Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow

Although it is in black and white, this graphic novel is exellent autobiographical and biographical story combined. As Emmet Sr. tells his story, he links Satchel Paige's career with his own life. I found this combination of autobiography and biography quite interesting. Through Emmet's eyes, the reader can experience how Satchel was able to override the Jim Crow system through baseball, and one suspects that Emmet vicariously savors Satchel's boldness and sassiness before white people when he was in the ballpark. Just for a few moments I thought that the story of Emmett Till was a part of this graphic novel when the father narrates the story of his son's "mysterious" dissappearance. Fortunately, the narrator finds his son alive. However, the story is there to show the extent to which white people subdued blacks into social inferiority. The whole purpose of scaring Emmet by hurting his son was to warn him against educating his son. Later on, Satchel's victory over the white team becomes a great victory for himself. Because of its length, however, I'm not sure how I could use it in the classroom. But, I'll keep thinking about it.

If you're looking for a Satchel Paige biography, this book might not be for you. If you want to read a story which paints a poignant picture of the times in which he lived, and what he meant to the people of his generation, by all means treat yourself this extremely well-written graphic novel.

Graphic novel biographies are touch-and-go affairs. For example, Houdini: The Handcuff King by Jason Lutes and Nick Bertozzi did little for me. I could see what the creators were trying to do, but taking a single selection out of Houdini's life and then making it directly into a comic book without any flashbacks, cuts, or original takes on his life... well, what's the point really? If you can't get creative with your subject when you're making a graphic novel out of their life then you may as well just create a plain old piece of non-fiction and be done with it. You need to do something to deserve your graphic format. In this way, Lutes and Bertozzi could take a page out of the book of James Sturm and Rich Tommaso, then. "Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow" can't be called anything but entirely thrilling. By telling Paige's stories through another man's eyes, the reader is given a fuller understanding of the times in which blacks lived during the height of Jim Crow. A graphic novel bio done right. Our unnamed hero decides in 1929 to support his family by becoming a professional baseball player. It might have worked out too had he not played early on against the great Satchel Paige and busted his knee. Now he works as a sharecropper in the deep South and times are hard. His son is beaten by the white landowners for going to school rather than working their fields and there's little to be done about it. Then, one day, Satchel Paige is advertised as coming to play the local white baseball team and everyone turns out. At first Paige doesn't show and the game grows tense. Yet by the end of the day Paige's eventual presence causes an outpouring of support from all sides and colors. In the midst of all this, the narrator decides to finally tell his son about his baseball days and remind his child that he still has options. The idea of placing Paige within the context of his times by narrating through someone else is inspired and probably why the book works as well as it does. The fictional sharecropper who tells his own story first and how Paige intersected with it second, is a great character because you can feel the reality of his situation. The danger of writing any book for children that discusses Jim Crow is that your author is going to dumb down the material. Make light of the horror of the time, even. Sturm is very clever in this respect. He drills home both the constant threat of violence present at the time alongside the beating down of the spirit. When the sharecropper's son goes to school instead of helping in the fields a horrific segment brings these horrors together. As for illustrator Rich Tommaso, he doesn't have to show any more that the simplest of images to complement these moments. You might hear about a "cotton sack tied around his head. Blood leakin' through the sack," but the next panels are just of the boy's mother boiling water quietly and carefully. Against this backdrop, Paige's appearance is