Guerrilla History - Making the Toussaint Louverture Graphic Novel w/ Sakina Karimjee & Nic Watts

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

In this great episode of Guerrilla History, we are joined by the creative team behind the new graphic novel Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History!  This tremendous work is the graphic novelization of a long lost CLR James play about the Haitian Revolution (which, incidentally, starred the great Paul Robeson the only time it was staged). In this conversation, we talk about this play and the process of adapting it, as well as the objectives behind doing so.  A great discussion about how to make subjects like the Haitian Revolution more accessible to broad audiences! Sakina Karimjee is a theatre designer and draughtsperson, an activist and socialist and co-creator of graphic novels with her partner Nic Watts. Nic Watts is an illustrator, activist and socialist. He has created artwork for numerous fiction and non-fiction books for children and adults, as well as other publications, websites, political campaigns and newspapers. He is the co-creator of graphic novels with his partner Sakina Karimjee. You can follow him on instagram @nicwatts_illustrator Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory

You remember Dinn-Vin-Bin-Bin-Bou? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, podcast that acts is a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons

of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckamacki, joined, unfortunately by only one of my two usual co-hosts today. We are joined by Professor Adnan Hussein, historian director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? Oh, hi, Henry. I'm doing great. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. As am I. Unfortunately, we're not joined by our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea. who of course is host of Revolutionary Left Radio as he had some family stuff come up at the last minute.

That's the essence of having children, I guess. But in any case, before I introduce the work that we're going to be talking about in our guests, I would like to remind the listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history.

And you can also keep up to date with everything that the show is putting out as well as what each of the co-hosts is putting out individually by following us at Gorilla underscore Pod. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-Skore pod. Now, today we have a really interesting work and a really interesting conversation ahead of us with two guests. We're going to be talking about the graphic novel, which I will admit, despite

being the youngest of the co-hosts by some distance on this show, I have never read a graphic novel before. I'm just, as my wife says, I'm ancient at heart, not old at heart. ancient. But we have a graphic novel, which was illustrated by our two guests, Sakina Karimji and Nick Watts. Hello, the two of you. It's nice to have you on the show. All right. Thank you for having us. Absolutely. So the book is titled Toussaint-Lauverture, the story of the only successful slave revolt in history. And as I mentioned, it's a graphic novel. It's an adaptation of a play by none other than CLR James. So I guess the way that I would like to get

into this conversation is, can you talk a little bit about the process of determining that you wanted to do a work on the Haitian revolution, that you wanted to do it in the format of a graphic novel, and then finding that there was a play that was done by CLR. James and that this actually worked really well with making a graphic novel out of it, especially given the background for the two of you. So, you know, talk a little bit about your background and how that also plays into that story in terms of coming up with this project and deciding on the format of it.

Oh, thank you for having us both. So I'm Nick Watts. I'm an illustrator. I've been working as an illustrator for 25 years. We, you know, we came across the... Well, I had the idea, didn't I, of doing a graphic novel about the Haitian Revolution after reading the Black Jackpins

I think the third or fourth time and having always found it to be an amazing book but quite a complicated book and one that had lots of different groups of people and it was always quite difficult to understand what was going on and stuff like that so I I read the Black Jackpins and I said you know like oh let's do a graphic novel about it

Let's do it off the Black Jackabins. And I had all these amazing ideas of how I was going to do stuff. And I got very excited. And then seeing as a sort of world. Well, yeah. So my background is actually in theatre. I don't come from a, you know, illustration and sort of art background in the same way.

And, but Nick and I, we're a couple. We've, you know, been together a long time. We've always sort of like shared a home studio and gradually over the years increasingly kind of collaborated together on, because there's a lot of overlaps in our work. Like I work in theatre, but I work in sort of set and costume design and production and stuff. So it's a very visual part of that sort of visual storytelling and things. So there's big overlaps.

And so, yeah, Nick came to me with this idea, said, let's do this graphic novel together. And I said, I think that's great, but I can't see how we can adapt, you know, a big, thick history book into a graphic novel. Neither of us are writers, neither of us are kind of, you know, work. people, we're both visual people. How do we do that? We had a lot of conversations about how we might approach that. And I said, really, we need a script.

I said, either we need to find someone to write one or find out if there is one. You know, we need characters, we need dialogue, you know, we need some kind of scripts. And I said, has anyone ever written a play about it? Because that would be the perfect thing to kind of adapt. Yeah, so I went off and started sort of researching this. and came across that, you know,

Fiela James himself had written a play about it. And not only that, but he had been lost for nearly 70 years and been rediscovered. So this was 2013. The play had been... Yeah. It had been rediscovered in a vault in Hull in 2005, and then it had been published.

It was due to be published about three months later. So we managed to contact the historian, and discovered it and you know we said to him like can we have a look at this play and he seemed very tedious we've got a bit out of the blue

I think it was a little bit out of blue and so we he said you need to buy it anyway we got hold of the you know eventually because the play was literally just about to come out there was a lot of synchronicity that all sort of came together really that we had this idea and we're searching for a

way, literally just as the play that the L.R. James had actually written four years before the Black Jacobins, which if people don't know, the Black Jackabets is like a really seminal history of the Haitian Revolution. 138. So this was written in 34. And, yeah, so that's kind of, you know, we came across the play, we read it, we liked it, we thought this would make a great graphic novel. So that's kind of how it all.

Yeah, it was a great religion. It was a great relief that it was good, because had it been rubbish, we would have been in big trouble because obviously... Well, we would have had to in it anyway. It would have been fine. It is a fantastic script, and that's what's really great. It's sort of testament to CLOJN's sort of olimatical genius was that he not only could write amazing books and be a massively important activist in his own. life. But you also wrote, you know, a prose book with Minci, Ali, and you wrote this amazing play, which, you know, really

concisely sums up the Haitian Revolution. As I was saying at the beginning, like, I'd read the Black Jackabins and I found it amazing, but confusing. When I read this play, I was like, right, now I finally understand what happens in the Haitian Revolution. You love it. Because it's by necessity sort of shorter, it just distills that story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, but that's, That's very interesting. I guess I have two questions for you out of this, what you've just mentioned. I mean, I hadn't realized that the play actually preceded the Black Jacobin's historical work. That's actually quite fascinating because normally one might think, you know, he wrote a history. He did all this research and he wrote this history and then realized, okay, it is very complicated and I want to reach a larger audience. So let me put it into a dramatic form. But he actually

started with the core story in a form to dramatize and present it. I don't know if it was performed. That would be quite interesting to learn about. But I guess it seems like you were going the other way where you first encountered not the play, but the famous work, Black Jacobins. And so that raises the question for me that I'd like to hear about, well, what was it about the Haitian revolution that attracted you for a subject? of a more popular form of a graphic novel to use that as a subject. Like what in your kind of political sensibility and understanding of the significance and importance of the Haitian revolution attracted you to use this as a subject for a graphic novel?

Yeah, I mean, to me, I think there's sort of no better example of kind of, I think we've I can't for the exact quote we put on the back of the book, but basically it's, you know, one of the most inspiring stories, really, of the most oppressed people in the world, rising up and overthrowing the most, you know,

powerful colonial regimes of the time. So it's such an inspiring story, you know, on that kind of level. Yet at the same time, it is so underrepresented. You know, it is, you know, obviously lots of people have read the Black Jackabins, but compared to kind of general pop

you know, outside of the Caribbean, you know, general population sort of understanding and knowledge, you know, most people that we've, you know, through the, you know, 10 years now really, we've been working on this, that we've said, oh, we're doing a book about the Haitian Revolution. Most people haven't really heard of the Haitian Revolution and don't know anything about it. And I suppose for us, you know, a big part of our motivating factor was to try and popularize that and get it to be more, you know, more well known. It's always been a sort of a thing that I always wondered like why didn't anyone seem to know about the Haitian Revolution? You know, I first learned about it when I was 19 from driving around my dad, he used to play with these tapes

of political meetings and one of which was on the Black Jackwins. Well, on the Haitian Revolution, not the Black Jackwins. And I was really inspired by it. And yet I talked to people know what has heard a bit, you know. I think that's the same thing that motivated see L.I. James, really, in the 1930s.

And I think popular culture, whether that be, you know, plays or films or graphic novels or whatever are a really important way that a kind of much wider audience can often know about things because there's always only going to be probably a certain sort of percentage and certain type of people that are going to read more denser academic books. And it's, you know, it's such a good way, I think, to reach a wider audiences. And I think, yeah, so, just to talk when you were saying about was it performed and things

is that it was performed in London in 1934 with Paul Robeson you know the American actor and singer playing Tucson and I don't apparently Paul Robeson had always wanted

to play Tucson so I don't know whether there was some dialogue between them before writing it and that was part of the motivation to to write the play, you know, how that sort of came about exactly, you know, what came first, but that may have been part of the reason. But I think, you know, I think by writing a play, it is an attempt at kind of reaching a broader and different audience. And someone was telling us recently that around the same time that Eisenstein wanted to make a film

about the Haitian Revolution and there was talk of C.A. James writing it and Paul Robes starring in it. So all of that was all kind of happening around the same time as well. So there was at that time, I suppose, a number of kind of popular culture sort of attempts at bringing this to a bigger audience, although obviously the play, it was only stated once in London and the script was subsequently lost. So it ultimately, you know, initially didn't kind of roll out and reach that much wider audience. I mean, it's a tricky play, I think, you know, from a theatre point of view, because since it's been refound and published 10 years ago, it hasn't had a major restaging. And I, obviously, I don't know why theatre companies haven't chosen it. But I would imagine it, you know, it's got a very large cast and a lot of theatres, you know, plays with quite small casts for budget reasons, you know, funding reasons and things. So I would imagine it's not an easy play to stage. And, you know, you know, in terms of doing a graphic novel, that's been great

because we can draw as many people as we like, you know. Yeah. Yeah, there, you know, obviously are constraints, but it's not in the same way as... Yeah, we have a cast of hundreds of thousands. Whereas you wouldn't be able to do the same things in a play on the stage. So, yeah. So I want to hop in for a second.

And you mentioned Eisenstein, that's, of course, Sergei Eisenstein, the famous Soviet director. And I also am familiar with the fact that he wanted to make a film on the Haitian Revolution. And he had met with Paul Robeson in 1934 to try to make some agreement in order to make this film. And he had drafted up a proposal for this film. But it was actually shot down by the Soviet authorities at the time. And there's a lot of speculation as to why that had been shot down. I know some contemporary scholars have speculated that because the way that Eisenstein was going to be looking at the film was into not only the revolutionary part of, you know, the early revolutionary part of the story, but also the degeneration and death of Toussaint Louverture that the Soviet authorities wouldn't have looked so kindly upon looking at a revolutionary leader in that kind of that kind of way in terms of the degeneration towards the end of his life.

and then his death. But again, that's largely speculation. There's no real document, documented evidence on that. As far as I'm aware, but a Soviet film is something that I look at. Anyway, I do want to turn towards one of the things that's kind of come up a few times in your last answer is that people generally don't know about the Haitian revolution and that looking at different forms of media that we can use is a very good way of reaching out to people. And, you know, it's perhaps interesting for listeners of this show because we've talked about Haiti quite a bit in various episodes of the show.

We have several episodes devoted entirely to Haiti. And the thing that we usually are decrying is the fact that many people know the Haitian revolution, but very few people know Haitian history after the revolution, which is why we focused on things like Western Intervention and Haiti post-revolution. We have an episode with Pascal Robert listeners on that exact topic. If you want to listen to that, we have another Haiti episode planned coming up soon that's going to be talking about even more contemporary issues in Haiti. But when I talk about that too many people know about the Haitian revolution but don't know anything about after the Haitian revolution, this is, of course, within our hyper politically aware group of people who are very aware of world history and political nuance and all of these things. of course we are the group of people that would know the Haitian revolution and the Haitian revolution as you uh you know like you said you put it on the book if I could pull up the quote now uh perhaps the greatest victory of the oppressed over their oppressors in all history

this is something that we're aware of but when we think outside of the group of people who are listening to this episode you know these multi hour long history episodes most people are not aware of the Haitian revolution at all much less anything after afterwards in Haiti. So we're looking on a completely different sphere. Usually we're complaining about people knowing the Haitian revolution, but not knowing afterwards. But if we look at general society, people don't even know the Haitian revolution. And the reason being is that most of the discussion of Haiti is done, as you mentioned, in academic texts, which reach a certain audience. And graphic novels and plays are a way of going outside of that audience to try to popularize

these events in a way that's accessible to a larger audience of people. So I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about, you know, why the graphic novel format was one that you latched onto even before you had found this play in terms of we want to do a graphic novel on Haiti in the Haitian Revolution. And how, in your opinion, as you know, kind of graphic visual people, as you put it earlier, these alternative forms of media outside of more academic texts, you know, novel, or not novels, but monographs and whatnot, are important for reaching out to a larger group of people that wouldn't otherwise be exposed to this material. Well, you know, you're right.

Well, okay, the reason I was specifically drawn to doing a graphic novel about the Haitian revolution is, you know, I'm an illustrator. I think that a graphic novel is the best way to tell any story. Because, you know, not just because I think graphic novels are great, but because they hid your head and you're braiding in two different ways you're you've got the interweaving of images and texts at the same time which I think uh you know really be it's being recognized in educational um institutions that that helps people um take information on and you can have amazing kind of backstory stuff happening in the images you know it did a lot of research

during creating this book and was able to go okay I know that was happening in 1794. Okay, well, this was happening in 1794, and then I can represent that in the background and add the sort of layers of depth and meaning to the images into what CLR James is saying without intruding on the story in a lot of ways. And, you know, graphic novels are a really sort of fantastic way to talk about complex histories, well, complex subjects and histories. I think that it's also about like an emotional engagement. You know, I think by having, by presenting this history through a series of specific

characters and also like Nick said, the combination of, you know, images and text, I think you're drawn emotionally into a story and you engage with it in a kind of slightly different, I think you can still communicate all of the kind of political and historical ideas, but also bring an emotional engagement, which I think gives it more power. Gives it more power and like Nick says, you remember it in a different way and it kind affects you in a different way. I also think graphic novels like other forms of, you know, popular culture and media can be kind of more easily accessible, less intimidating. They're kind of entertaining to engage with as well as, you know,

when you read a, you know, a history book or, you know, an academic book, you expect to be informed, whereas when you read a graphic novel, you expect to be kind of entertained and emotionally engaged as well as informed. And I think that it's more easy for people to engage with a sort of leisure time. So I think you'll reach a broader audience. And for some people, they just wouldn't ever read, you know, an academic kind of, know, history book or whatever, but would, you know, would engage, I think, you know, there's a lot of talk now in schools, at least here in the UK, about sort of reluctant readers and things

like graphic novels because of the images can be more accessible, you know, to young people who are reluctant readers. But I think you can extrapolate that to adults as well. I don't think it's necessarily just sort of teenagers or children. So I think there's sort of a whole number of really, why, yeah, and I also think there are academic books in existence around, you know, these subjects where there isn't really a graphic novel. So there's sort of a gap in that, in that sense. And why not? You know, we just, you know, we as people who are interested in history and interested in our own history and interested in revolutionary histories, we need to know these stories and we deserve to know these stories.

And you've always talked about you wanted to create a book than you wanted to read. Yeah, I think that's the advice that writers are always given. Write the book that you want to read. Well, we drew the book that we wanted to read. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right that there's a big gap culturally in terms of maybe the culture on the left.

Some episodes have been portrayed in popular novels, in film. I don't know if many people have done politically oriented and engaged historical graphic novels before, but just in the popular culture, there is a big gap when it comes to the Haitian revolution. And there should be, as you say, a lot of, and it's also a very complex event that, you know, there's space to have many, just as in scholarship, there are many different interpretations and emphases about how that story is told and how it's analyzed. And so I think what you've done is really brought to life CLR. James's, you know, kind of interpretation that he developed first in this play and then elaborated with maybe more kind of analysis and so forth in black Jacobins. But that's been a touchstone departure for historians thinking about the Haitian Revolution. Everybody goes back to C.L.R. James. even if they develop different critical interpretations. So that really needs to be there, I think.

So this is a very important sort of work to have available in the culture. But I guess some of the questions I have is, since you were politically inspired as well, what kinds of challenges or problems to solve or decisions did you have to make about artistically and politically to illustrate this version of play about the Haitian Revolution. It's already a kind of interpretive version. Luckily, that gives you a script, but a script and your page on, you know, illustrated are two different things. Ultimately, you must have had to make a lot of decisions about how to do that. So I'm just wondering both as, you know, artistically and politically, What were you trying to, you know, achieve?

What was your kind of vision or goal for how to portray and represent both the Haitian Revolution and particularly CLR James's play about it? Yeah, I mean, one of the, we've put this quote right at the beginning of the book, where it says, they the Negro slaves are the most important characters in the play. Tucson did not make the revolt. It was the revolt that made Tucson. and that's something that Celar James wrote in the stage directions for the play. And that's been one of the kind of overarching principles, I suppose,

of our approach is we wanted to kind of capture that spirit. You know, the text of the play in some ways predominantly deals with sort of the key major events and the key kind of leading political characters. But Celar James obviously also wanted to show the kind of the role of the ordinary, you know, enslaved people, the role of the masses in creating and influencing and, you know, driving forward the revolution. And that's something that we talked a lot about early on and that was kind of a guiding principle as we went through. We wanted to try and, you know, depict ordinary people very much at the centre of the struggle. Yeah. It wasn't just Tucson, which I think

often. Yeah, it's not a biography, although it's called Tucson Laurechure, the story of the only successful slave about in history. It's not a biography of Tucson, although Tucson is, you know, obviously a hugely important character and part of what Celar James was doing in the play

was analysing, you know, leadership and different strategies and tactics. You know, there's sort of debates played out between Tucson and Desalines and Christophie and so on, about strategy. But it, you know, we wanted to put that at the centre.

And so, you know, we've, that's affected how we've drawn it and how we've illustrated it. very much put people and also early on we became when once we sort of started doing some of the drawings we became aware of the potential dangers of kind of reinforcing stereotypes or having groups scenes kind of looking like mobs or things like that and we became um you know very kind of um yeah cool you know uh again it became a kind of big part wanting to have avoid that and the solutions we came to that became a big influence in a factor as well because

what we decided is we needed to very much betray every individual enslaved person who appears as kind of like an individual character and you know my background in theatre I guess came in is that you know if you're given a part to play on the stage as an actor you're often asked to kind of create a backstory for your character and we kind of created backstories for people that we visually represented. We tried to really work on making everyone a real sort of person. And we actually created a series of non-speaking characters, which you can see on the inside cover at the front and the back, there's, you know, some lineups of enslaved people. And also in the illustrated character list, they both contain kind of characters that we sort of created

and you could follow visually those characters through the play. Now, Obviously not everyone will pick up on that, but I think it will add to kind of the richness of how you interpret it visually, the fact that that's there and that we've created those kind of individual real people and that they're at the centre of the story. That was a big outfit. I think also like recognising the sort of wide diaspora of the enslaved people, yeah, they came from so many different parts of, you know, Western and Central Africa. They came from so many different cultures and had different religious. and different traditions. But they had this common bond of the trauma,

a terrible trauma of the Middle Passage, and then the, you know, brutality of enslavement in Haiti, which was pretty bad. And so, you know, we wanted to show them as individuals, but also show them as being kind of brutalised,

and so having this common bond. So it was very useful for me as, artist, it's like start going, okay, right, I'm going to write back stories to these people. There's not easy to do going back to those historical periods. And what we didn't want to do is fall into the various tropes that exist around the Haitian Revolution. And we're doing to end up repeating racist, like, stories from the early 19th century. The visual depictions you see from the time of slavery were things that were drawn by slave owners

or colonial people see you've got to be a bit cautious of what you take from the research so that's yeah and yeah and I think more careful than we kind of initially imagined like my the representation of Tucson is not the normal representation you would see of Tucson because that image that we all know of Tucson Overture was drawn after his death.

I don't personally trust it. It comes from a description. I would back to the description. I used that. But, you know, fundamentally we created a run in Tucson, didn't we? Because... Well, there's a problem as nobody knows. Right.

I know, yeah. I can see that there were us a lot of research and thinking about decisions. I really like the idea of, you know, using background. You can foreground the action that's in the play, but you can put context in some kind of background. You can, you know, have these visual cues of characters to try and broaden the story. Because obviously, in some ways, you know, Toussin is like a hero. And, of course, this isn't a biography of him, but he has the most lines. He's a central figure.

He plays such a dramatic and important role in the success of the revolution. evolution and so on. And so, you know, I think one thing, it seems, both in your work and also in the play and one of the components that maybe made it a very good and successful play as a work of art about this complex event is that the characters are a little more rounded and complex themselves. They have kind of, you know, different sides to them. and it seems that that comes out in the story and also the portrayal and representation. So I wondered a little bit about, you know, the graphic novel form. Of course, it's developed and there's very, you know, kind of complex ones, but many people come across these because there are, you know, comic books and then, you know, superheroes and all of that. And, you know, you could have Toussaint as a sort of left wing, you know, a hero, you know.

And I think you've done something a little bit more nuanced and balanced. And maybe you might talk about that and also about these tropes trying to avoid some of these historical tropes or stereotypical ways of representing. One thing I enjoyed, and maybe you have further remarks that you could make about it, but one thing I enjoyed is that the most kind of savage, passionate, unreasoned figure is like the planter. you know, Mr. Boulin, and the way you portray him is just absolutely deranged. I mean, he just like the way you draw him in those moments where it looks completely savage, you know, and it's quite a reversal that the, you know, hallmark of white colonial planter civilization is actually portrayed is probably the most deranged and irrational. you know, barbaric kind of figure who can't control himself, you know, because this racism is just sort of pouring out of him. So those were things that I noticed about choices you had made.

And I just wondered if you had any further comments about that problem of heroes and how you may have used visual components to reverse some of these stereotypes. I think that's really interesting. Obviously we were aware of how we, you know, represented the people. to show that the people had sort of were in reverse of those stereotypes. I don't think we quite put in, you know, thought of in those terms. You know, during my research into this book, became quite clear that a lot of very untalented and brutal people from France could, or from, you know, going from all the colonies,

but in this case, France could go to Sandamang, or Haiti as it is now, and make a lot of money and have a very divorced lifestyle and still be treated like they were like the height of civilization. Yeah, you're right. I love how in the opening scene with Bullet, they're listening to Mozart because it's that juxtaposition. It's one of my favourite scenes that in the play, that juxtaposition of kind of this pinnacle of European civilization

alongside really what underpinned European civilization at the time was the brutality of that slavery. That was what was funding it. That was what was, you know. And, yeah, I think that's, it's very cleverly written. And, you know, hopefully we've carried that across. Yes. The brilliant, I can't from sexual.

It's a brilliant quote in the play from Desolides, where he's talking about, you know, violence and brutality. And he's saying, I put it here. he says, you know, he's talking with Tucson, there's obviously all the way through the story, there's this conversation going between Tucson and Desalines about what to do, you know, Toussaint's saying

we need to stick with France, we need their technology, we need their knowledge, whereas Desalines is saying, no, we need to break free of these people, we need to stand up on our own, we can do it, we've made everything that is here. And two things, we need the education from Europe, as if, you know, And so there's a sort of debate going on about who's civilised and, you know, where do we want to learn from, you know?

And Desalines, you know, says, I, Desalines was born on the Congo and lived there, but never saw such things. It is the white men in Sandamang that showed them to me, you know. And it's such a, you know, puts it into that context, really, about where that brutality is coming from. So I guess in a lot of ways that also kind of informed how, you know, we approached that, you know, in terms of how we represented that. And I think what Nick was saying about what he'd read about, the kind of people that often became planters in Sander-Mang and also just some of the, you know, descriptions of things that that happened, you know, are just beyond kind of your brain, you know, the breed of the same. this, you know, it's just beyond it. And I think, therefore,

I think Bollet, you know, somebody asked us, you know, did we think it was sort of over the top? And, and we don't think it is. You know, we think that does, you know,

obviously we've caricatured it. It's a comic book. But the, the representation that we're communicating of him as a character feels entirely appropriate, really, for how, you know,

the, the brutality and, And I think it's worth mentioning here, you know, probably some people might know this, but, you know, Sandamang, as it was then French colony, it was the most profitable colony on the planet. And, you know, why was it the most profitable colony on the planet? It wasn't because the land was particularly any different from any of the other islands. It was because the level of brutality. You know, the level of brutality of what was going on in Haiti was unimaginable.

And I think there's the arrogance as well that I suppose you see in Boulé that, again, you can read in lots of other, you know, sort of things from the time is that, you know, they, you know, slavery really, I'm sorry, racism, you know, as a concept where he was sort of invented as a justification for slavery, yet they believed their own lies, you know, they believed in their own kind of that white people were superior and that they were going to be able to rule over these islands forever because of their innate kind of civilization and superiority. And because of that, they completely underestimated, you know, Tucson and the, you know, the army of the formerly, you know, enslaved and things. And that is part of their

downfalls, their underestimation. And I think you very much see that at Boulé as well. At no point does he kind of realise, you know, there are other characters that you see, you know, from the colonial powers that have revelations as they go along. Boulay, to the end, thinks he can have it all still, you know. He's at no point prepared to kind of compromise it. The appeal of the whites in 80, people like Bullet, was that their profound racism, it stops them from actually taking what was happening seriously

and being able to deal with it. You know, if they turned around and gone, well, these people actually have some agency and they're intelligent and they are powerful, But no, they squandered opportunities to make peace and also to have the returns of slavery. Because I think it's in which was in their interests, you know, it's worth noting that, you know, early on in that before it became a revolution, when it was just a revolt, the leadership of the revolt were not asking for an end to slavery. They were just asking for a slightly better version of slavery, please, you know. But the, they wanted to make a deal.

And the slave owners could not, you know, the bullets of that world could not, you know, counsellors any inch. And they were right in a way, you know, if we give them an inch, he says at one point, you know, they will take this all, you know. Well, it's about that defence, you know, a bully talks in that very opening bit about not giving what they, what was called in the play, Milatoes that we now might call mixed race or free people of colour. the reason for not giving them rights is because, I mean,

he doesn't quite put in this way, but essentially it's a challenge to racism. You know, by giving right to raise people, you're suggesting that, you know, you're breaking down this idea of inferiority and that they're, you know, not fully human and all this kind of stuff becomes challenged. And that everything then starts to collapse.

But also I think in terms of representation, and a part of that, I think, is the way in which there's actually, in some ways. You see, because the play in our book focuses on the, you know, the resistance and the revolt, you don't see a huge amount of the violence of what existed at the time when they were still enslaved. And, you know, one thing that you talked about, Nick, is very much wanting to show a kind of permanent presence of the violence that that society had been. bin and there's a lot of yeah we wanted to show

the violence of the slave you know the slave world or slave colony on the skin of the slaves you know in their scars and the permanence of that you know psychic damage done to those people and they're suffering just on their bodies

and it never you know most slaves in that book carry those marks and you should also show people people with like mutilations, punishment collars. There's some really horrible, horrible stuff. But, you know, effectively, we don't need to show someone being whipped. We don't need to show, because people understand and they see these symbols and they'll

understand. And, you know, obviously we're working heavily with symbolism and symbols. That actually relates to the next thing that I wanted to talk about, which is, you know, again, we've mentioned that this is based off of a script for a play that was by CLR James and that we're talking about your adaptation as a graphic novel. Some of the things that you've been saying throughout this conversation thus far are, you know, we wanted to show X or we wanted to depict Y. We wanted to portray this person in this way.

And it's really interesting thinking about how there are certain limitations and there are also certain horizons that are available on the stage, and there are also similarly, there's limitations and horizons available in the graphic novel format, and those two things don't always overlap. Some of the limitations that you face on the stage in terms of space, in terms of being able to put certain sets up, to be able to have the number of actors that you would need,

and et cetera, et cetera, you know, different effects that would be practical versus not practical, within the confines of the theater. Those are not constraints within the format of the graphic novel, but there are other constraints, whereas on the stage, you know, and again, I'm a fantastically unartistic person, so feel free to correct me on anything like this. But, you know, on the stage when you watch a play,

one of the things that you can see, even if you're sitting fairly far back, is the facial expressions changing of people. You know, though it's those subtle cues that you see on the stage that I would imagine are significantly harder to do instill image drawings that you're doing within the graphic novel format. And then also things like, I mean, there's some humor throughout this, throughout this novel, which, you know, maybe is a surprise to the listeners, but, you know, it comes across from the script. But again,

the way in which you would convey humor on the stage would be slightly different than the way in which you convey humor in a graphic novel. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how the process of adapting this play into the graphic novel format went from kind of a practical side of things. And then the license that you took to try to take these depictions where there was some opening for you to, you know, make your own interpretations of what CLR James was intending to be shown, but maybe had those limitations on the stage that you don't have in the format of the graphic novel.

So I guess kind of those two sides of that in terms of how did that process go? then how did you work with that process in order to get across what you were hoping to get across? Yeah, I mean, on the question of humour, that was definitely something that... That was quite a challenge. It was quite challenging. I think some of the sort of humour is written in quite a, like a sort of visual comic kind of way.

And to bring that across in the graphic novel was definitely challenging. You know, the third scene in the play, I think, for us, was one of the most difficult. And that is one that has quite a lot of humour. You've got there, there's a character McCoyer who's come from, he's a, you know, formerly enslaved person, but he's a Spanish general. And he's a kind of comic character that is really sent up. And that was, and then there's all this stuff to do with kind of marching and whistleblowing and stuff, which, as they're trying to kind of form themselves into sort of the beginnings of some sort of army.

and that was quite difficult to communicate. It's written, that's definitely written for the stage, isn't it? Hopefully we got there in the end, but it was definitely challenging and I think you have to find some kind of, yeah, still image sort of representation. With the marching, I think we fought with trying to represent the physicality of it and the humour in that, whereas like the sending up of McCoyer, I think we kind of did by more still image representation of kind of things going on around him

and kind of sending him up in that way. I think one of the big things that you can't have in a graphic novel that is really, really powerful in theatre is to do with sound and music. And this was obviously written with quite a lot of that in mind. You know, the Mozart that I've already mentioned at the beginning, but that's also undercut at the same time is that the graphic novel starts

on what is the evening of the start of what historically was the start of the revolution. You've got the first city where there's in Boulé's house where there's Mozart going on. But at the same time, you have a kind of political gathering stroke voodoo ceremony, which was when the enslaved people kind of took the decision to start the uprising. and you've got the drumming going on from that

happening, you know, at the same time and to represent that visually and to capture, which, you know... We tried. But I just don't think it would have the same, you know, on the stage where you actually have the live music of the drumming and things,

I think that would have a different kind of power. And, you know, maybe there are ways to do that in the graphic novel as powerfully that we didn't manage, I don't know, but we tried. I think it was actually very effective. I agree with you that, of course, it would be more fully immersive if you were hearing it and you're in the theatrical space. That's one of the dimensions of being in live theater.

But I definitely got the sense that it was a concerted effort on your part to give that sense. This is the drumming that's happening, the kind of drama of that event. So I think it was still very effective. And I noticed that throughout, and I wondered if this was because of direction that was in the play, when there might be just a band or a banner over, you know, a scene that was taking place that had dialogue and so on, but you would still have like, you know, a line, a banner of drumming. And I wondered if that was from the play that you were expected to hear that, even though the picture that was represented was not in, you know, a concept.

where anybody was playing anything, but it was just meant to be, you know, part of the backdrop, yeah. Yeah, that's generally where it's in the stage directions. But we used it to build up sort of tension throughout the book. And, you know, one of the things that we were conscious of with the graphic novel was trying to create kind of pace

and to, you know, vary that pace and for the pace to build as the book goes on, which obviously music and drumming and things can do brilliant. But we try to use those images as well. By doing like a series of small images, you create a sort of... Yeah, you can create pace and timing and stuff like that. You know, one big picture of somebody drumming has a different impact than a series of lots of little small images of somebody drumming because you create, you try and create that sense

of a beat through the image. And then that repetition, those small images all the way through the book and coming to some kind of crescendo towards the end. But I guess we also use other things to try and build that. sense of pace and rhythm as well, like the use of mosquitoes and things, which I was just going to ask about that. I was just going to ask about this use of what you're going for there. Yeah. You want to read you a bit. There's like about four different reasons. Yeah, the mosquitoes are fascinating. They've got an amazing history in Haiti. You know, there was a previous uprising by

a guy called Mackinnell. The leader was the guy called Mackinnell, who, um, I think about 50 years before the Haitian Revolution had created a conspiracy with lots of other people, enslaved people, to poison planters and their children. And a lot of white planters died during that period. And eventually he was captured and burned at the stake. And the other enslaved people were forced to watch this happen. And they swore blinds that as soon as the first lick of the flame hit his toe, he transformed into a swarm of mosquito.

disappeared. But I think also another thing that's very interesting about the mosquitoes is that, you know, Western... Also just on a kind of more mundane practical level is that they are, you know, they are present. And they're always seen flying around

the European kind of colonial characters because we wanted to create this sense of them being kind of bothered and uncomfortable and slightly ill at ease in their environment. Sweeting as well. Yeah, sweating, mosquitoes buzzing around. You know, they're uncomfortable. And then there's this whole other dimension

with like Nick was saying with Macanow because there's this sense that then the mosquitoes became the spirit of resistance kind of thing. And therefore it then ties in to the yellow plate FIFA played in. As I was saying, that, you know, when the enslaved army beat not only the French, Spanish and the British, I think the story back at home was, oh, well, you know, the yellow fever, it was the yellow fever. We all died of yellow fever. Well, that's not quite the case because it is the case. But the part of it, yellow fever was a huge part of why. The reason so many of them were dying of red yellow fever, because I mean held in swampy areas and held by the, the country. host during yellow fever season and then dying in their thousands.

And, you know, of course, the revolutionaries were sitting back going, this is great. The revolutionaries were very intentionally using, you know, yellow fever as an act of warfare, like with early chemical warfare or whatever, who, you know, wasn't just an accident, who wasn't a fate of nature. I mean, obviously there is an aspect of that, but they used it to their advantage. And then when you tie that in with the Macanelle as well, I think of this idea of this spirit of resistance in the mosquitoes,

it's kind of a... But also, I think we use them to build pace and as the graphic novel develops, this presence of the mosquitoes increases as the yellow feather death kind of increase and the sort of viral that they create of a kind of down. And the white start really talking about, what's happening. And, you know, if you read the Black Jackabins, there's all these

letters going backwards and forth towards the end of the book where they're talking about the amount of people who are dying. And it's phenomenal, the amount of people who are dying, you know, colonial soldiers. So, yeah, the mosquitoes also are just a great character. I think they're probably my favourite character in the book. It's just these mosquitoes everywhere. And, you know, it's such a great symbol because it's something that we all kind of hate. and yet we again we've kind of tried to switch that to be something that is kind of a symbol of resistance and the liberation most yeah yeah i mean i definitely got some sense that the this so wonderful to hear you explicate it a little further because i got some impression these mosquitoes are playing some role in and of course later disease but this theme that characters mention very often about the advantages that the revolutionary army of former ex-slave has because they know every inch of the land. You know, there's a way in which they're indigenized.

You know, of course, they've wiped out the, you know, the planters have been there as long, but because of their way of seeing, they're not really part of the natural environment in the same way. They're not indigenous. And it did give that sense of whenever you saw the mosquito, it was some kind of a portrayal or representation of slave revolt. and slave resistance lurking and they won't the planters sometimes don't even notice it of course they're just a mosquito and that was also related it seemed to the point that you had made sakinah about

like you know that they completely uh you know over you know underestimate and that this is part of the fatality of their situation is that they're constantly not noticing or under appreciating and uh and so that's i think that was that was wonderful well that visual motif that kind of thing and those techniques that you've just been talking about, remind me that I was intrigued and interested in, you know, what other artistic or political work, you know, may have informed your portrayals of these revolutionary politics and political histories. And, you know, I was just wondering who you might have been, you know, responding to or informed by or, you know, and of course I'm thinking is particularly now because

you know the footnotes in Gaza just comes to mind Josaco's other work Palestine and just these you know really important graphic novels if I'm thinking of what is the OVE that actually

tries to do something with this form of graphic novel that's overtly political and historical like footnotes in Gaza I think of him but I'm wondering what else you may have been thinking or, you know, what's sort of in your background in the graphic novel world and of politics that you are really engaging with?

I think it's quite difficult. You know, Nick and I were talking about this recently. And I think you read lots of different things and they all kind of go into the back of your brain and to say directly we've been influenced by this or influenced directly by that. I mean, I think without works like people like Joe Sacco, then this book just wouldn't even exist.

Do you know what I mean? The existence of kind of serious political graphic novel being used to explore political and historical ideas is a relative, you know, certainly within kind of, you know, the UK and America and things, there's a relatively recent kind of, you know, a thing. And, you know, without books like Mao's from Palestine and things like that, you know. So that's hugely influential.

Absolutely sort of standing on the shoulders some pretty big giants. But the, you know, I've read graphic types of like storytelling all my life since I was a kid. You know, I was really into Asterix when I was growing up and that European, Belgian kind of scene, you know, and obviously Asterix. The people like Raymond Briggs. Raymond Briggs, but like, you know, I was going to say about Asterisks, very racist and sexist, but extremely good on colonialism. And, but, you know, just looking at my sort of shelf of graphic novels, there's so many people that have an influence.

And it's difficult to say where, you know, where all those, who is the influence here or there. You know, it's a combination of all these kind of things, but also life and politics, music. You've been reading graphic novel theory books and things. Yeah, I've read quite a few graphic novel theory books in preparation for starting this project. You know, I read Scott McLeod's understanding comics, and then I read Will Eisner's comics and sequential art, you know, both very, very kind of like informative kind of, kind of... You probably like the stuff that you kind of sequentially now

into something in more quite slowly now. It's a Western, you know, they're not talking about manga and stuff like that, and I'm sure there are theory books about manga as well and other sorts. forms of graphic story today. But I also think we were influenced by by theatre as well, you know, because that's my background. I mean, I always, I've always felt like we were staging the production. And I've always kind of, I suppose,

that's my kind of mental process, because that's my frame of reference. And we had a whole thing quite early on when, Nick was kind of, you know, storyboarding some of the early, you know, early scenes and things. And we ended up, I got him to read the work of Stanislasky, who was a Russian theatre director from the 20s and 30s, who talked a lot about kind of the importance of all aspects of a production, whether that be the different actors playing different parts, also, you know, scenery lighting, anything else. the importance of them all working together to create one single three line and one clear storytelling and I think Nick because he'd been so inspired by lots of different things

that he'd read and researched and wanting to put in lots of different layers of meaning and historical kind of detail and things it all got a little bit muddled and it was like everything but no clarity through so we were using kind of theatre theory as well to try and sort of that was always then what we kind of everything on was kind of after that was benchmarks what is the through line what's the clarity

you know what are we communicating here now I'm sure there's lots of other ways but because my background is theatre that's the way that we have the thoughts of last year really kind of focused I think, and allowed us to really... Discipline, and really kind of tell that story and push it through and also tell the story that, you know, that James wanted to be told as well, I think, you know,

and not get lost to most. Nick could almost, you could argue almost done too much research, you know, like I think to bring every amazing anecdote. I think there is so many amazing stories in the Haitian Revolution. and so many wonderful stories and part of me wants you to tell all these stories and of course I can't tell all these stories you know it's 272 pages

and it's amazing how little room that is to tell us to tell a story and so yeah there are so many wonderful stories but you have to be quite disciplined and kind of go well I think that would be really great actually doesn't fit right cutting room floor and having that sort of ability to tie

of to be kind of quite brutal about it. Which doesn't mean you can't add in lots of things because that's what we've done. It's just you have to keep the through line at the centre of it, you know, and be really clear about what is it that we are wanting to communicate here. What's the text communicating? What do we want to communicate? And that that's always got to be the key thing. And there's lots of other things you can bring in, but that's your,

they've all got to feed into that one sort of central. through time I'll hop in here for a second and you know you keep talking about things that you want to communicate and how you are communicating it but one of the things that we haven't talked that deeply about yet is the political

side of things which is in regards to you talked about your influences in terms of graphic novels and in terms of theater you know design and things like this but we haven't really talked about political influences on

on you to it and as well as political goals with this work because you know you're looking at doing something on the history of the Haitian revolution for a reason you know you don't just say well today I'm going to talk about blah blah blah and there's no thought process behind it there is obviously political goals involved with that decision to take up that project and then similarly there's also political thought into how and why you are portraying things in a specific way and what your goal is, what your aims are with those certain portrayals. So I'd like to just open that aspect of this in terms of how you are portraying things, not only to the visual component of it, but also the political component of it. So what are some of, you know, the political influences

that got you thinking that this is a worthwhile work? And then what were your goals with this work politically as well? Well, you know, when James wrote the Black Jackman's out to play, he had a very clear political kind of reason for doing it. You know, he looked upon this book, The Black Jackabins, but also his play as a sort of political weapon and making a sort of an intervention in the politics at the time. At that time, you specifically had kind of anti-colonial movements in Africa and the Caribbean that he was trying to,

I suppose, also inspire, but also teach the lessons of, you know, things that were learned in Haiti, you know, not relying on colonial powers who form alliances with you. You know, there's a lot in the book where they form alliances, you know, with different colonial powers at different times, and they use them strategically. But ultimately, they're not to be trusted and relied upon and, you know, lessons of sort of leadership and strategy like that

and thinks he's trying to teach that. And I guess for us as well, there's a very similar thing in that, you know, obviously we're, I mean, Nick and I are, we're both Marxists, we're both socialists, you know. Nick grew up in a political activist kind of background and family. I've been politically active since I was 15, 16. And, you know, for us, it's a kind of, you know, it's a kind of, you know, it's a, you know, it's a, you know, it's a, there's almost no story that's more inspirational, really. Obviously, there's, you know, things that happen subsequently from the revolution, but the actual, none of that can take away from the amazing victory

of literally the most oppressed people in the world, the most exploited people in the world, overthrowing the most powerful people in the world. It's just such an inspirational story for people who are resisting and fighting and challenging, you know, ongoing system of, you know, racism. imperialism, capitalism and so on today. And I guess for us, that's the big part of it. And we think there's still a huge amount of inspiration that can be taken,

but also lessons, you know, lessons to be learned from this. I mean, were you talking about the ANC, you know, some of the ANC leaders were reading the Black Jackabins in prison. Yeah, I think the four words, I think it's the Black Jackabins that was published in the 80s. James talked about how we'd been so excited to learn. speaks of people with me, A and Cia had been in prison.

They'd been reading the Black Jacobins, and they had been informing their struggle. You know, so the Black Jacobins itself was an incredibly successful intervention into global politics, into politics of kind of liberation. And, you know, we really want people to know this, you know, such a stolen history from us.

And it's stolen for a good reason that, you know, certainly do not want this history to be told and even, you know, recently with the Napoleon film, you know, there is an aspect to Napoleon which was not spoken about, i.e. his al-keen he was to reintroduce slavery, which you would have thought would be an incredibly, especially after Black Lives Matter, an incredibly important thing to be saying about somebody like Napoleon in the context of now, but yet it's not mentioned and it's silenced by admission. Just one very, sorry, one very quick thing to add, since you mentioned Napoleon and wanting to reinstitute slavery and the fact that yellow fever came up earlier in the conversation, famously there was a huge epidemic of yellow fever in 1802 as the French sent soldiers back in after the Haitian revolution to try to re-institute slavery.

These are French soldiers that were being sent by Napoleon, you know, this great, you know, the great man of France of the day that, you know, many. people, many people have a much rosier view of Napoleon than should have a rosy view of Napoleon, you know, not in the far left, but there's a lot of like even liberals that take a fairly positive view of Napoleon in more ways than just saying he was a military genius, which is kind of bizarre to me, but nonetheless, that's what we see. The point is, is that many people, as you mentioned, don't think about that aspect of Napoleon, that he was explicitly and overtly trying to re-institute slavery within the colonies, including Haiti. And did everywhere apart from that.

That's right. And one of the reasons they couldn't in Haiti was because of this yellow fever epidemic, which killed about 70% of the soldiers that contracted it. And estimates that I had seen estimated that somewhere between 70 and 80% of the French soldiers that died in that attempt in 1802 to reintroduce slavery in Haiti were actually fatalities due to yellow fever, not due to actual resistance of the people. against slavery. As Nick was saying,

those yellow fever epidemics weren't if he would be by accident. Yeah, right. As an explicit weapon of war used by the Haitian revolutionaries, just as in the Napoleon film, Napoleon is using the land. You know, he attacks an army

on a frozen lake and bombs the lake and they all fall into water. So he's using the land. He's using the advantages if he's an actual environment. This is exactly what the Haitians were doing. And the victory and also the way that the defeat of Napoleon completely changed the course of history. You know, that led to Napoleon turning away from the Americas, the Louisiana purchase, the doubling of the landmass of the United States,

as it was at the time, the push west, very, very bad news for the indigenous. people. And, you know, so Napoleon's defeat in Haiti is a phenomenally important historical moment that... Yeah, that doesn't get much attention in these narratives. And it's so important that you're pointing out that this film is a real contrast to the history that you're portraying here. But you were about to say something.

Yeah, I was just going to say, I think it's not a sort of accident. I think there is... I mean, the Napoleon film specifically, but, you know, in general, the kind of repression of this history and what we are kind of bed instead, you know, you know, in the UK, you know, we're always told that slavery ended because of kind of white liberals who suddenly decided, you know, slavery was really, you know, slavery would build a bad idea, you know, William Wilberforce is the character that's often flouted. And there's a brilliant quote from Eric Williams in capitalism and slavery

where he talks about, I don't have the exact right of rents to me, but it's like the... He thinks that the British introduced Negro slavery. Most of the British introduced Negro slavery. Only for the solitin to... For the purposes of abolishing. abolishing. There's this brilliant, you know, it's this brilliant quote

that sort of just sums up the hypocrisy, that we're kind of fed, that it's this white, you know, that civilised layer of society, you know, a layer of Europe that we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation are responsible for the end of slavery rather than showing that, you know, slavery was resisted constantly, you know, at every turn. It's not just a high point, you know, Haiti was a high point, but slavery was resisted, you know, daily in small ways. It was, you know, a series of, you know, were the revolts and resistance to. the Caribbean and the America. There was a wave of resistance going on

before the Haitian Revolution throughout the Caribbean. And then after the, you know, obviously the high point of that is Haiti. But then after that, Haiti goes on to inspire people, you know, Nat Turner, various revolts in Cuba, all inspired by the Haitian Revolution.

You know, it was, and also, it wasn't just inspiring slaves. It was inspiring oppressed people all over the world, you know, back in England. People, it was a fantastic story had happened. And yet now people don't really know about it. In the West, I think in the Caribbean it's known about. But I think for us, that idea that history and society changes

because of the actions of all no people from below. And if we organise and come together, you know, we can resist and we can fight and we can change things. It against the image that we're told, you know, politicians, our leaders, you know, our education systems that change, you know, comes from above, it comes from benevolent leaders that we need to wait for to be inspired. You know, that's the, that's the challenge we're trying to make, ring. That's the notion of who makes history, how does history come about? How do we change things that we're not happy with, therefore,

in the present? That's what we're. And also, you know, like Sikina was saying earlier, if the most depressed people, you know, imaginable, can beat the, you know, the three most powerful nations on the planet with their power. It's not just, you know, Haiti, if people don't know, was at the time was invaded by Spain and Britain, who were trying to take advantage of the crisis in Haiti and take the colony for themselves. So the revolutionary, you know, former slave army defeated all three colonial powers.

And if those people can do that, you know, we have a lot of challenges these days, absolutely. But, you know, we have a very good example from history of what is possible, you know. Absolutely. I mean, that's why, I mean, our show is about guerrilla history, about these, what we can learn from these episodes, revolutionary struggles, and be inspired by them and what we can learn from them. And it just seems that just as CLR James was situated in his time in a period where there was anti-colonial organizing and resistance taking place in the Caribbean and in Africa, likewise, you know, in our day, we have struggles. And this is a time in some ways where people are demoralized by the forces arrayed against working people. People of Color, the Global South, and this is a great reminder that history is unpredictable,

that resistance can be successful, and we need those kinds of stories. So I'm really grateful for you for putting this together. It's a tremendous and amazing work. And maybe as a kind of final question, since it was so gratifying for us to read this work and we encourage our listeners to go out and get it, engage in it. And we hope, and I imagine it's going to be very successful and very useful for a lot of educators. I can see it being important in curriculums, maybe GCSEs in the UK. I'd like to make a call for the listeners. This would be a great book for high school libraries to stock because this is the exact kind of history

that high school students, maybe that aren't looking at reading, you know, heavy, dense history books while they're in high school. This is a very easy entry point for them to get this absolutely critical history. So if you have children, if you're listening to this and you have children who are attending a local school or if you, you know, can attend a local school board meeting, this is a book that I would, you know, encourage you to try to propose the school, get into their school library because you never know a kid might sit down and just pick up this graphic novel and learn about this absolutely fascinating story of the Haitian revolution, which I understand we haven't talked super deeply about the revolution itself because we have other

episodes on guerrilla history. I know Brett has a long episode of Rev. Left with Alex Avenia specifically on the Haitian Revolution. We'll be talking about Haiti and subsequent episodes, but we focus mostly on this work. But this is a work that is a work that is a work that is going to be something that can introduce many, many young people to this history who otherwise wouldn't be exposed to it unless they happen to decide to read, you know, black jacobins, which we know most people are not going to do, unfortunately. I'm sorry for cutting you off. I just want people to go ahead and do that.

I think in the context of, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement, you know, I think there is so much more of an opening for that now as well. I think, you know, hopefully that, like you say, you know, young people, you know, would be much more inclined to pick it up now and things. I mean, we started this book 10 years ago, and we couldn't kind of imagine when we started it, the terrain that has taken place in terms of this debate around, you know, slavery, around reparations about who from this sort of period of history we should be celebrating and remembering and whose statues we should be pulling down and, you know, all that kind of

stuff has kind of really come about. in the time while we were working on this and hopefully that will create a much bigger opening as well I think more school libraries and things like that would be much more inclined to stock it because there is now that sort of emphasis that we can't just talk about history

as we used to talk about history anymore we have to kind of start shifting the history we talk about and what we put in our libraries and what our young people want to read and also I would say it's all part the same struggle. You know, the struggle that was going on in Haiti, you know, 225 years ago is the same struggle that's going on now when statues are torn down. And then, as happens in the UK, the people who tore down the statue were taken to court and found not guilty. Because the good

people of Bristol sort of listens to their reasonable arguments as to say, well, actually, you're right. That statue should be torn down and chucked in the river. So it's a phenomenal history and it's really exciting, I guess, for us to be part of that trajectory of the struggle against racism. Indeed. I mean, it is very exciting. Perhaps you've told us what you found most gratifying. But I was going to say, because we found this very gratifying, I wanted to ask you just perhaps in conclusion, you know, what you found most gratifying about the project. we could ask you what's most difficult but let's on a high note

and celebrate this great achievement so what was especially gratifying about in the project a lot of what was gratifying was also difficult okay but what was difficult once we solved it became gratifying so you know

but you know telling the story effectively was really really pleasing and in some in some scenes they just just came together really, really quickly and knew what to do. And in other scenes, we, like we said, we sort of battled with them backwards and forwards. I think one scene was redrawn eight times.

I think I'm not the process of solving that and feeling like, yes, we are now communicating what we want to communicate and things. That is extremely gratified. That is extremely gratified. For me, that point we got to when we finally had all the pages drawn, laid out, speech bubbles and text. put in and we could sit there and see every bit of what we've done and achieved kind of together and, you know, sending it off. That was a very gratifying. But they're also, you know, getting a publishing deal, getting an agent, these are all really kind of gratifying things because you kind of feel like we can actually do those. Yeah, when you start off, you're like,

will anyone be interested? Will this really happen? And I guess when you reach those kind of milestones, you start feeling it's very exciting in that you feel like this. actually can happen. We can, you know, get this done. And of course, now, with, you know, the book being a real physical thing, which is something that is quite a strange experience, yeah, we're quite nerve-racking when you spend years working on something on your own and, you know, the two of us together in our room, you know, to put it out. Yeah. And to see it in its final form, yeah, not as artwork or not as a, on the screen, but actually as a final book. and then to actually see that in shops,

you know, go into shops and find a book there. It's phenomenal experience. People seem to want to read it. Yeah. You seem to want to talk to us about it. Yeah, we've had phenomenal feedback about it.

An amazing privilege really, but very exciting. Yeah, it's very, very exciting. And talking to people like you guys who like have read it, which is brilliant. Every time someone reads the book, I'm like, oh my gosh, you've read my book. It's some funny.

Well, with pleasure. With pleasure. Really enjoyed it. I think it's the right time for it, as you were saying. It's been a labor of love, long ingestation. It takes a long time to draw all of these. Think about how you're going to put it together. But I think it's a very good time for it to come out. There's, I think, a receptive. The culture has changed and it needs something like this. Whereas before it did need it, but it may not have recognized it needed it. Now I think it will. And so we look forward to many more conversations. that people will be having about the Haitian revolution and about your portrayal of it in this wonderful graphic novel form. Thank you. So again, listeners, today we were talking about the new book, which everybody I think we've conveyed should pick up

to Saint-Lauverture, the story of the only successful slave revolt in history by CLR James and illustrated and adapted by our excellent guests today, Sakina Karimji and Nick Watts Sakina and Nick, thanks for coming on the program. Is there anything that you would like to direct the listeners to in terms of places that

they can find your work or even if it's just telling them where they can get the book? I think online the book's available at kind of all booksellers really. It's in lots of shops as well. If it's not in your local shop, encourage them to stock it, I guess would be

the best name. Maybe a word of them. And many tell people, your Instagram? Yeah, my Instagram is just Nick Watts. That's Nick with No. Kay NIC. underscore illustrator.

Come and, yeah, give me a follow. I've got lots of stuff on there about what we're doing. We're doing events all up and down the country. We've been, I think we've done 12 events now, book signings and talks. And we've got quite a few more plans for 2024. So that's very exciting as well. Just going out and talking to people

about the book. It's been phenomenon but yeah so there's lots going on terrific what do you do you have anything else in the works right now that uh you know we should be looking forward to we we are working on something new but it's in the early stages it's it's with an agent and they're looking for a publisher so i yeah hopefully hopefully we'll have something to to tell people soon but okay great let let us know when that's all started out we'll do hopefully it won't be 10 years yeah hopefully for us as well. Adnan, how can the listeners find you in your other

excellent podcast? Well, you could follow me on Twitter at Adnan A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N and check out the resurrected the Mudge List podcast. We're back. We've got new episodes coming out.

If you haven't listened to the episode on History of the Oud, go check it out, and we've got things on Palestine, on Arabic literature, film, and culture in the post-67 era. So lots of fun topics. That's the M-A-J-L-I-S on all the usual platforms.

Yeah, I highly recommend the listeners to do that. I listen to that episode on the History of the Ool. Great stuff. One of my favorite instruments. So I'm glad that you had that episode. As for me, listeners, you can get the Stalin book at iskrabooks.org. And I will let you know about two other things that will be coming out from Iskra books very soon. I know we've mentioned them in the past, but Adnan, Brett, and I co-wrote a forward for a forthcoming two-volume set that's coming out from Iskra, which we collaborated with them on.

That'll be coming out early in 2024, so in the very near future, historical documents of the PLO and historical documents of the Popular Front looking at these documents from Palestinian Resistance over, you know, in the 50s, 60s, very interesting collections. and I know that we've already talked on our Patreon about that, and we've submitted it forward for it. So expect those volumes out soon. And I also am collaborating again with Salvatore on another translation project, tentatively titled Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology, and that should be coming out also sometime middle of this year, I'm hoping. So stay tuned for that.

As for me on Twitter, you can find me at Huck 1995, H-U-C-1-9-5. You can follow Guerrilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-L-A-U-Skore pod. And you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this and doing more things because we always have more ideas of things we want to do by contributing at patreon.com forward slash

guerrilla history. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. So, you know, we're going to be able to be. Thank you.