Joel Christian Gill Books

"Joel Christian Gills shows how ordinary people fight for our collective liberation and whose stories are not often at the forefront of our historical consciousness.” —Ibram X. Kendi, author of  How to Be an AntiracistDo you know the story of the slave who sailed himself to freedom? For the third book in the bestselling Tales of the Talented Tenth series, Joel Christian Gill brings Robert Smalls to life by telling the true story of the enslaved African who pulled off one of the most daring and largest heists of the Civil War. Come along for the adventure as Robert earns a job working for the C.S.S. Planter , escapes to freedom, goes on to become a first-generation Black politician, and makes history by writing and leading the passage of legislation that led to the United States’ first free and compulsory public school system.Tales of the Talented Tenth is a historical comic series that focuses on the adventures of amazing African Americans in action.

A New York Times Best Graphic Novel of 2020 YALSA 2021 Great Graphic Novels for Teens 2021 Cartoonists Prize for Print Comics 2021 Eisner Awards Best Publication for Teens Nominee Fights is the visceral and deeply affecting memoir of artist/author Joel Christian Gill, chronicling his youth and coming of age as a Black child in a chaotic landscape of rough city streets and foreboding backwoods. Propelled into a world filled with uncertainty and desperation, young Joel is pushed toward using violence to solve his problems by everything and everyone around him. But fighting doesn’t always yield the best results for a confused and sensitive kid who yearns for a better, more fulfilling life than the one he was born into, as Joel learns in a series of brutal conflicts that eventually lead him to question everything he has learned about what it truly means to fight for one’s life. "FIGHTS is somehow brutally raw, funny as hell, deeply sensitive and insightful in each panel." –– Nate Powell (March trilogy)

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A striking graphic novel edition of the National Book Award-winning history of how racist ideas have shaped American life—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist. NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD Racism has persisted throughout history—but so have antiracist efforts to dismantle it. Through deep research and a gripping narrative that illuminates the lives of five key American figures, preeminent historian Ibram X. Kendi reveals how understanding and improving the world cannot happen without identifying and facing the racist forces that shape it. In collaboration with award-winning historian and comic artist Joel Christian Gill, this stunningly illustrated graphic-novel adaptation of Dr. Kendi’s groundbreaking Stamped from the Beginning explores, with vivid clarity and dimensionality, the living history of America, and how we can learn from the past to work toward a more equitable, antiracist future.