A graphic novel in four linked stories, drawn in stark black-and-white dry-brush, about enslaved Africans in colonial Brazil who resist, flee, or strike back. On sugarcane plantations, lovers Valu and Nana face the choice between the relative safety of the plantation kitchen and a run for freedom; other characters answer enslavement with revenge, suicide, or flight into the jungle toward quilombos, the maroon communities of escaped slaves. D'Salete, a São Paulo art historian and teacher, researched Afro-Brazilian history for the book, and brief touches of the supernatural, rooted in African and Afro-Brazilian belief, run through the realism. One of the first comics works to confront Brazil's long-minimized history of slavery from the victims' perspective, it was nominated for Brazil's leading comics awards before its international success in translation.
Author: Marcelo D'Salete · Original publisher: Veneta (São Paulo), 2014 — as Cumbe, in Brazilian Portuguese
