An excellent tool in connecting with audiences in a historical manner. The telling of the story was a tad heavy-handed, but the other parts to the story, such as the historians' discussion and layers of intent, more than made up for it.

This graphic history is an adaptation of a court transcript of a girl who took her slave owner to court in 1876 West Africa. She lost the case, but her story remained in that transcript until historian Trevor R. Getz teamed up with artist Liz Clarke to recreated Abina's life in this non-fiction graphic novel. I really enjoyed this book, especially with the historical context explained in the back. I don't read that many graphic novels, and I love how this book attempts to combine the lightness of a graphic novel with the complexity of history. I highly recommend this book if you're curious to learn more about African history but don't want to start with a big, scary textbook.

Read this for class, didn't love it. It's a very creative take on history which is cool and all, but it was hard not to be critical of.

Bought this in the hope that I could use it with high school students, and after reading, have decided against it for now. While interesting for me, it's just not emotionally compelling enough for them.

I really loved the way that this text was divided up to give reader access not just to the story, but to the documents, the historical context, and to a look at how to teach this book. This is the kind of publicly accessible, digestible, interesting, history from the bottom up that I'm here for!

Good book for historical context-- tells an typically unheard story and promotes discussion on European imperialism/colonialism & its effects on native civilizations to current African nations. Highly recommend, even though author & artist took a lot of license with the graphic novel portion (although this section really humanizes the people involved).

**Read this for Survey of World History (Honors)

Extraordinary GN published by Oxford UP. 1-79, GN; 81-179 explanation and analysis. Presentation primary and secondary sources, as well as consideration of a 'staircase of voices,' including attention to silences, as well as representation and translation. Glossary, maps, consideration of truth.

Michel-Rolph Trouillot's Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History useful to read with the book. (PDF first chapter at ResearchGate.)

Such a wonderful book. Would be excellent summer reading.