But Hall is also adept at reminding us of the undeniable legacy of racism that is engrained into every level of our contemporary social structures as a result. It goes without saying that the sheer unmitigated horror of those lives and experiences is a sobering read indeed. While a linear account of these events would obviously have its own value what adds layers to Hall’s approach is that by juxtaposing the past with details of the historian’s process she is able to add her own social commentary in a measuredly paced and incremental way bringing us more directly into the scope of what she unearths as we discover each revelatory piece of information alongside her. Her early enquiries lead her to two New York slave revolts on 17 as she looks to discover the final fates of condemned slaves Sarah and Abigail who were sentenced to death for their part in an uprising, and the identity of a slave known only as “the Negro Fiend” who was burnt at the stake for her part in rebelling against and killing the slaver family who owned her. Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts jumps between portraying Hall’s contemporary detective work sifting through international archives and shifts back through the centuries to depict the events she uncovers an exercise not just in identifying participants but in shedding light on the circumstances behind their actions. This account of historian Hall’s investigations into “the erased, the unspoken, the blank spaces in the documents” is both a study of her meticulous forensic research to reinstate the place of Black women in the historical narratives from which they have been excised, and a platform to acknowledge said previously obscured stories in order to restore them to posterity. The winner of the Broken Frontier Award for Best Graphic Non-Fiction in 2021, writer Rebecca Hall and artist Hugo Martinez’s Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts is not an easy read.
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