In 2021, I released Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, which shifted the landscape of how we talk about slavery and resistance in the United States. What began as a dissertation transformed into a graphic novel. The book revealed just how hungry people are for the truth, and for stories that center the lives and legacies of Black women who are so often left out of history. Wake received international attention and coverage from NPR and various media outlets, recognition from the NAACP, and praise from leading scholars and celebrities. The book is now out in seven languages: English, French, German, Turkish, Korean, Arabic, Japanese, and soon, in Portuguese. It became clear that the liberation story of Wake is one that resonates worldwide.

Now, I am launching Wake Productions, an AfroFuturist Education Project Based in the Black Radical Tradition. This work is more than storytelling, it’s resistance. At a time when US Department of Education is actively attacking education to distort truth and erase historical memory, Wake Productions stands as a counterforce. Every project we produce will be peer-reviewed, historically accurate, and deeply grounded in scholarship, ensuring integrity while remaining accessible and engaging. Through zines, educational media, and partnerships with scholars and filmmakers, Wake Productions will create work that both preserves history and sparks imagination for the future.

As our systems of education continue to be dismantled, there is so much at stake. We got to this place by a failure of education. It is time to build academic structures outside of the current system that is crumbling. As Jason Stanley pointed out in his newest book Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, our political culture is built by our education system. He identifies the “five major themes of fascist education: 

1. National Greatness
2. National Purity 
3. National Innocence
4. Strict Gender Roles 
5. Vilification of the Left.” (p78) 

Fascism begins by erasing history education to claim that the status quo has never been challenged. Therefore, Black and Indigenous history, which is filled with countless stories of resistance, is erased to control the narrative.

I have a wide range of teaching experience: law schools, graduate school, undergrad, and high school Social Studies and Civics. I was constantly getting fired for teaching what I was hired to teach and learned to work outside academia. Wake Productions will allow me to remain an independent scholar-activist in a climate hostile to history. Help me do that. Help Wake Productions fight fascism.

Wake Productions: An AfroFuturist Education Project Based in the Black Radical Tradition 

Wake Productions is based in the Black Radical Tradition, an ideology that is anti-colonial and anti-capitalist. It is rooted in Black liberation – something we’ve been fighting for since we were brought here. When I say Wake Productions is in the Black Radical Tradition I mean that in a literal sense. I was born into this tradition as the daughter of Harry Haywood. He fought fascism his whole life, and he taught me how to fight too.

I see AfroFuturist Education as Sankofa, the injunction to go back for what you lost. AfroFuturist scholarship retrieves the past in order to lay claim to the present and the future. Using the past to envision and reconfigure the future. It is an act of remembering, of putting our stories back together so we can find a path forward. 

What We Will Produce

1. Historical Narratives

I am currently writing Conjure: Black Women Ending Slavery which is under contract with Simon & Schuster. S&S is happy about the success of Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts. They are excited about our next book. However, the advance is much lower than Wake, which seems strange to me because when Wake went to literary auction, I was an unknown author. The political climate is hostile.

2. Comics /Zines

Wake Productions will produce Zines. For example, a zine with the working title, I Am Not the One, this is my story after Wake. Follow me as I navigate medical racism, homophobia, and sexism against the backdrop of rising fascism in America. We also have a line of comics in development called Free The Land, which will be an anthology of anti-colonial movements in American History among Black and Indigenous people. The anthology will center Indigenous scholars and artists.

3. Curriculum 

It is difficult to find quality education outside of our official education system. As a subject matter expert, I worked with the New York State Department of Education to provide curriculum resources on the history of the African Diaspora. Wake Productions will provide peer-reviewed and scholarly rigorous curriculum with teacher’s guides, powerpoint presentations, and core curriculum standards alignment.

Example of Wake Productions Curriculum Design: Hexagonal Thinking Activity 

4. Story Liberation 

Wake Productions will provide two types of consulting:

1. We will work with scholars who want to use the graphic medium to reach a wider audience. Many professors already ask for this type of help, and I love to offer it. 

2. We will provide consulting to the film and TV industry that uses historians to provide context or historical accuracy in their works.

Risks and challenges

I am returning to Kickstarter to build Wake Productions, because it is crazy in these streets! Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts started as a Kickstarter. I’ve been told that the prerequisite to having a successful Kickstarter is having had a successful Kickstarter. I guess I meet that catch-22 requirement! My goal was to fund Wake Productions through my new career as an author. I was on a book tour for over two years and was paid for engagements that my literary agent set up. The political climate is so hostile I ended up cancelling my book tour and firing my agent after getting racially assaulted at Wesleyan. She kept her 20% and never checked in on me. I won’t put myself at risk like that again. Later, I signed with a Hollywood agent to create Wake the TV show, but after working on it for six months I got ghosted. I’m not sure if it was Hollywood disfunction, or my vocal stance against the Genocide in Gaza. But, if Wake Productions can get community support through Kickstarter, we will have the seed money for grants and investments to build Wake Productions as a type of Freedom School outside existing, crumbling structures.

Launching October 2025.