by Ben Passmore
Pantheon Books
10/7/2025, paperback
SKU: 9780593316122
From the Ignatz and Eisner Award-winning cartoonist Ben Passmore comes a whirlwind graphic history of Black life, taken by force
It's the summer of 2020, and downtown Philly is up in flames. "You're not out in the streets with everyone else?" Ronnie asks his ambivalent son, Ben, shambling in with arms full of used books: the works of Malcom X, Robert F. Williams, Assata and Sanyika Shakur, among others. "Black liberation is your fight, too."
So begins Black Arms to Hold You Up, a boisterous, darkly funny, and sobering march through Black militant history by political cartoonist Ben Passmore. From Robert Charles's shootout with the police in 1900, to the Black Power movement in the 1960s, to the Los Angeles and George Floyd uprisings of the 1990s and 2020, readers will tumble through more than a century of armed resistance against the racist state alongside Ben--and meet firsthand the mothers and fathers of the movement, whose stories were as tragic as they were heroic.
What, after so many decades lost to state violence, is there left to fight for? Deeply researched, vibrantly drawn, and bracingly introspective, Black Arms to Hold You Up dares to find the answer.
Reviews:
"Passmore raises the scale from the personal to the historical, tracing a lineage of racial injustice and radical resistance with his characteristic acerbic wit and impetuous visual style." --NPR
"Black Arms To Hold You Up stays with you long after reading it. Ben Passmore's mastery of the comics medium is evident in every panel of this journey through Black history, struggle, and resistance--made all the more compelling by his personal lens. This book is necessary at this particular moment in history, and it powerfully makes the case for its relevance in any moment in history." --Marcus Kwame Anderson, illustrator of The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History
"Black Arms to Hold You Up is an unnerving visual text. Ben Passmore's loving, instructive, and abrasive book educates about Black resistance against racist state violence and Black compradors. Its critique of Black leaders will spark debates and arguments. However, as we awkwardly hold ourselves together, we can lean into Passmore's call to arms--of various types--to scrutinize history and heal our communities." --Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition, Contextualizing Angela Davis, and In Pursuit of Revolutionary Love
About the Author:
Ben Passmore is the author of the ongoing comic book series Daygloayhole, as well as the Eisner Award-nominated and Ignatz Award-winning comic collection Your Black Friend. He also wrote and illustrated Sports Is Hell (Koyama Press), collaborated with Ezra Claytan Daniels on BTTM FDRS (Fantagraphics), and contributes to publications such as The Nib and the New York Times. He lives in Philadelphia.