Ignatz and Eisner Award-winning Ben Passmore's scathing Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance rightfully demands attention. With his meta-self as reluctant guide, Passmore graphically presents ideologies, movements, protests, and uprisings ignored and erased from classrooms, curricula, and even collective memory.
Passmore opens with his stand-in watching Philando Castile's killing on his phone. He's interrupted by his beret-wearing, dashiki-garbed father, who insists "you should be out there fighting for liberation too!" Dad arrives laden with two bags filled with "the canon of the Black radical tradition"--Malcolm, Assata, Garvey, and many more. "You're BLACK and I'm gonna make sure you know what that means." Ben's dismissal of Dad's "cocoa butter condescension" earns him a time-traveling head smack back to 1900s Louisiana.
Ben gets caught alongside activist Robert Charles in police crossfire, witnesses the Universal Negro Improvement Association founded by Marcus Garvey, meets Emmett Till's mother, hears Robert E. Williams advocating to "meet violence with violence!!!", and experiences the conflagratory implosion of radicalized MOVE. After ignoring Ben's protests of "Yo DAD, beam me up!" through centuries, Dad reappears to drag Ben into a Republic of New Afrika meeting with Black leaders living and dead.
Passmore predominantly creates in black-and-white, adding splashes of pinks and reds for electrifying emphasis. His illustrations mix detailed realism with simplified, cartoonish line drawings. Lettering variations, particularly onomatopoeic exclamations, affectingly enhance conversations and actions. Passmore impressively harnesses struggles, failures, tragedies, and triumphs, infused with both sarcasm and humor: history, he proves, is never neat. "It's finally time to wake up," Dad insists. He's definitely not addressing Ben alone. --Terry Hong