Back in 2021 Dr. Rebecca Hall, alongside illustrator Hugo Martinez, won that year’s Broken Frontier Award for Best Graphic Non-Fiction for Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts. It’s an astonishing piece of comics work of which I said at the time: “Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts is an essential piece of graphic history/journalism that brings untold tales to the page while giving due recognition to the lives and agency of the Black women it spotlights. This is an outstanding example of the potency of comics in communicating socio-political history with accessibility and clarity, and a book fully deserving of the critical acclaim it has garnered.” You can read my review of the book here at BF.
Now Hall has announced a major follow-up project: Wake Productions, an AfroFuturist Education Project Based in the Black Radical Tradition, currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter. Hall describes Wake Productions as “…work [that] is more than storytelling, it’s resistance. At a time when US Department of Education is actively attacking education to distort truth and erase historical memory, Wake Productions stands as a counterforce. Every project we produce will be peer-reviewed, historically accurate, and deeply grounded in scholarship, ensuring integrity while remaining accessible and engaging. Through zines, educational media, and partnerships with scholars and filmmakers, Wake Productions will create work that both preserves history and sparks imagination for the future.”
Sample from Rebecca Hall’s upcoming book Conjure: Black Women Ending Slavery
There’s lots more information about Wake Productions, its aims and objectives on that Kickstarter page. including planned comics and zines, and work in the education sector. This is exactly the kind of initiative we should be lending whatever support we can to in these harrowing of times as the rise of fascism looks to rewrite history and overturn decades of DEI progress. Don’t forget that you can back the Kickstarter here.
