Firebrands
Portraits from the Americas
Justseed Artists' Cooperative
Edited by Shawn Slifer and Bec Young
at Amazon
Microcosm Publishing
File Under: Biography, Art, Fight the Power

This is a great book. The introduction says this book is:

"For all our ancestors, especially those misrepresented in those textbooks, left out because they were too brown, too female, too poor, too queer, too uneducated, too disabled, or because they daydreamed too much.".

I think that sums things up rather nicely. Basically this book is a compilation of radical thinkers and doers who have stood up for what they have believed in no matter the cost. Each entry has a great one page drawing depicting them and a one page biography telling us why they are important. For the most part these folks are left out of the history books. Those that are included like John Brown or Muhammad Ali are included in main stream history books as such small blurbs that a lot of their importance is lost.

You will know of some of the people listed here like the aforementioned John Brown, Muhammad Ali, Fred Hampton and Geronimo, but there are many folks here like Pablo Neruda that I was less familiar with.

My only regret is that I wish that some of the drawings were available as posters.

Bonus Material

Here is a video of The Justseeds Artists' Cooperative installing a show in Milwaukee.