A lively graphic history of Black life in America, from the award-winning political cartoonist Ben Passmore

It’s the summer of 2020, and downtown Philly is up in flames. “You’re not out in the streets with everyone else?” Ronnie asks his ambivalent son, Ben, shambling in with arms full of used books: the works of Malcom X, Robert F. Williams, Assata and Sanyika Shakur, among others. “Black liberation is your fight, too.”

So begins Black Arms to Hold You Up, a boisterous, darkly funny, and sobering march through Black militant history. From Robert Charles’s shootout with the police in 1900, to the Black Power movement in the 1960s, to the Los Angeles and George Floyd uprisings of the 1990s and the aughts, readers will tumble through more than a century of armed resistance against the racist state alongside Ben—and meet firsthand the mothers and fathers of the movement, whose stories were as tragic as they were heroic.

What, after so many decades lost to state violence, is there left to fight for? Deeply researched, vibrantly drawn, and bracingly introspective, Black Arms to Hold You Up dares to find the answer.

"[Passmore] offers a rollicking survey course in a history that has often been reduced to slogans or erased altogether. As a friend of Black Liberation Army activist Assata Shakur says, ‘The whole white world doesn’t want us to know we ever fought slavery.’ The cartoonish art has a daring quality that leavens the text’s treatment of more heady topics. Passmore’s sharp humor and refusal to blindly parrot any prescribed narrative make for a necessary reckoning." - Publishers Weekly

"Passmore’s wildly expressive visual storytelling makes every page bristle with urgency, perfectly matched to his narrative voice as he mixes careful research, biting humor, and an interrogation of generational struggle and personal responsibility. The result is as much a call to action as it is an unflinching record of individuals who refused to surrender their dignity or their lives. . . . This is an essential work of uncompromisingly political graphic nonfiction that is provocative, funny, devastating, and rich with historical insight." - Library Journal