W. E. B. Du Bois Souls of Black Folk: A Graphic Interpretation

by W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963), Paul Peart-Smith, Paul Buhle (Editor), Herb Boyd (Editor), Jonathan Scott Holloway (Introduction)

Overview

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” These were the prescient words of W. E. B. Du Bois’s influential 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk. The preeminent Black intellectual of his generation, Du Bois wrote about the trauma of seeing the Reconstruction era’s promise of racial equality cruelly dashed by the rise of white supremacist terror and Jim Crow laws. Yet he also argued for the value of African American cultural traditions and provided inspiration for countless civil rights leaders who followed him. Now artist Paul Peart-Smith offers the first graphic adaptation of Du Bois’s seminal work.
 
Peart-Smith’s graphic adaptation provides historical and cultural contexts that bring to life the world behind Du Bois’s words. Readers will get a deeper understanding of the cultural debates The Souls of Black Folk engaged in, with more background on figures like Booker T. Washington, the advocate of black economic uplift, and the Pan-Africanist minister Alexander Crummell. This beautifully illustrated book vividly conveys the continuing legacy of The Souls of Black Folk, effectively updating it for the era of the 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978824669
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	04/14/2023
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.30(d)
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

PAUL PEART-SMITH, an artist of Afro-Caribbean and British background, has been working in the comics industry since the early 1990s, when he worked on Judge Dredd. Co-curator of the comics exhibition Black Power, he now lives in Tasmania. 
 
PAUL BUHLE has been a key creative force in the development of comics for more than fifty years, publishing one of the first alternative comics, as well as editing graphic novels on subjects ranging from the Wobblies to Che Guevara. He is the coeditor of Ballad of an American: A Graphic Biography of Paul Robeson (Rutgers University Press). 

HERB BOYD is a veteran journalist of African American life and culture, working frequently with artists. 

JONATHAN SCOTT HOLLOWAY is the twenty-first president of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He is the author of The Cause of Freedom: A Concise History of African Americans. 

Table of Contents

Introduction by Jonathan Scott Holloway
I Of Our Spiritual Strivings 
II Of the Dawn of Freedom 
III Of Booker T. Washington 
IV Of the Meaning of Progress
V Of the Training of Black Folk 
VI Of the Passing of the First-Born
VII Of Alexander Crummell 
VIII Of the Coming of John 
IX Of the Sorrow Songs 
Afterword 
Acknowledgments
Further Reading
Notes on Contributors

What People are Saying About This

author of Laika - Nick Abadzis

"An incredible achievement. This work makes Du Bois accessible in whole new ways and does so with great pathos and sensitivity. I don’t know how you can read this book and not be moved and outraged. Outraged, because it’s all still so relevant. That I have to type that gives me a vertiginous feeling, but it’s true, and in that sense, it’s incredibly timely."

Editorial Reviews

In this wonderfully innovative collaboration of image and text, Buhle, Boyd, and Peart-Smith present a graphic W.E.B. Du Bois whose immemorial words are so brilliantly visualized that Souls will speak to generations to come. Buhle, Boyd, and Peart-Smith's offering is superb.”
 

Pulitzer Prize recipient for W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 - David Levering Lewis

"[A] masterpiece...Peart-Smith’s work in this text expresses the pain, frustration and the joy DuBois’ text is known for. The art is both realistic and dreamlike....This retelling of The Souls of Black Folk deserves a place among the pantheon of great graphic texts like Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Alan Moore’s The Watchmen." 

CounterPunch - Ron Jacobs

"[A] masterful graphic adaptation and edited interpretation...[I]n their stylistic and artistic representation of Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk, Peart-Smith, Buhle, and Boyd provide the public and the world of academia with a stellar presentation and remembrance of Du Bois’s pungent polemic and profound prophecy."

Portside - Patrick Delices

04/24/2023

“Hear my cry, O God the reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not stillborn into the world wilderness,” cries visionary scholar Du Bois (1868–1963) in lament. Cartoonist Peart-Smith (Horrible Histories) answers with an uneven nine-chapter graphic adaptation of Du Bois’s influential literary text. In “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” undefined faces haunt Du Bois’s recollection of his boyhood and the “problem of the color line.” In “Of the Meaning of Progress,” sepia-lacquered scenes of barefoot schoolchildren and farm labor underscore the tension between opportunity and strife for post-Reconstruction-era Black Americans. The lithograph-like drawings, awash in earth tones, while reflective of painful circumstances, also suffer from muddied details and literal thematic translations that inconsistently elevate the original text. “Of the Coming of John” benefits most from the vivid retelling of John Jones, a young Black boy who leaves southeastern Georgia for a better education up north and returns an embittered man. The art amplifies the horror of John’s tragic life—wide eyes and gritted teeth denote terror and pain. More detailed linework is employed for historical figures, such as Booker T. Washington. With varying degrees of success, this adaptation enlivens while condensing an important historical work, which, while not quite expanding on the original, will make its dense arguments accessible for a new generations. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"An incredible achievement. This work makes Du Bois accessible in whole new ways and does so with great pathos and sensitivity. I don’t know how you can read this book and not be moved and outraged. Outraged, because it’s all still so relevant. That I have to type that gives me a vertiginous feeling, but it’s true, and in that sense, it’s incredibly timely."

author of Laika - Nick Abadzis