Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

My only complaint, if we can call it that, about this slim book is that I wish it was longer! This is one of those works where the book's form enacts its content in a literal sense, a concept I really appreciate when done as well as it is here. Hugo Martinez's art possesses a density that many times compelled me to stop and contemplate what I was really looking at. A soothing cup of tea with sugar in London, or the hard legacy of imperialism? A run-of-the-mill hardware store in New York City, or the scene of a deadly 1712 slave revolt? The answer is both, evinced by Martinez's art, in which he embeds illustrations of the past directly into the present. This contributes to a sense of underneath-ness that persists throughout Wake, as in I felt as if I was being offered a generous glimpse beneath not only the stories of enslavement that we typically learn, but also a glimpse underneath how these stories emerge, if they do at all. Unsurprisingly, the archives of enslavement and its revolts are studded with gaps, which complicate Rebecca Hall's endeavors to bring these stories to the page (another hindrance is the casual racism she encounters at libraries and clerk offices along the way), but she widens the angle of the story and invites speculation. She infuses what facts she finds with ruminations on what may have motivated enslaved women to lead these various revolts, embodying the outline of their lives with a fullness that is often tossed aside in favor of historical accuracy. And underneath her own motivations for this kind of storytelling is an ancestral tether—a chorus of voices underneath her own, speaking survival across centuries.