Transitions in the Second Half of Persepolis

Find a panel transition in Persepolis you find particularly interesting and write a 1-paragraph response describing how it works on the blog.

Colin's Pitch!!! The MacGregor Girls, Or: Wong Chin Foo Must Die

The MacGregor Girls

Pitch

Fresh off of a failed rebellion in his native China, Wong Chin Foo, who history would come to remember as the Chinese Martin Luther King, flees to San Francisco. He captures the attention of the local press–and the ire of the Chinatown triads–immediately upon his arrival when he assists in the rescue of eight of his young female shipmates from sexual slavery. Wong sees the media’s sudden interest as a chance to voice his radical ideas about Chinese American rights, but even as he rises to celebrity the Chinatown underworld plots revenge.

Background

The 1870s were a harrowing decade for Chinese immigrants in America. Anti-Chinese sentiment, which would soon come to a head with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Exploitation by American capitalists and distrust from the white working class beset the Chinese community, forcing immigrants to cluster into Chinatowns across the country to survive. These Chinatowns were typically hotbeds of criminal activity, housing enterprises like drug smuggling, gambling, and human trafficking that still persist to this day. Wong Chin Foo was one of the earliest and most vocal advocates for Chinese American rights, as well as for the reformation of the Chinatowns’ criminal elements. He would make many enemies, survive many assassination attempts, and travel many miles in his lifelong quest to win civil rights for his people.

Act I

We open on a courthouse in Shanghai. A Qing magistrate announces the jail sentences of nine foreign mercenaries, all for the crime of conspiring to incite a revolution against the Empire. He ends by declaring a generous bounty for the head of the leader of the would-be rebellion: one Wong Chin Foo.

Wong Chin Foo awakes on the SS MacGregor, an American steamer bound for San Francisco. While on the ship, he notices an older Chinese woman corporally punishing a young girl. He tracks the girl down later, and, upon questioning her, discovers that she and thirteen other girls are on the ship against their will, bound for a life of prostitution in San Francisco Chinatown. Unbeknownst to their handlers, Wong introduces himself to the other girls. Ever the talker, he cannot help but recount his failed revolution in Qing China, but he also learns their stories and sympathizes with them. He decides to take action.

Plot Point 1: Upon the ship’s arrival in San Francisco Bay, a letter is smuggled from the MacGregor to the local police. After reading it and learning of the fourteen enslaved women, the police arrive at the docks to intercept the girls as they come ashore.

Act II

The police are able to bring the girls to the station without incident. Although six girls opt to return to their handlers, eight choose the protection of the Chinese Domestic Mission. They leave the station to find a growing crowd of reporters outside. The police decline to answer the question of who tipped them off the fourteen girls on the MacGregor, but one of the girls offers them a name: “Wong Chin Foo.”

Reporters quickly arrive at Wong’s new residence in San Francisco. Although he encounters a good deal of racism from the reporters, he finds he likes the attention from the media, and he becomes the hero of the Chronicle’s story on the girls’ rescue. During the interviews for the article, one of the reporters indicates interest in doing a more in-depth profile of Wong.

The next day, the story of the MacGregor girls hits the city. San Franciscans are intrigued by the portrait of a remarkably articulate, sharp member of their racial underclass. However, the article also comes to the attention of the Hip Yee Tong, one of San Francisco Chinatown’s most powerful criminal organizations. Its main business is prostitution, and it does not take interference in that business kindly.

Midpoint: The head of the Hip Yee Tong places an offer of $1,500 for Wong’s assassination. The Tong also enlists the services of Chee Ah Lung, a legendary assassin.

As Chee stalks Wong, Wong meets with the reporter from the Chronicle. The reporter does not seem to have much respect for the Chinese, but Wong sees an opportunity to construct a narrative for himself and voice his ideas about rights for Chinese Americans. In the following interview sessions, Wong tells his story: his family’s ruin during the Taiping Rebellion, his upbringing by Baptist missionaries and subsequent education in America, his return to China and attempt to the start a family, and finally the ill-fated putsch that led to his exile to the States. He also speaks at length about his vision for equal rights for Chinese Americans and the eradication of vice from the Chinatowns.

As he settles into the city, Wong continues to take a very personal stake in advocating for the Chinese. He accompanies a friend, a fellow passenger on the MacGregor, to a shoe factory to convince the managerial staff to promote him. The white managers, however, refuse to have a Chinese foreman. Wong heatedly argues on the behalf of his friend.

Plot Point 2: Chee strikes when Wong is in the factory. In gaining access to the building, however, he alerts the Chinese laborers to Wong’s presence. Aware of the generous bounty for Wong’s assassination, the laborers mob Chee’s target. They beat him but fail to kill him, and Chee flees when the police arrive.

Act III

Convalescing from the assassination attempt at the factory, Wong learns that his Chronicle profile has been published. The story, entitled “A Remarkable Chinaman,” is huge success, rapidly becoming syndicated across the country. At a time when anti-Chinese sentiment is rampant, Wong’s ideas are controversial and compelling. Overnight, he has become a celebrity.

Knowing that he is no longer safe in San Francisco, Wong embarks on a speaking tour of the country, embracing his destiny as an advocate for Chinese American civil rights.

Cast of Characters:

Wong Chin Foo, the MacGregor girls, the Hip Yee Tong, Chee Ah Lung, the Chronicle reporter, Wong’s friend at the shoe factory

Wong Chin Foo, the Jack Sparrow of Chinese American Civil Rights

Major Turning Points

Wong helping liberate the girls, the Hip Yee Tong deciding to assassinate Wong, Wong agreeing to the Chronicle interview, the assassination attempt, the publication of the Chronicle article

Resources

http://www.chineseamericanheroes.org/heroes/2013/Wong_Chin_Foo-1.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wong_Chin_Foo

The First Chinese American: The Remarkable Life of Wong Chin Foo by Scott D. Seligman

Reflections

The Chinese American community is commonly characterized as not being politically active or vocal, but we have an incredibly compelling inspirational figure in Wong Chin Foo. Wong Chin Foo’s loud-mouthed, brave and deeply flawed character would be a great subject for a graphic novel. This project also offers the chance to draw 19th century San Francisco and the seedy underworld of its Chinatown.

Some problems I see with this project: there is really not much information on this incident, and the available histories don’t really flesh out any side characters. However, I think some creative liberties could account for this and make this crime drama even more exciting.

Pitch: The Farm

So I did this in LaTex--I'll go through and redo the formatting for Blogger after class maybe.


\section*{Pitch}
We see the beginning, middle, and not-quite-over-yet end of a commune in Tennessee called The Farm. Through the eyes of a young idealist, we watch as infrastructures are set down and principles are lifted up, organizations are formed and children are born, love is found and love is lost, and 420 hippies from California are shown how to make tofu. The fervent idealism of the 70s is examined from within--the ways it did and did not succeed, and how it influenced us as children of the 90s. We examine the commune as it struggles through the decades with this question: How do we change the world?

\section*{Background}
Here is how Wikipedia describes the Farm: ``The Farm is an intentional community in Lewis County, Tennessee...based on principles of nonviolence and respect for the Earth. It was founded in 1971 by Stephen Gaskin and 420 San Francisco hippies.''


\section*{Act 1: The Caravan}

We meet Stephen Gaskin and his family, living in a converted school bus. There's a lot of pretty art and dialogue that familiarizes us with the early seventies--the Vietnam war, Woodstock, Apollo 8, the Stonewall riots, college shootings, the creation of the EPA, weird hair, acid--all of these things that are happening of which the reader should be reminded. The narrator is a ghost at this point--we are cruising through, looking at Gaskin as a legend instead of a man.

\section*{Plot Point 1}

\\ October 12th, 1970: Stephen Gaskin and his swarm of San Francisco hippies hit the road in anything that will roll. Gaskin has been invited on a speaking tour, but at some point his entourage stops being a bunch of hippies on wheels and becomes the Caravan. Our protagonist, A Female Character, stumbles into this community while hitchhiking, and decides to stay on. She has run away from college and her overbearing boyfriend and parents. This is the point at which our story becomes personal--instead of being broadly about the injustices of the era (most if not all of which are still pertinent today), the focus narrows to the community A Female Character has just joined.

\section*{Act 2: The Farm}

Gaskin and the hippies set up camp in Lewis County, Tennessee. They're vegan. They're faced with Herculean workloads. They start growing soybeans. They're also feminist, so the commune becomes a mental boot camp--there's a tent called the ``Rock Tumbler" where arrogant guys with ``rough edges'' can go to get sorted out. A Female Character falls in love, which is probably inevitable. But it's lean and hard-going and even a pretty face can't distract her from the thought that the commune might fail.

\section*{Midpoint: Harvest!}

1973: The Farm can make tofu! Life improves. It's spring, it's beautiful, even if the commune's marijuana growers are still in jail. Everybody goes on a ``grass fast'' and Coke and Dr Pepper become the drugs of choice. A Female Character starts to see sharp edges in the commune, as if all this talk about treating one another right doesn't work as well as she had hoped. Gaskin is a far-away, almost religious figure. In the midst of heady springtime tofu love, A Female Character and her Love Interest get into a fight about a condom, which she isn't supposed to use as part of the rules of the commune. He dumps her--but we'll have to find a more enlightened word for it. She is crushed.

\section*{Act 3: The Changeover}

1983: The Farm is in debt, and the growing population cannot supply the workers that the commune needs. The Farm changes its policy so that its members must support themselves on their own incomes, which is almost impossible for most, given the barrenness of Lewis County. There's implication of foul play on Gaskin's end. A Female Character has left, unable to deal with the heartbreak she met after the Midpoint. She watches as most of the commune, friends and strangers, leaves in what they term ``the Exodus.''

\section*{Plot Point 2}

A Female Character finished school, became a doctor, and now kicks butts on all levels. She misses the commune but prefers the freedom of her life. She overhears that Gaskin has steered the Farm back to its original purpose--sustainability and charity work come again to the forefront. One day she gets an email inviting her to volunteer with a group of Farm members in her area. She goes, sees a very dear, familiar face (maybe her best friend from that time.) They hug, end.
\\
\section*{Reflections, Major Turning Points, and Cast of Characters}

Reflections: The seventies are rich with the juxtaposition between young, hip ideals and horrific realities. There's a lot of opportunity for storytelling in 70s history, as well as for delicious art--hippie communes, goats, brightly painted buses, women with flowers in their hair, tinted sunglasses, backbreaking farm work, endless plumes of marijuana smoke...I also think that the eager activism of the Farm mirrors what my generation is dealing with today. Today, there's a lot of talk about problems but not very much action, and Farm is exciting because it was an action towards \textit{something}, even if some of its members weren't sure what that was. It's also an opportunity to show the flimsiness of ideals, which is as much a problem today as in the 70s, especially in the case of feminism. The story is challenging, though, because its plot is not clearly delineated--it is the rise and semi-fall of an organization but also of an individual--and whether its protagonist is the Farm itself or A Female Character will have to be answered before beginning.

\section*{Major Turning Points} Joining the Caravan, the Caravan putting down roots, the Farm's first successful harvest, the Exodus, the Farm's return to social activism
\section*{Cast of Characters} Stephen Gaskin and his family, 420 San Francisco hippies, A Female Character, Her Best Friend, A Love Interest.

\section*{Sources}

Wikipedia!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The[underscore]Farm[underscore](Tennessee)#Changes
\\The Farm's website: http://www.thefarm.org/lifestyle/index.html
\\``American Commune,'' a documentary about the Farm: http://www.americancommunemovie.com/film-synopsis/
\\A memoir of the Farm by John Coate: http://cervisa.com/stories/farm.txt
\\Also, a good fictional rendering of a commune: ``Drop City'' by T.C. Boyle

Less Than Whole                                                                                                                           Naomi Lattanzi

(alt. title: Section 504)

Pitch: “We will not tolerate a society that sees us as less than whole people.” Before the disability rights movement in the 1960s and 70s, people with disabilities were barred from fully participating in many areas of society—jobs, universities, even public education facilities were at best segregated. When the President broke his promise to sign into law anti-discrimination policy for disabled people, protestors launched one of the largest disabled rights demonstrations in history. For 28 days, 150 people with disabilities staged a sit-in for their right to be treated as human beings. Today, the results of their bravery can be seen on every college campus, bus stop and city block throughout the country.

Background:

In the early 1800s, and well into the 1900s, people with disabilities were stereotypically viewed as pathetic, subhuman beings unable to take care of themselves or lead “full lives.” This attitude was reflected in the government’s lack of any laws protecting the rights of disabled people. In the 1960s and ‘70s, paralleling other movements for civil rights, grassroots groups of people with disabilities lobbied for laws protecting their right to accessible education, jobs, and living situations. Section 504 was a law intended to stop discrimination based on disability, but President Jimmy Carter initially refused to sign it with all the original provisions. Grassroots organizations across the country protested the watering down of Section 504. Protestors who “sat-in” San Francisco endured squalid living conditions and sleepless nights for nearly a month in order to ensure that everyone in America, no matter what their physical, mental, emotional or social differences, would be able to access a better standard of life.

Act I

Through the eyes of the main characters, we see the early days of the disability rights movement—and why it was so necessary.

Judith Heumann, born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, is diagnosed with polio at a young age. She is initially segregated in schools from children without disabilities, but in high school she is placed in unsegregated classes. The other students are not prepared to face her, and although they interact in class, there is a clear divide outside the classroom. The night of her graduation, her principal refuses to let her participate because he doesn't want her to be carried to the stage in her wheelchair. After discussing with her parents, he allows her to participate, but she is shaken by the experience.

Kitty Cone, whose father served two stints in the army, “walked funny” as a kid. She was initially diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and through her father’s insurance was treated in army hospitals. As a kid, she was “stripped naked in front of a classroom full of medical personnel” while they discussed what her disability might be. She was given walking casts to wear all the time. Since her family had an unofficial policy to never complain of pain or painful feelings, she accepted her disability and tried not to dwell on negative emotions. When finally diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at age 15, she “seemed a little subdued for a day or two, and then now she’s back to normal and trying to figure out how to get out of doing her algebra homework”—recorded in a letter from her aunt.

Ed Roberts and his entire family contract polio when he is 14. He is the only one who does not fully recover. The doctor predicts that he will be a vegetable. Reflecting later, he decides “if I’m a vegetable, I’m going to be an artichoke, prickly on the outside, with a big heart in the middle.” Initially living on an iron lung, he used respirators to breathe and also learned to “frog breathe” on his own to survive long airplane flights, river rafting, places he couldn’t bring his respirator. Although he was accepted to UC Berkeley, the college would not initially let him attend because “his iron lung would not fit in a dorm room.” Later, he and several other severely disabled students managed to attend. They dubbed themselves “the rolling quads.”

Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter criticizes President Gerald Ford for failing to uphold the 1973 law intended to protect people with disabilities from discrimination. He promises to uphold the law (Section 504) before his election. It is a time of great hope for American people with disabilities.

Plot Point 1: Newly elected President Jimmy Carter goes back on his word, and attempts to change Section 504 and weaken its language, weakening the promised protections for people with disabilities. Protests explode across the country, with marches and sit-ins in different cities. People in wheelchairs chain themselves to the front of government buildings, to each others’ bodies, are arrested as they crawl towards the front doors.

Act II

 A group of protestors begin to occupy the Health Education and Welfare building in San Francisco in a “sit-in” protest. 75 people originally begin the sit-in, with numbers swelling to 150 as their vigil continues.

Hygiene is bad and accessibility to the building is worse. The protestors rely on Black Panther members outside the building who prepare two hot meals a day. Although the members are tired, dirty, barely able to sleep in the rough conditions, there is an atmosphere of hope and energy within the building. They hold daily meetings to go over why they are protesting, bolstering morale. Sometimes they sing.

Midpoint: 10 days in. The vigil is beginning to wear on the protestors, physically and emotionally. Many have crabs from the lack of hygiene. Although they believe in what they are doing, it’s inevitable that some are disheartened by their circumstances. Some may even wish to leave the sit-in, but of course they can’t leave under their own power—the building has no elevators. Ed Roberts gives a speech to motivate the protestors. “We, who are considered the weakest, the most helpless people in our society, are the strongest and will not tolerate segregation, will not tolerate a society which sees us as less than whole people.”

Plot Point 2: Members of Congress arrive in San Francisco to hold a press conference with the demonstrators. After their press conference, in which 150 dirty, exhausted disabled people steam-rollered congressmen with informed, well-thought-out opinions, the discussion moved to New York. In April 1977, Section 504 was passed with the original stipulations.

Act III

After the passing of Section 504, the protestors go their separate ways, but continue to work for greater rights for their community.

 Judith Heumann is part of an organization to develop the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) statute, working closely with the government. She is occasionally frustrated with the ignorance of those she negotiates with—they ask if she can make it to their offices across the street, and visit her in her office to negotiate. As higher-ranking officials, she should be the one to go to their offices. (source calisphere interview)

Kitty Cone works briefly at a center devoted to putting the policies of Section 504 into action and making transportation more accessible. She faces a lot of bureaucratic obstruction, lack of resources for the project, and drama within the organization, but manages to lobby for accessible buses.

Ed Roberts becomes the first disabled person to win a John D. and Catherine MacArthur fellowship, and founds the World Institute on Disability, a research and policy organization dedicated to “looking at issues through the lens of the disability experience.” Its crowning achievement was the inclusion of in-home service options in Medicaid, so that people with disabilities could be supported within their own homes.

Cast of Characters: Kitty Cone, Judith Heumann, Ed Roberts, Black Panther members, President Jimmy Carter, possible composite characters

Major Turning Points: Jimmy Carter’s failed promise, the squalor of the building, Ed Roberts’s speech, the passing of Section 504

Resources:

http://www.itvs.org/films/lives-worth-living

http://www.rollingrains.com/archives/000513.html

http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt1w1001mt;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00019&toc.depth=1&toc.id=div00019&brand=calisphere

http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb9v19p0k9;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00064&toc.depth=1&toc.id=div00064&brand=calisphere

http://www.wherevertheresafight.com/timeline/issue/disability_rights

http://static.stanford.edu/2014/09/29/lack-sessibility-at-stanford/

http://www.wid.org/about-wid/booklet%20with%20speech.pdf

http://www.ala.org/aasl/sites/ala.org.aasl/files/content/aaslpubsandjournals/slr/vol13/SLR_SeeingDifferent.pdf

Reflections:

One of the strongest points about this story is that it’s one that is relatively unknown—most people are somewhat aware of the accommodations provided by schools and in public areas, but have no idea of the struggle required to win these concessions from the government. Our history books detail the Civil Rights Movement with focuses on women’s groups, racial groups, voting rights, but rarely mention this intersectional movement for the rights of disabled people. Also, while there are recently more disabled characters visible within the graphic novel genre, they tend to be little more than tropes—the “evil” disabled person, the inspirational story, own worst enemy, etc.

This will be a visually interesting project because we can mess with panels, structures, story-boards to try and express human limitation. It will be interesting to think of ways to represent the ways American society segregated and dehumanized (and in some ways continues to dehumanize) people with disabilities.

One challenge I foresee with this story is how to sensitively portray these characters without trying to idealize them or make their disabilities the main part of their personality. In my research for this pitch, I found websites with incredibly detailed interviews of three of the main figures for this movement, so hopefully in reading their stories, hearing their voices, we can get a better idea of how to best represent their struggles.

Althea's pitch: Essential Blackness (The Negritude Movement)

Essential Blackness

Pitch

The 1930’s mark the beginning of a turbulent age in France. A group of three young, black intellectuals, sent to Paris to study at university from their home colonies in Africa, begin meeting at the tea-shop Clamart Salon. Through the shop’s owners, the Nardal sisters, they discover the Harlem Renaissance, which in turn inspires the trio to analyze their race, identities, and the moral backbone of the stratified French society. These students, known as les trois peres (the three fathers), publish multiple literary journals and magazines and found the Negritude movement — an intellectual and literary movement characterized by anticolonialism; Marxism; the rejection of Western domination; and pride in and valorization of African history, traditions, and beliefs. The story pits the turbulent development of the protagonist’s personal identities against the backdrop of an intellectual revolution, questions of moral imperatives to action, and violent anticolonial wars across the globe.

Background

The 1930’s marks the height of the French colonial empire in Africa. During this time, wealthy Africans send their children to university in Paris. These students felt caught between two worlds: on one hand, they were part of the cultural elite — they were rich, educated — but on the other hand, they identified strongly with the countries they hailed from and came face to face with the unjust reality of colonization. Their movement, the Negritude movement, was both a literary reclamation of African culture and a political movement that played a major role in the political downfall of the French empire as the country headed into the bitter wars in Vietnam and Algeria. This is especially relevant because the group had been criticized by some of being too militant, and the members then had to face the reality of a violent revolution.

Cast of Characters

 

Aime Cesaire: A poet, playwright, politician, and insomniac from Martinique. In Paris, he discovered the black community and “rediscovered Africa.” He is upset with the purpose of colonialism. He believes in finding. Black self-determination and finding new genres of representation.

Leopold Senghor: Poet and later the first president of Senegal. He advocates the modern incorporation of the expression and celebration of traditional African customsHe is regarded as one of the most important African intellectuals of the 20^th century.

 Leon-Gontran Damas: French poet and politician hailing from French Guiana.  In his writing he reflects on alienation, loss, and racial persecution in relation to communism. He later enlisted in the French Army during WWII, served in the French National Assembly, and became a professor at Howard University.

The Nardal Sisters: Paulette (pictured) and Jane Nardal from Martinique. These two were the social center of one of the most important black diasporic intellectual circles in Paris. They introduced les trois peres to the Harlem Renaissance, were among the first women of African descent to be educated in the French colonial system, and were hosts of the Sunday salon at Clamart.

Major Turning Points

The group’s discovery of the Harlem Renaissance, The publishing of the first issue of L’Etudiant Noir, The group’s separation (Coincides with WWII).

The story arc, rather than a three-act with a climax and resolution, is more a gradual escalation of uneasiness.

Act 1

Start with the les trois peres at the Clamart Salon, with Aime Cesaire and Leopold Senghor in the midst of an intense debate about the role of a citizen.

Reset to a few months ago. 1935, Aime Cesaire, 22 years old, has recently passed the entrance exam to école normale supérieure (ENS), a publicly funded school for higher education. He joins his old friend Leon Damas, from Martinique. Damas had had a difficult transition

Aime then meets Leopold Senghor, 29 years old and a professor at the universities of Tours and Paris. He becomes a mentor to Aime — they read books together and discuss them thoroughly. Leopold had also had a difficult transition, as he describes: “I disembarked one morning in Paris in a cold rain and October sky. And everything was gray, even the famous monuments! What a deception!”

Aime is stunned to find out that there is a thriving, intellectual black community in Paris. He begins to question his status in society and what this means for his identity.

Historical Backdrop: Hitler has ordered German rearmament. American Jazz has taken a strong hold on France and now has its own character. 

Aime is anxious. As an insomniac, he ends up staying up late into the night. Through his worrying we get a basic understanding of where his opposition to French colonialism is coming from and how he feels torn by his high social status but his race prevents him from becoming a full French citizen.

Plot Point 1

The Nardal Sisters notice Aime’s anxieties and offer him the writings of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. His life is CHANGED.

Act 2

The three meet again to discuss their discoveries. It becomes clear that the three men have different but compatible views.

Talk of war stirs among the populous. The French Africans have a difficult place in this society. Their citizenship, according to French colonial law “was not a right, but rather a privilege.” Someone of African descent has their citizenship determined through committee.

Damas considers attaining French citizenship. He and Aime have a discussion about “cultural citizenship.”

Meanwhile, they live between two worlds. On one hand, they read the works of great Western philosophers who approach he topic of race with varying decrees of ineptitude. On the other, they live within the thriving black intellectual world of Paris — people of all nationalities engaged culturally and politically.

Aime comes up with the term Negritude, in part an attempt to reclaim the term “Negre.” Cesaire proudly uses this to name their movement. Their movement grows increasingly confrontational and direct.

Midpoint

They publish L’Etudiant noir, a celebration of the diversity of thought within their movement.

The three have an intense debate about the meaning of citizenship in light of modernity. Senghor’s stance is that it’s not just about essentializing black life, but about political assimilation, as opposed to cultural assimilation. This is held in opposition to “Black Republicanism,” which calls French Republicanism “the new tyranny.”

They get criticized for being too militant, which makes sense because of the rising tensions.

During this time, Aime goes through what he later calls a “psychological breakdown. The colonial student life takes a great emotional toll on him. He “loses perspective.”

Aime meets Suzanne Roussi, a writer in her own right. (It would be interesting to find a way to compare their ways of thinking.)

Plot Point 2

WWII begins, and the trio’s separation begins.

Act 3

Aime marries and leaves with Suzanne to return to Martinique. WWII is a fruitful intellectual time for Aime. He and Suzanne found Tropiques, he becomes a teacher and teaches Franz Fanon, and later is elected mayor of Fort-de-France.

Senghor and Damas are both enlisted into the French Army during WWII. We can show their first reactions to violence.

Resources

The French Imperial Nation-State by Gary Wilder — A thorough text on the movement, which describes their philosophical and political stances but also goes into detail of their lives during the beginning of the movement.

“Les Soeurs Nardal and the Clamart Salon: Content and Context of La Revue du monde noir, 1931-1932) from Negritude Movement by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting

Cesaire, Senghor, and Damas all have collections of poetry and were prolific essayists. 

Althea is a hoarder who kept all of her notes from Intro to CSRE in pdf form.

https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/callaloo/v036/36.2.church.pdf (A biography of the Nardal Sisters)

Relevant Materials

Dear White People (upcoming film)

Les Miserable (film and book)

Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou

Fun Home or Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel

Asterios Polyp, City of Glass by David Mazzuchelli

Reflections

While this is a hella historical story, the issues that the Negritude movement discusses—issues of race, citizenship, colonialism, and globalization — are all extremely relevant to today, especially in light of racial tensions and injustices in America. It’s an important story because it provides a great commentary on modern activism — it shows that a movement can have a multitude of different perspectives, can exist without “exciting” moments like protests, and is influenced directly by the cultural moment outside of those specific people.

More research is needed before we can find a specific “narrative arc” for the story. Moments are there, but it’s important to try to contextualize the story in terms of the human experience of our protagonists. I’ve found a lot of information about the characters, ranging from their emotional breakdowns, their writings on their specific thoughts at the time, etc. There’s a LOT of material that just needs to be boiled down.

Visually, this story is amazing because:

1.     There are relatively few main characters who are all lively, different, and interesting as people.

2.     The setting, 1930s France, is concrete and easy to find materials for, as are all of the actual places these characters inhabited.

3.     The challenge is to find ways to showcase the intellectual/philosophical arguments between our three characters. However, the Negritude movement and the Harlem Renaissance are both very visual movements as well, and we can draw stylistic decisions from both.

Despite these, here have only ever been very dry academic studies of this movement. Finding the human story — an immigrant scholar trying to figure out the meaning of his citizenship in relation to his race and origins — will make this story relevant to today’s reader. Their story gives historical context to transnational stories of people today, and I believe that this is an important story for the graphic novel project to tell.