'In this anthology of seven comics essays, author and graphic novelist Nate Powell addresses living in an era of what he calls “necessary protest.” Save It for Later: Promises, Protest, and the Urgency of Protest is Powell’s reflection on witnessing the collapse of discourse in real time while drawing the award-winning trilogy March, written by Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, this generation’s preeminent historical account of nonviolent revolution in the civil rights movement. Powell highlights both the danger of normalised paramilitary presence symbols in consumer pop culture, and the roles we play individually as we interact with our communities, families, and society at large.
'Each essay tracks Powell’s journey from the night of the election—promising his four-year-old daughter that Trump will never win, to the reality of the Republican presidency, protesting the administration’s policies, and navigating the complications of teaching his children how to raise their own voices in a world that is becoming increasingly dangerous and more and more polarised. While six of the seven essays are new, unpublished work, Powell has also included “About Face,” a comics essay first published by Popula Online that swiftly went viral and inspired him to expand his work on Save It for Later. The seventh and final essay will contextualise the myriad events of 2020 with the previous four years—from the COVID-19 pandemic to global protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder to the 2020 presidential election itself—highlighting both the consistencies and inversions of widely shared experiences and observations amidst a massive social upheaval.
'As Powell moves between subjective and objective experiences raising his children—depicted in their childhood innocence as imaginary anthropomorphic animals—he reveals the electrifying sense of trust and connection with neighbours and strangers in protest. He also explores how to equip young people with tools to best make their own noise as they grow up and help shape the direction and future of this country.'
This book was my first experience reading something that Nate Powell had worked on, and I'm sorry to say I'd never heard of March, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this read. I'd never read a graphic novel that was trying to present essay work before, and didn't know how such a thing would work, especially given the nature of the content that Powell was going to be tackling.
Save It For Later has several sections, each of which tackles a different subject, yet they all manage to feel connected, like they're tackling smaller parts of the bigger whole, because they're all talking in some way about the changing nature of the world; especially the United States over the last several years.
It may seem an extreme thing to say to some, and I could get a bit of backlash for saying this, but as someone who is outside the US watching what's been happening in the country over the last few years, it's a country that has become more and more right wing. The US is a place that I sadly now associate with hatred and violence, a place where the loud and the angry feel free reign to do and say whatever they like, where minorities are a constant target. This book focuses on a lot of these ideas, on the rise of open displays of fascist iconography, on the militarisation of the police and those who want to imitate the military to feel big, on the injustices taking place.
The book doesn't just talk about these things in an abstract, however, but many of these points are painted through the experiences of Powell himself, how it touched and affected him. He talks about reassuring his young daughter that 'the bad man' would never win, that she would wake up the next morning to the first female president, then having to break the news to her that a bully was in the White House. He tells readers how he taught her about racial inequality as a child, even though it was something that she would never have to face, and how important it is to try and do the right thing, to stand up for those who needed help.
These personal stories help to ground conversations that could otherwise feel too big and too nebulous, it helps readers to see how these wider issues intersect with their lives, especially if they're, like Powell, not the obvious targets of hate and oppression. The book acknowledges that as a straight white man he will never truly know how it feels to be targeted for your race, religion, or sexuality to name just a few, yet how it still changes the world he lives in. Powell shows readers that inaction doesn't help, it doesn't do anything to change things, and that even if you don;t feel that you're the target of right wing hate it will still make your world a worse place, so you have to do something about it.
There's a message in this book, about how doing something, anything, to help and try and make a change is a good thing. Whether it's raising awareness, volunteering, or marching in protest, it's everyone's duty to try and do something so that we can have a fair and just world; one that people won't be ashamed to leave to their children.
I was expecting the book to leave me feeling depressed, to talk about these awful issues and reinforce how hopeless things seem. Instead, it left me feeling a spark of hope, hope that even if things seem bad, not everyone is okay with that. Things already seem like they're getting better, but then I'm writing this review a few weeks after the 2020 election, so I honestly don't know if hope is still winning, or if Trump has instigated a full violent civil war to keep the presidency. I hope that that's not what's happened in the months since, and I hope that this is the beginning of decent change to make the world a better place.
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