In My Name is Marcus, Philp, a longtime Garvey scholar has written a factual account of Garvey’s life that is powerful as it is unsentimental. Boldly illustrated by a talented creative team (Shaquille Cross, Marcel Hemmings, Richard Kentish, Djet Layne, Mikel Miller, Davia Morris, and Michael Robinson), My Name is Marcus is a first-person narrative of Garvey’s childhood into adulthood effectively using the graphic novel format to immerse the reader in Garvey’s world.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher Blue Banyan Books in return for my unbiased review.
Using believable dialogue peppered with excerpts from Garvey’s actual words, Philp effectively embodies Garvey’s voice, and from the very beginning, readers experience the dichotomy of joy and sorrow which dogged Garvey’s life and fueled him to stand up for himself and others against the harsh realities he faced as a Black person in the Caribbean, the UK, and the US. For example, in the opening scenes, we find Garvey enjoying a game of Shark with friends while encountering racism and colorism from the very people he calls friends. Similarly, Philp in Garvey’s voice, presents Garvey’s positive relationships with his mother, uncle, and others alongside the toxic relationships with his father, his first wife, and many others in his life.
We see how Garvey’s pursuit of knowledge through books and specifically, his reading about Africa transformed his views of himself and his Blackness. He discovers that pre-colonialism, “In these kingdoms of Africa, we had scientists, writers, and mathematicians who has made advances while European nations were emerging from caves” and decides that “we (of African descent) were once a great people and would be great again.”
My Name is Marcus joins the growing canon of children’s books that resists the notion that children cannot handle difficult topics and instead, presents the realities of Garvey’s life in a way that illustrates the power of knowledge to replace fear with a strong sense of self and a determination to make a mark on the world.
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