Turner Family Stories: From Enslavement in Virginia to Freedom in Vermont, edited by Jane C. Beck and Andy Kolovos and with introductory commentary by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, Julian Chambliss, and Jane Beck, features the work of six New England cartoonists retelling stories told by Daisy Turner about her family, including her father’s journey from being a slave to becoming a freedman in Virginia. These stories also include details of family history, such as how Daisy’s mother almost died from consumption (tuberculosis) and how that health crisis led the family to move to Virginia.

The book begins with a forward, introduction, and preface in traditional chapter format, composed in the first-person voice of each author. These opening pages explain who Daisy Turner is and how it happened that her family stories were recorded. These authors also share their thoughts, reactions, and feelings about the meetings that led to assembling this book, adding an enjoyable, easy-to-read element.

The rest of the book highlights the stories that were told by Daisy, adapted to comic-strip/graphic-novel style. They are presented as if Daisy were having a conversation with two young boys from her community. This format shows how Black stories function at a critical point in history. We also see that Black culture was often a form of entertainment in the early days of comics, and that these products often mocked the culture. As a counterpoint, the comics here reveal Black culture and Black experiences in a graphic style, not purely for entertainment, but as a way to showcase the realities faced by Black communities in the late 1800s.

I enjoyed the graphic-style format, along with the introductory chapters; these introductory comments do explain the reasoning for the choice of graphic style. The graphic novel showcasing Daisy’s stories helps to make them easy to read and easy to follow and engages readers so that they are interested from beginning to end. While I would not recommend this book for graduate students or for those seeking in-depth analysis of Black stories or Black culture, I do think that Turner Family Stories is a useful tool for a foundational understanding of one family’s experience, and for learning about personal experience narratives and oral history.

I recommend this book for first- or second-year university students who may not have a background in folklore studies or Black culture. I would also recommend it as general pleasure-reading for anyone interested in personal experience narratives or in ways people earned their living after they were freed from enslavement. While I understand that it was not the main purpose of the book, I would have liked to see more of the authors’ opinions and more analysis of the stories and their place within the broader oral history of Black narrative.

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[Review length: 458 words • Review posted on December 16, 2022]