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A review by deboraaahchu
Audubon, on the Wings of the World by Fabien Grolleau
informative
fast-paced
2.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, Violence, Xenophobia, Medical trauma, and Colonisation
First up, this graphic novel is gorgeous: the drawings are stunning, and it was incredible to experience how the world must have once looked and sounded, teeming with life, before we wrecked things.
However, the way the authors handled Audubon's biography is a massive disappointment that cannot be overlooked. Yes, he was an important figure in Western early sciences, but Audubon was also a 'man of his time' -- namely, a huge asshole. If you're going to write about his life, you need to include these dark facts too.
However, other than playing it a bit of lip service in the introduction, they don't reckon with the fact that Audubon was part of the colonisation of America, which destroyed the lives and livelihoods of indigenous people, and uprooted them from their homes. Even his whole endeavour to catalogue the birds of America was, in a way, a project of colonisation.
Also, instead of acknowledging that Audubon owned slaves and openly supported the slave trade, they did something truly bizarre instead:
The authors invented a fictional event in which Audubon comes across African-Americans fleeing from planters, and encourages them to go back to their masters??? I genuinely do not understand why they thought including this made-up event was enough to address this issue.
In the back, the authors say that the issue of Audubon owning slaves 'deserves a book of its own'. Actually, it would have been VERY POSSIBLE to address that issue in THIS bookâthey just didn't want to. Which is disappointing, because a more complex biography on Audubon would have made this book so much better.
So yeah: beautiful visuals. An incredibly disappointing biography.