Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts

The Story of Wake

Women warriors planned and led slave revolts on slave ships during the Middle Passage. They fought their enslavers throughout the Americas. And then they were erased from history.

This graphic novel tells the story of one woman’s quest to uncover their stories. But in the process, she learns that the power of resistance, buried in the past, is still very much alive.

Historian Dr. Rebecca Hall is driven by a sense of being haunted by the past. Her grandmother was born the property of Squire Sweeney in Howard County, Missouri in 1860. Though the standard history books insist that enslaved women were unsuited for planning or leading revolts, Rebecca keeps searching for the deeper stories. She learns from old court records, newspaper articles, captains’ logs of slave ships, insurance policies, correspondence, and even the bones of enslaved women from the “negro burying ground” uncovered in Manhattan.

She finds women warriors everywhere.

Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts brings these women’s stories graphically to life.

Follow their stories into the slave ships during the Middle Passage, where women risked certain death in a final fight for their freedom. Follow them through the founding of New York City, in stories that radically reshape our notions of slavery’s role in the U.S. Follow Rebecca’s own story of resistance, as she faces the forces of white supremacy and patriarchy continuing to shape her own life -- both as a successful attorney and later as a historian seeking the past that haunts her.

The past is gone. But we still live in its wake.