find it interesting if there was a bit more of this imaginative reframing the restraint did serve to highlight it more.

As far as Joel Christian Gill himself, they are in fact a black man, who apparently likes dogs more then cats and teaches at New Hampshire Institute of Art. They've also written stand alone biographies of Bessie Stringfield, Bass Reeves, and Bessie Stringfields - and contributed to an anthology entitled Colonial Comics: New England 1620 - 1750.

As I noted in the beginning this is a general audience book. There is some cursive that may prove difficult to read, but as I mentioned the stories (vignettes really) are all relatively short, engaging and to the point. Despite its somewhat chilling title nothing to really merit anything beyond maybe a PG rating.

And that's all she wrote. Look in the description for links to some of the articles I used to write this script, not to mention all the reviews already up on goodreads - to which I almost always owe a debt of gratitude. Have fun, fight facism and read on!

https://www.bu.edu/today/2015/african-american-comics/
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/14/384947485/strange-fruit-shares-uncelebrated-quintessentially-american-stories