Alexis Dudden

I'm getting more than a little tired of graphic novels produced by people who really don't understand graphic novels.

While the topic of this history is quite fascinating, the execution as a comic is lifeless and dreary as giant blocks of text are piled around illustrations that make use of sequential art exactly once and word balloons twice.

Even worse, the twenty-page comic is overwhelmed by the twenty-five pages of three academic essays that follow. (And, hey, there is a reason that traditional comic book letter pages were broken into two or three columns; it's hard to follow lines of small text back and forth across a page that is one to three inches wider than a traditional hardcover or paperback book.) Ten minutes of comic, an hour of textbook.

Again, the topic is deserving of wider attention. The end of the transatlantic slave trade in the 19th century was offset by a rise in the trafficking of indentured Chinese people across the Pacific. Occasionally, the "cargo" rebelled against their fate and rose up against the crew, as in the case of the ship Robert Bowne vaguely recounted here in comic form and in more satisfying detail in the first essay.

The second essay is a boring reflection on how a teaching module about Asian indenture went over with some eighth graders one time. The curriculum sounds way more interesting than this report on it.

The third essay strays a little from topic as it talks about the influence the Chinese immigrants had on jazz music in Louisiana and the development of the drum set. Some of the conclusions seem a bit tenuous at times based on the minimal evidence presented, but it's nice to think about some productive cross-cultural seeding.

For an example of how to better use the power of graphic novels to enliven a similar topic, I recommend reading the excellent Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents:
• The Cargo Rebellion / Jason Oliver Chang, Benjamin Barson, and Alexis Dudden, writers; Kim Inthavong, illustrator
• Intermission
• The Robert Bowne Mutiny / Alexis Dudden, writer
• Teaching Asian Indenture / Jason Oliver Chang, writer
• From Plantation Percussion to the Sound of Solidarity / Benjamin Barson, writer… (mehr)