Operation Legacy and Other Stories: Graphic Histories from Africa

A narrative of enslavement, a satire on colonialism, and a court battle for justice by those tortured and detained during the fight for independence from colonial rule: three comics depict key moments in African history.

Three unique narratives depicted in comic-book form introduce readers to African historical narratives. In one, readers are offered a translation of a short story, turned into a comic, that satirizes the colonization of Africa by depicting Europeans as cats and Africans as mice. The cats wish to feast on the mice and so create an elaborate ruse by proclaiming that they can turn the inferior mice into cats via education and medication, a ruse that is finally discovered by the mice, who rise up against the cats. In a second, readers are offered a deconstruction of a slave narrative, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano. Several historians weigh in to evaluate the memoirs of Olaudah Equiana and decipher whether his claims are true or false; nevertheless, despite some problematic aspects of his narrative and questions that remain as to its veracity, the effect it had on the abolitionist movement is without question. And finally, the third comic details how ordinary Kenyans who had been tortured and abused by the British government during the Kenyan fight for independent from colonial rule were able to obtain justice, decades later, from a British court of law.