Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Angolan Americans

This is a sequential illustrated tribute for Tim Hashaw's book The Birth of Black America. This book was an enjoyable read, I read it over my birthday, and I am blessed to have my birthday during Black History Month. I do have to say that some of the book has a bit of embellishment, or at least I wonder how Hashaw drew some of his conclusions about the personality of the first Malungu generation's different personalities through dingy court records. But a lot of what is treasure about the past is really just a myth we hold in our hearts. A strong recommendation for this book if you want to you know a bit about Black or Colonial American history and would like another unique perspective. So much of African American history is about slavery, or starts with slavery, that's undeniable. But can one have a conversation about these people beyond property and torment. The book doesn't ignore these things but certainly adds from a lot of dimensions around it, in terms to the economic and political structure that surrounded these people. The information about cattle raising and economic contributions toward Jamestown were the most interesting to me. I think they should make it into a movie by 2019, when it will be the 400th anniversary.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Lesser Evil Warfare

Shout out to the one person who reads my blog, you know who you are.

I have been reading and learning a lot, especially history, and generating picture-paper-idea-things. The above image where some illustrations I did a while ago, that I arranged as a little cartoon about the conversation James Whitman had on the New Books in History Podcast. I think it's a worthy listen for anyone interested in trying to understand global conflict.

Some of what he talked about with the ancient history of declaring war reminded me of Herodotus, of course.

Anyway, maybe a bit of a rusty and arcane blog post but I just wanted to stretch the mussels.