Abina And The Important Men Summary

Written by Trevor R. Getz, and Liz Clarke, Abina and the Important Men is a novel about a young slave named Abina and her journey to freedom and bringing justice to herself. The novel takes place in a courtroom setting, Abina being the plaintiff and her master. Quamina Eddoo, being the defendant. Abina is attempting to press charges that she was treated poorly as a slave. She was successful at pressing charges and gaining her freedom. The authors took the transcript of the trail and made it into a captivating graphic novel of her story. The novel is thought to be a history about “women without history” and a historical production.
Several individual parts of the novel have different purposes and effects. Part 1 is the graphic history of the court case itself consisting of elaborate pictures and dialogues and thoughts. Part 2 was the transcript that the court case was based on. It consists of individual dialogues of the

The authors try to give Abina a opinion by filling in the empty spaces of the court transcript, which was actually a transliteration of what Abina said. Part IV of the book explains the problems they faced while trying to give Abina an opinion. For example, problems like reconstructing the way Abina talked and looked, and decoding the significance of the removal of Abina's beads, were some of the many issues that the authors had to explore and reinterpret in their own way.
Abina and the Important Men is, in a sense, a reinterpretation like African oral retelling tradition. With most oral traditions, history is told my mouth and over time stories can change very much from the original and true story, therefore, the authors have made it possible to be able to tell the story in a way that can not be twisted over time. Although they told history in the novel, they definitely add their own touches to history. The authors are well aware of this issue, as it forms the topic for Part