Abstract Founded in 1979, World War 3 Illustrated has played a central role in radical comic art with its annual, artist-driven productions.
Abstract This article aims to analyze the exhaustion experienced by Black women in Brazil, a segment of the population that continues to occupy the base of the country’s social pyramid, facing the worst social and economic indicators. Although the topic is vast and deserves extensive research, this article seeks to start from a common point shared by Brazilian Black women—fatigue—in order to more systematically reflect on the experience of exhaustion among Black women who have made significant contributions to Brazilian literature. To this end, the works of Carolina Maria de Jesus and Conceição Evaristo will be examined through an analytical approach that seeks to explore how the act of writing can serve both as a source of fatigue and as a potential means of coping with the shared exhaustion experienced by Black Brazilian women.
Abstract Nested in the theoretical framework of Alice Walker’s 1974 essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” this research analyzes the life and work of North Carolina artist Minnie Evans (1892–1987) to contemplate causations for the lost potential of female African American artists. Evans’s exposure to white violence as a survivor of the 1898 Wilmington massacre and coup d’état is considered, as are the deleterious effects of white supremacy and the ways it intertwined with capitalism to exhaust Black women. Evans toiled as a domestic laborer for decades in the depths of the Jim Crow South. Eventually, she secured employment as the gatekeeper of Wilmington’s Airlie Gardens, one of the South’s most magnificent green spaces. Evans utilized this inspirational setting and more restful role to unlock her artistic talent. As her rest increased, so did the production of her art. This study of Evans sheds light on obstacles that African American women faced in exploring their creativity and realizing their artistic dreams in twentieth-century America.
Abstract This essay discusses Rebecca Hall’s Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts (2021), a genre-bending graphic novel-history-memoir, reflecting on its strengths as a teaching resource. It grapples with the exceptional qualities of the text, while also situating the work within a relatively recent tradition of classroom-friendly graphic novels that get at “difficult” history through a potent blend of historical research, personal narrative, and critical reflection on power and the production of history. The author parallels the ways Wake might be considered “subversive” with the ways recent grassroots movements to topple monuments to white supremacy and foreground African American history in public education have also been maligned and dismissed in mainstream discourse in the United States.
Abstract China’s lying-flat (tangping) movement, which first emerged in 2021, is as much a critical rejection of the historical ideology of diligence and the contemporary regime of hard work as it is a creative reimagination of work and rest. This article examines both the sociopolitical and artistic aspects of the lying-flat movement. First, it analyzes the use of body images by the movement to criticize toxic work cultures and vindicate workers’ right to rest. Then, it traces the ideological construction of diligence in China’s prolonged intellectual history to illuminate the obstacles facing the lying-flat generation in their attempt to change hustle culture. The demystification of diligence underlies the movement, as overworked youths refuse to keep making personal sacrifices for postponed rewards to benefit “the greater good.” The conclusion investigates three popular media representations of farming to demonstrate how labor is reimagined by the lying-flat generation. The fantasy of farming in rural lifestyle vlogs, farming fiction, and farming reality shows centers on immediate gratification and playfulness to constitute a creative space for China’s burned-out youths to escape and recover from hard work. The body at rest is thus conceptualized as a critical and creative force of life.
