As the author of a graphic history, I loved chatting with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Paul Peart-Smith about the graphic interpretation of An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2024). An Indigenous Peoples' History of The United States originally came out in 2014 with Beacon Press. In 2019 it was adapted into a Young Peoples version by Jean Mendoza and Debbie Reese. In 2021 it was one of the three foundational texts for the amazing HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes, written and directed by Raoul Peck. The other featured books were two of my all-time favorites Sven Lindqvist’ Exterminate All the Brutes: One Man’s Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Paul Peart-Smith has adapted what many regard as the first history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples into a stunningly powerful graphic history. Through evocative full color artwork, renowned cartoonist Paul Peart-Smith brings this watershed book to life, centering the perspective of the peoples displaced by Europeans and their white descendants to trace Indigenous perseverance over four centuries against policies intended to obliterate them.
Dr. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a New York Times best-selling author, grew up in rural Oklahoma in a tenant farming family. She has been active in the international feminist and Indigenous movements for more than four decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. Dunbar-Ortiz is the winner of the 2017 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, and is the author or editor of many books, including An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, a recipient of the 2015 American Book Award. She lives in San Francisco and is a professor emeritus in Ethnic Studies at California State University, East Bay.
Paul Peart-Smith is a celebrated cartoonist of over 35 years, with experience in concept art, graphic design, and animation. Having studied to be an illustrator in Cambridge, England, he has worked on comics for 2000 AD, such as Slaughter Bowl . He is the illustrator and adapter of W. E. B. Du Bois Souls of Black Folk: A Graphic Interpretation. He lives in Tasmania, Australia and puts out the bi-weekly newsletter InkSkull .
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