Fist Stick Knife Gun Graphic Novel

by Geoffrey Canada, Jamar Nicholas (Illustrator)

Overview

Long before U.S. News and World Report named him one of America's Best Leaders and Oprah Winfrey called him "an angel from God," Geoffrey Canada was a small, vulnerable, scared boy growing up in the South Bronx. Canada's world was one where "sidewalk" boys learned the codes of the block and were ranked through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. Then the streets changed, and the stakes got even higher. In this candid and riveting memoir, Canada relives a childhood in which violence stalked every street corner. "If you wonder how a fourteen-year-old can shoot another child his own age in the head and then go home to dinner," Canada writes, "you need to know you don't get there in a day, or week, or month. It takes years of preparation to be willing to commit murder, to be willing to kill or die for a corner, a color, or a leather jacket."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807044506
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	11/26/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	1,053,959
File size:	45 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Geoffrey Canada is the president and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, a nonprofit, community-based organization deemed “one of the most ambitious social experiments of our time” by the New York Times Magazine. Jonathan Kozol called him, “One of the few authentic heroes of New York and one of the best friends children have, or ever will have, in our nation,” and Oprah Winfrey simply refers to him as “an angel from God.” Canada is featured in Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for Superman.

Jamar Nicholas is an artist and educator. He was previously editorial cartoonist at the Philadelphia Tribune, the nation's oldest African American newspaper. He teaches at Moore College of Art and lives in Philadelphia.

Editorial Reviews

Canada, a legendary educator and crusader for inner-city-youth, first published in 1995 his revelatory account of the daunting push toward violent behavior that was a part of his Bronx childhood. This graphic adaptation by Nicholas works as a kind of youth-friendly summary of that book's conclusions. Canada's thoughtful, no-nonsense narrative begins in the Bronx in the late 1950s, after his father left him, his mother, and two brothers to fend for themselves. The spine of the story is not so much the broad array of violence on display in a neighborhood suffering from postwar white flight and increases in crime, but Canada's surgical analysis of the stages of violence and the strictly codified strata that reigned on his street and in his school. Helped by Nicholas's dramatic but low-key illustrations, Canada describes how he graduated from one level of violence to the next in a sort of ladder of self-protection. This inexorable evolution is dismaying enough before Canada moves ahead to show how those codes of violence eventually collapsed under an influx of guns. This is exactly the sort of broadly appealing and gripping nonfiction graphic novel that librarians need to be adding to their shelves. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Geoffrey Canada’s realistic yet hopeful voice finds fresh expression through the comic style of Jamar Nicholas. Canada’s account of his childhood and the role that violence played in shaping his experiences provides hard-won and crucial lessons.”
—Pedro A. Noguera, Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education at New York University

“Jamar Nicholas is a master of his craft—his drawings are full of life and truly stunning.”
—Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

“I wish every city had a Geoffrey Canada.”
—President Bill Clinton

“It's a no-brainer, buy one for yourself and one to put in the hands of a young man who may benefit from it as well. The life you save may be your own.”
 - BlackSuperHero blog

“This is exactly the sort of broadly appealing and gripping nonfiction graphic novel that librarians need to be adding to their shelves.”
 - Publisher's Weekly

From the Publisher

The original text of this brutally honest 1995 memoir of a Bronx, NY, childhood intersperses commentary and persuasive recommendations with accounts of actual experiences: from witnessing his brothers' struggle as six-year-olds to reclaim a stolen jacket to learning to fight himself by age 12 and then in college packing a gun for the feeling of immortality it gave him. But Canada finally said no to violence, earning degrees from Bowdoin and Harvard and founding Harlem Children's Zone, a model for the Obama-Biden "Promise Neighborhoods," designed to assist urban areas with high crime and low student academic achievement. Challenged with adapting Canada's complex book into a one-volume graphic novel, Nicholas (The Grosse Adventures series) has judiciously focused on the personal end, and his semirealistic black-to-grayscale art has just the right lived-in-yet-edgy feel. Adding brown hues would have upped the vibrancy, though. VERDICT Canada's original earned raves from reviewers as well as from Oprah, who called Canada "an angel from God." Nicholas's version infuses an emotional immediacy and makes Canada's message into a personal parable accessible to a wider age range. Highly recommended for tweens through adults; violence and strong language.—M.C.

Library Journal