- This book is in graphic novel format..
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
As the civil rights struggle heats up in Texas, two families-one white, one black-find common ground.
This semi-autobiographical tale is set in 1967 Texas, against the backdrop of the fight for civil rights. A white family
from a notoriously racist neighborhood in the suburbs and a black family from its poorest ward cross Houston's color
line, overcoming humiliation, degradation, and violence to win the freedom of five black college students unjustly
charged with the murder of a man.
The Silence of Our Friends follows events through the point of view of young Mark Long, whose her is a reporter
covering the story. Semi-fictionalized, this story has its roots solidly in very real events. With art from the
brilliant Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole) bringing the tale to heart-wrenching life, The Silence of Our Friends is a new
and important entry in the body of civil rights literature.
The Silence of Our Friends Author Q&A
How much of this book's story is based on real events?
Mark Long: Creating a book like this one required us to find a balance between factual accuracy and emotional
authenticity. Some details as well as names have been changed for storytelling purposes. But the facts are that in 1967
Texas Southern University students began a boycott of classes after the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was
banned from campus, and on May 17th they staged a sit down protest on Wheeler Avenue over conditions at the nearby city
garbage dump. The protest evolved into an riot that night when an undercover officer was and over 200
officers responded by pouring and machine fire into the men's dormitory. The later stormed the
dormitory and arrested 489 students after a man was and killed. All but 5 of the students were released the
next day. They came to be called the "TSU Five" and were charged with the murder of the slain officer. Only one of the
students stood trial in Victoria Texas due to publicity in Houston. His trial ended with the dismissal of all charges
against the five when it was discovered that the officer was accidentally by another officer.
With the civil rights struggle as a backdrop to the story, how did you balance a contemporary perspective on race with
the reality of race issues at the time?
Nate Powell: While visualizing and adapting Mark's largely autobiographical work on the story, I found myself calling on
my own experiences as a kid in Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas in the 1980's. Though the story takes place in a
specific historical framework, many of the attitudes, details, atmospheric elements, and anecdotes were extremely
familiar to me -- sometimes too familiar. As the pages progressed, the twenty years between our Southern childhood
experiences didn't seem like much of a difference at all, which was certainly disturbing at times.
There were frequent case-by-case conversations about accurate depictions of racism, the privilege of authorship, and
inherent charge carried by racism's role in the book. Generally speaking, we determined that this was in many ways a
brutal story but a very accurate one, and respecting the very real violence carried by certain words and actions allowed
us to give them their ugly space in the narrative, for better or for worse.
Is much knowledge of the civil rights movement required?
Mark Long: Everything that pushes the narrative forward is contained within the story's pages, and a lot of the civil
rights and struggle-related content is specific to Houston in 1967-68. It definitely covers what readers might need to
know without having expertise on the civil rights movement. Having said that, however, I think readers are rewarded
throughout the book as characters are offered windows through which they witness a much more massive social upheaval,
framed within the last few months of Dr. Martin Luther King's too-short life.
There's no easy way to categorize this book, how would you describe it?
Mark Long: I'd say it's a culture's own coming-of-age tale. By that, I mean it's first and foremost an exploration of
shifting boundaries: towns and neighborhoods, friends and families, customs and attitudes all on the threshold of
massive (and ongoing) change. The boundaries themselves take on lives of their own at times. In a more traditional
sense, it's also equal parts a story centering on two families' internal relationships as they find themselves in each
other's orbit, struggle narrative, friendship-betrayal tale, and courtroom drama.
Why choose to tell this story in a graphic format?
Nate Powell: As the story's climax is dependent on sorting through multiple points of view, it's appropriate that comics
are ideal medium by which to tell a tale with so many lenses. The book offers a pretty view of the world
through main characters' points of view, but bringing the narrative even closer through Mark's eyes and balancing them
all without judgment highlight the strengths of comics storytelling.