If there is anything 2020 has taught us, it is to find blessings wherever we can see them, to grasp on to moments of hope. As we close out the year on the precipice (at least here in the United States) of a very dark pandemic winter, “The Sacrifice of Darkness” provides us with that very same message.
Please note that this review will contain spoilers.
Cover by Rebecca KirbyBased on a story by Roxane Gay
Written by Tracy Lynne Oliver
Illustrated by Rebecca Kirby
Colored by James Fenner
Lettered by Andworld DesignNew York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay (World of Wakanda, Difficult Women) adapts her short story “We Are the Sacrifice of Darkness” as a full-length graphic novel with writer Tracy Lynne Oliver (This Weekend), and artist Rebecca Kirby (Biopsy). Expanding an unforgettable world where a tragic event forever bathes the world in darkness, The Sacrifice of Darkness follows one woman’s powerful journey through this new landscape as she discovers love, family, and the true light in a world seemingly robbed of any. This young adult drama challenges notions of identity, guilt, and survival in a graphic novel for fans of On A Sunbeam and Are You Listening?
Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay’s short story “We Are the Sacrifice of Darkness” is the story of a miner named Hiram Hightower so consumed with the world of darkness from his work in the mines that he can only find one solution to bring light into his life: to fly into the sun. That decision brings him the comfort he needs, but leaves the world to pick up the collateral damage: a world with no sun. That event and its aftermath is secondary in this tale to the two parallel love stories. The first is in flashback of a young Hiram and his eventual wife Mara, and in the present, that of their son Joshua and local girl Claire. What they both have in common is their search for light, literal and metaphorical, in the darkness that surround them. For Hiram and Mara, it’s the struggles of Hiram’s work in the mines and Mara’s family disapproval of their romance. For Claire and Joshua, it’s not just the world of literal darkness that they grow up in, but the prejudice and ostracization Joshua faces as the man whose father took down the sun.
The prose in this story is raw, powerful, and optimistic, bringing in themes that seven years later still remain relevant. It’s Roxane Gay at her best. On its own, the text embodies that radical case for hope that you can see in feminist Rebecca Solnit’s writings (particularly Hope in the Dark), and the work of Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson in her “Letters to an American” newsletter. (As a side note, if you are not reading either or both of these women, now is a great time to discover them.)
That begs us to ask the question: What a graphic retelling of this story can do to add to the conversation? Like previous graphic adaptations of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” this visual adaptation brings forth deeper themes and layered nuance that pictures do so well.
A central theme throughout this story is one of food. Hiram and Mara’s first dates were picnics, and Claire’s first meeting with their son Joshua brings an offer of a sandwich. Sharing a meal together brings a certain sense of companionship and intimacy, particularly when the utensils for that food are your own two hands. Seeing these moments brought to life past words brings you closer to these characters, building the relationships that makes you want to root for them against all the odds that seem to be in their way: disapproving parents, social ostracization. It’s almost scandalous how we get to observe such closeness, as if it is an invasion of their privacy.
Rebecca Kirby’s hand on the pencil and ink is that of a gentle one. Everyone has a softness and humanity about them, even the perpetually angry Corona Council, the governing body that demands restitution each year from the Hightower family for Hiram’s act. Where Kirby does bring in harsh lines, such as on Joshua and Hiram’s faces, it’s never exaggerated, never dominant. It’s to show peaceful power and resolve, a steel-faced determination to find the other side of the struggle.
Continued belowIn a story focused around darkness, it’s very easy to make this artwork an inkspill and truly embrace the potential that the absence of color can provide, such as in Nate Powell’s “March” and “Come Again.” The latter opted for splashes of key colors to set narrative, which is what colorist James Fenner does well here. The story of Hiram and Mara sets itself against a background of peach, pink, and grey tones, but never too harsh. These are colors that symbolize life (particularly the pinks) . . . but also lend themselves a tint of nostalgia. Think of the phrase “rose-colored glasses” as you read these pages. We’re seeing that blush of first love, but are we seeing the full picture of their past?
As we turn to the present and that perpetual darkness, we see what could be an ironic choice for color: yellows, oranges, reds. Hues one associates with the (now non-existent) sun. This is the metaphorical light breaking through that darkness; the friendship, courtship, and eventual marriage of the next generation that brings peace to the world. Yellow and orange in particular are colors of optimism and youth, perfect for this particular narrative arc that follows children who know only of this world, but also know that there is something better beyond it. And while it is Joshua’s mother Mara who stares down the Corona Council each year, the real defeat of the darkness comes in Claire and Joshua’s commitment to each other, the quiet breaking of shackles of reputation to carve their own path, and their own covert research into a way to bring back the sun.
It’s fitting that the final page of this story is that of the young family: Claire, Joshua, and their very appropriately named daughter Dawn. The colors here – – purple haze and peach – – are colors of romance, nostalgia, but also of comfort. Comfort for a future for the young that will be better than what came before, a long awaited reward for the years of struggle. They’re also the colors we most see at dawn, the soft blending of twilight with the growing promise of a new day.
May we all find our own purple hazes and peaches, our own Dawns, as we cross over into 2021 and whatever it may bring.
If you would like to read Gay’s original prose that provided the basis for this graphic novel, you can find it in American Short Fiction magazine #55 and her 2017 anthology Difficult Women.
