So it was back to college and Hall attained a PhD in 2004. She felt the need to get to the root of what she saw as the racial issues “warping the world” – and made the life-changing decision to quit her job and dedicate herself to the study of chattel slavery. I’m the attorney for the plaintiff,” she would bellow. Sometimes she would walk into a courtroom and be directed to the defendant’s chair. Racism and sexism were everywhere in the justice system, she says. But toward the end of the 1990s she became disillusioned. Now 58, she worked as a tenants’ rights lawyer in Berkeley, California. Hence the title of the book – Wake – which Hall says is intended to play on the meaning of a wake at a funeral, or the wake of a slave ship.īefore becoming a historian, Hall says her life was like living in that wake. “It’s also about growing up in the wake of slavery – which is traumatic,” she says. “The combination provides a way to look almost simultaneously into the past and the present, which was crucial for this story because it’s about haunting and the relationship between slavery, the United States and the current issues that we have today. The characters – including herself as narrator – are brought to comic-strip life with black and white illustrations and speech bubbles in the work of New Orleans artist Hugo Martínez. You look at the picture, the art, and you can see what’s happening,” Hall says. Rebecca Hall’s grandmother, Harriet Thorpe, back row, left, with her sisters.
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