strange fruit uncelebrated narratives from black history

Then he earned a scholarship to Roanoke College where he excelled as a student, creating powerful series of paintings about lynchings. He didn’t finish high school, married young, and got a job at plastic molding company.īut at 20, he enrolled in community college, where he pursued painting. All the drug dealers would come to my house for haircuts.” “I would carve Bart Simpson into people’s hair. “Instead of selling crack, I was cutting hair,” he recalled. He also channeled his creative talents into making money carving designs in people’s hair. By age 10, he had created his own comic book about a dystopian world where the planet had blown up because of global warming. He discovered comics on the spinner rack at the store and instantly fell in love. … Kids who are poor are disaffected millionaires.” “That was me telling the story of who I wanted them to see, as opposed to who I actually was. “That was my first foray into telling stories,” Gill said. When asked if he had these things, he would fib “Yes, it’s at my grandma’s house.” He recalled how, as a poor child, he longed to own all the popular toys and coveted items.

Gill, who presented Lesley’s annual Finnegan Lecture on April 10, provided rapid-fire reflections on his childhood and the serendipity and hard work that propelled his journey from storyteller and high school dropout to successful cartoonist. 'If we all share our stories, we will make a better world,' said Joel Christian Gill. “All these things I did growing up poor in the South,” he said.

He pointed out the places of significance in his early life, such as “the strip mall where I shoplifted a lot of toys.” He grappled with emotional and sexual abuse. He recalled living against the backdrop of the crack cocaine boom of the 1980s and losing his father, who drowned when Gill was only 5. Growing up in the projects in a small city in western Virginia, his stories were often tall tales.ĭuring a recent presentation in Sherrill Hall’s third floor amphitheater, Gill started off with a picture slide of his hometown, gesturing to different landmarks, including the statue of Confederate General Jubal Early, which was the site of a Ku Klux Klan march during his childhood in 1983.

Joel Christian Gill has been a storyteller his entire life. (For the podcast transcript, visit our episode page.) Photo: 'Fast Enough' is based on the story of Bessie Stringfield, the first African-American woman to travel solo across the United States on a motorcycle.

Strange fruit uncelebrated narratives from black history