PREFACE
Married and photographed together, in late 1860's** Alabama, my Mulatto great-grandmother and Caucasian great-grandfather's photograph appears on the cover and in the body of this novel. Seventeen photographs taken during the 1880s (tintype), 1890s and from early 1900 to 1920, of my mixed-race African American, White and Native American (Chickasaw) family serves as the catalyst for this graphic novel.
The photographs in AMERICA'S BURIED CHILDREN speak volumes for the idiomatic expression "pictures don't lie." The oral history narrative, relating to the family members in the photographs, along with fictionalized anecdotal of day-to-day events, accompanies the photographs and computer-generated color graphic clip art.
After reading and discussing, in a college class in 1984, how playwright Adrienne Kennedy uses the format of a play the "Owl Answers," to acknowledge her White and African American ancestry, I became inspired to move "center stage" and share my tri-racial family's oral and photographic history. Nonetheless, it is playwright, Sam Shephard's play,"Buried Child," about a dysfunctional family sharing a secret that I view as a metaphor for America as a family. This metaphorical premise I use in this graphic novel to reveal how America, as a dysfunctional family, shares a historical (LEGALIZED CONCUBINAGE) and familial secret (MULATTOS PASSING AS WHITE) that touches and influences the lives of all Americans.
As a retired NYC Dept. of Education middle school computer technology school teacher/computer lab administrator, with hard copy and CD publications of graphic novels, etc., authored by some of my former at-risk and learning-challenged inner-city students, it is my desire to encourage an even larger audience to document and desktop-publish their family's heritage.
Therefore, to inspire and assist the readers of AMERICA'S BURIED CHILDREN with starting, I have provided in the back of this graphic novel some resources, such as; references to pertinent videos, books, periodicals and most importantly...
graphic novel desktop-publishing software.
**interracial sex and marriage was illegal (state constitution) in Alabama until 2000.
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