“A People's History of American Empire“ by Howard Zin, Mike Konopacki and Paul Buhle

I finished this comic book after 2 days of reading it and it’s a shock! 😱 It’s a realistic painting of the dark side of the USA, the one we hear little or nothing about for some of the stories gathered here.

The author of the book that was used as a reference is a pacifist, this can be felt in the choice of the events told, but that does not take anything away from their strength and scope. I am both horrified and happy to have read this comic book.

There are stories that I already knew, those about the dictatorships in South America, and all the chaos introduced in Iran (I am of Iranian origin) but what is disgusting is that the US has been committing these atrocities continuously for 200 years, while at the same time working in parallel to their influence in the literary, artistic, scientific, etc. fields. These are not just a few dark historical “accidents”. The two sides of the US are intimately intertwined, inseparable: the money of one finances the other.

For example, characters that we see in a rather positive (Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, Carter…) or just mixed (the banker J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller family…) light appear here as monsters! Racists, liars, bloodthirsty, greedy, accomplices or sponsors of crimes.

Be careful however not to interpret this comics only in the context of emotion! I think that’s what I will keep above all: not everything is all black and white, one must not hate the USA after reading this comic book (or the book that served as a model) but we have to stop idealizing this country.

I think we must take a step back, not seek revenge, not do worse, not trigger an opposite pendulum movement: oppression, revolt or a “benevolent” counter-attack do not cancel out the oppressions of the past, they would only lead us towards an even worse, even totalitarian system.

Fortunately, the comic ends on a hopeful note. Moreover, shortly after I read this book, Donald Trump was not re-elected at the end of 2020, all is not so bad in the USA 😅

• Bande Dessinée
• Critique
• Book Review
• Bookworm
• Comics