Library Catalog
On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
Wake by
A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and The Washington Post Part graphic novel, part memoir, Wake is an imaginative tour de force that tells the "powerful" (The New York Times Book Review) story of women-led slave revolts and chronicles scholar Rebecca Hall's efforts to uncover the truth about these women warriors who, until now, have been left out of the historical record. Women warriors planned and led revolts on slave ships during the Middle Passage. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas. And then they were erased from history. Wake tells the "riveting" (Angela Y. Davis) story of Dr. Rebecca Hall, a historian, granddaughter of slaves, and a woman haunted by the legacy of slavery. The accepted history of slave revolts has always told her that enslaved women took a back seat. But Rebecca decides to look deeper, and her journey takes her through old court records, slave ship captain's logs, crumbling correspondence, and even the forensic evidence from the bones of enslaved women from the "negro burying ground" uncovered in Manhattan. She finds women warriors everywhere. Using a "remarkable blend of passion and fact, action and reflection" (NPR), Rebecca constructs the likely pasts of Adono and Alele, women rebels who fought for freedom during the Middle Passage, as well as the stories of women who led slave revolts in Colonial New York. We also follow Rebecca's own story as the legacy of slavery shapes her life, both during her time as a successful attorney and later as a historian seeking the past that haunts her. Illustrated beautifully in black and white, Wake will take its place alongside classics of the graphic novel genre, like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Art Spiegelman's Maus. This story of a personal and national legacy is a powerful reminder that while the past is gone, we still live in its wake.
Call Number: PN6727.H2556 W35 2021
Slavery at Sea by Call Number: HT1332 .M87 2016
The Slave Ship by Call Number: HT1322 .R42 2007
Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade by Call Number: G2446.E625 E4 2010 OVERSIZED
Websites
- Slavery and Remembrance : Middle PassageFrom a collaboration between the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Colonial Williamsburg
Streaming Video
- The Black Atlantic (1500-1800): The African Americans—Many Rivers to CrossThis program explores the global experiences that created the African-American people. Beginning a century before the first documented “20-and-odd” slaves who arrived at Jamestown, Virginia, the episode portrays the earliest Africans, slave and free, who arrived on these shores. The transatlantic slave trade soon became a vast empire connecting three continents. Through stories of individuals caught in its web, the episode traces the emergence of plantation slavery in the American South and examines what the late 18th-century era of revolutions—American, French and Haitian—would mean for African Americans and slavery in America. (56 minutes)
Distributed by PBS Distribution.
Online From CCBC Libraries
Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage by Publication Date: 2007
Databases
- Oxford African American Studies Center This link opens in a new window
Articles and scholarly essays, historical newspaper articles, primary sources, and timelines you can use for African American topics.
- U.S. History This link opens in a new window
Articles, essays, and primary sources on the history of the United States. - ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
Articles on any subject. This is a good place to start.
- Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window
Background information on all topics to start your research.
