Book cover for Fast Enough: Bessie Stringfield's First Ride by Joel Christian Gill

Fast Enough: Bessie Stringfield's First Ride

2019 Released
40 Pages
1 Hours
Ebook Unavailable
Audiobook Unavailable
Paperback Unavailable
Hardback Unavailable
Oni PressISBN 9781549307041

Have you ever been told that you’re not enough? That you’re not strong enough, tall enough, fast enough? Bessie was told she was not enough.

Bessie dreams of riding her bike with the boys after school, but they tell her she is not fast enough. When she finally gets a chance to race, she proves not only that she is fast enough, but she is faster. Fast Enough combines an imagined story of Bessie Stringfield as a young girl with historical facts about Bessie as an adult. Bessie Stringfield went on to become the first African-American woman to travel solo across the United States on a motorcycle. Not only was she fast, but she was a true adventurer, daring to ride to places unsafe for African Americans in the 1930s and ’40s. Fast Enough is an inspirational story for anyone who’s been told they are not enough.

Joel Christian Gill

Joe Whitt is a comic artist based in Alabama. He graduated from the University of Montevallo with a BFA in drawing. He lives with three polite cats. This is his graphic novel debut. Professor Joel Christian Gill is a cartoonist and historian who speaks nationally on the importance of sharing stories. He is the author of the Eisner Nominated graphic memoir Fights: One Boy's Triumph Over Violence, cited as one of the best graphic novels of 2020 by New York Times and for which he was awarded the 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize. He wrote the words and drew the pictures for the award-winning graphic novel series Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History and Tales of The Talented Tenth, each volume tells the stories of Bass Reeves, Bessie Stringfield, and Robert Smalls. He adapted into a graphic novel Dr. Ibram Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped From the Beginning into Stamped From The Beginning: A Graphic History of Racist Ideas from Ten Speed Press. Gill has dedicated his life to creating stories and helping others create stories to build connections with readers through empathy, compassion, and, ultimately, humanity. He is the Inaugural Chair of Boston University’s CFA MFA in Visual Narrative. He received his MFA from Boston University and his BA from Roanoke College. Catch all his updates on Instagram, Tik Tok @joelchristiangill and on Twitter @jcg007.

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