I received an excerpt of this graphic nonfiction in exchange for an honest review.

In this adaption of Ibram X. Kendi’s National Book Award winning book of the same name, Kendi takes you on a journey of racist ideas in America through the lens of five figures: Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Angela Davis. While the excerpt ends part way into the section on Jefferson, I was immediately drawn into this format and will definitely be ordering and reading the whole work upon its release in June.

The art by Joel Christian Gill is striking and really fits the tone of the book and I loved the cheeky commentary throughout. The introduction provides a good base for what the rest of the book will entail with its comic strip style white teacher working to “improve” an underperforming low-income/inner city school. Kendi then lays the groundwork for how cyclical conversations around race are. There’s a really poignant full page drawing that has Uncle Sam holding a Rube Goldberg machine of the move towards racial equality, highlighting the pushback that each advance has received. Throughout what I was able to read of this work there are so many more examples of fantastic integration between art and text.

I love this move into putting nonfiction in graphic formats, and truly look forward to the release of this book!