Review: The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging, by Rebecca Wanzo

Comics scholars have been talking about Rebecca Wanzo’s latest book, The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging, in the highest of terms ever since its publication. The book has won the Charles Hatfield Book Prize from the Comics Studies Society and the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award for the Best Academic/Scholarly Work. In addition, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies awarded The Content of Our Caricature its Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award. Indeed, this book has already become a cornerstone of Comics Studies in the twenty-first century as it successfully establishes a connection between two areas that have rarely been connected before: cartooning and political belonging. The book is a milestone because it shows that cartoons take part in a visual political discourse by representing the dreams, desires, values, and fears of communities, and Wanzo provides nuanced and captivating readings of how works...