by Roland Owen Laird Jr. With Taneshia Nash Laird
Illustrations by Elihu Bey Forward by Charles Johnson
Q&A WITH ROLAND OWEN LAIRD, JR.
STILL I RISE: A Cartoon History of African Americans [W.W. Norton; October 6, 1997] is the first book to ever tell the vivid history of African Americans in a fully illustrated comic book format. Compelling and irreverent, STILL I RISE is the fruit of Posro Komics, one of America's most exciting independent black publishers. Featured on ABC News, "The Today Show," and "Yo! MTV Raps," Posro is best known for "The Griots," a weekly comic strip that was syndicated to the black press. At its height, the decidedly Afrocentric strip reached more than one million readers a week.
Question:
Still I Rise: A Cartoon History of African Americans looks like a 200-page comic book. Is it just for children?
Roland Owen Laird, Jr.:
Not at all. Actually, as we were writing the book we had adults and teenagers in mind as our target audience.
Question:
You use two narrators, a man and a woman to take the reader through history from the 1600s to the Million Man March. Are the narrators based on any people that you know?
ROL:
Well, my wife Taneshia would like to think that the narrators are loosely based on us, but they're really not based on any individuals in particular. It's just two different voices; they're composites of different folks whose beliefs have been simplified for the purposes of storytelling. The female narrator's voice is uncompromising. She believes that injustices have been perpetrated and continue to be committed against black people. The male narrator is more methodically in his analysis of our history and believes that things are getting better for black people slowly but surely.
Question:
Speaking of your wife, you worked on Still I Rise with her and illustrator Elihu "Adofo" Bey. Was it an easy collaboration?
ROL:
Actually, there were many more people involved and while it was frustrating, looking at the finished product, I think it was worth it. For example, I would request research on a particular topic from Taneshia. Then I would incorporate the information into a script with dialogue and art direction. Two book editors plus National Book-award winning author Charles Johnson [Middle Passage] read the draft, as well as historians Nell Painter at Princeton University and Earl Lewis at the University of Michigan. They were all reading for different things &emdash; tone, coherence, historical accuracy, etc. I submitted drafts to them in chunks, like the first 30 pages, the next 60, and so on. So I would get a pile of reader's comments from each draft and try to satisfy each concern. So the writing process alone took almost a year. All the while I'm thinking, "Is Eli ever going to get to start the artwork?" It was sometimes enough to drive me crazy!
Question:
Getting back to the research. How many sources did you consult?
ROL:
At the end of the book we have a bibliography of over 30 sources. Some are double volume encyclopedias, and all are respected sources of historical scholarship. Every source listed was used to create dialogue, narration, and captions for Still I Rise.
Question:
What are your hopes for Still I Rise?
ROL:
First and foremost, I want readers to come away knowing that black people were an integral part of the building of America. I also hope that people embrace the book as a serious work. Comics are relatively new form of storytelling in American adult literature. My goal as an author and as an independent publisher is to get people who've consider comic books kid's stuff to look at how well suited the format is to tell important stories like history.
About the Authors: Roland Owen Laird, Jr. and Taneshia Nash Laird are the founder and marketing director, respectively, of Posro Komics, a cartoon company in Edison, New Jersey. Elihu Bey is a freelance commercial artist in East Orange, New Jersey, who also drew "The Griots" comic strip and the first issue of Posro's MC Squared comic book. Charles Johnson won a National Book Award for his novel Middle Passage.
# # #
Still I Rise: A Cartoon History of African-Americans by Roland Owen Laird
Jr. with Taneshia Nash Laird. Illustrations by Elihu Bey. Forward by Charles
Johnson. 204 pages. Illustrated throughout. ISBN: 0-393-04538-2. $21.95 cloth.
$15.95 paper. Publication: October 6,
1997.
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Last Updated on August 10, 1997 by Posro Media