For this year’s Black History Month, we would like to showcase Kyle Baker’s graphic novel, Nat Turner. Focusing on Turner’s rebellion against slavery in Virginia in 1831, it is incredibly well-researched and historically accurate. The only text you’ll find is taken from The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, written by Thomas Ruffin Gray based on Gray’s research and his conversations with Turner before Turner’s trail and subsequent execution. Combined with powerful art, muted in colour, but varied in subtlety, it brings slavery’s horror to the forefront. The story does not shy away from violence, both the violence of the slave-owner and the desperation-fuelled violence of the people trying to escape and free themselves. It is an intense read; brutal, unflinching and fast-paced. It incorporates primary source material and offers an examination of Nat Turner and slavery that is both painful and eye-opening.
Using the direct words from The Confessions, the art does most of the talking in this graphic novel. The subject stands on its own and while it demands more engagement from the reader in order to construct the story, it remains compelling. Check out our library’s copy and find out for yourself.
Beautifully illustrated, this work won the 2006 Glyph Award for Best Artist, Best Cover and Best Story of the Year, as well as the 2006 Eisner Award for Best Limited Series. The book is often used during teaching in Black History Month in the US and is recommended for teaching by the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund (CBLDF). It has been written on extensively in the academic community with articles such as Tim Bruno’s “Nat Turner after 9/11”, Michael A. Chaney’s “Slave Memory without Words” and William Murray’s “Reimagining Terror”. Looking at how Nat Turner and other erased history remains vital, Kyle Baker wrote “Why Not Nat Turner” for Pen America and reaffirms the ongoing need to engage with Slave Narratives.
