history geek

I majored in history. (And art history, but that was a different story, one you can read about in my viz arts column this week.)

I wrote my senior thesis on how the religious right of the 1980s stole civil disobedience tactics of the civil rights movements of the 1960s. I studied Students for a Democratic Society (including the amazing Port Huron Statement); the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Richard Viguerie and his tactics; Operation Rescue and the Christian Coalition etc. ( I even interlibrary-loan-requested and read Jerry Falwell's dissertation). Sometimes I was elated, sometimes I was sickened. But it was one of the more intellectually demanding times of my life, which means some of it is seared into my brain.

Also? I like graphic novels.

So today, when Molly opened some of the pile o' packages waiting for her and we got Harvey Pekar's new Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History AND Rick Geary's new J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography, I about swooned with joy.

History! Comix! Wowzers!

I need to read Perry Moore's Hero first, and then I can get to these two. Hm, YA gay superhero novel or comic-book depiction of the Weathermen? Damn, it's hard to decide.

Of course, this may trouble my vow not to review in 2008 anything written by a straight white American man. Or perhaps I meant "not review in the print version of the paper anything in 2008 written by etc."

That reminds me: First book review of the year will be on Jan. 17 (for me; Molly has a review Jan. 3), and I'm planning to review Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun. The publisher says, "A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by the Washington Post Book World as 'the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,' Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed."

Hm. I seem to be back to history. Awesome.