Ginger Goodwin

Ginger Goodwin

A Worker’s Friend

By Laura Ellyn

Paperback

$29.95
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With bright, strong imagery, Ginger Goodwin presents the story of labour activist and martyr Albert “Ginger” Goodwin. This accessible and thoughtful graphic history explores Goodwin’s life, work, and death in the mining communities of Cumberland and Trail, British Columbia. Drawing on local history, and exploring the ways the history of labour organizing affects contemporary movements, Ginger Goodwin is a story that needs to be shared.

Praise

In her lively graphic history, Ginger Goodwin: A Worker’s Friend, Laura Ellyn offers a fresh personal interpretation of the life of labour socialist Ginger Goodwin and his mysterious death in 1918. It’s heartening to see a new generation and a new medium explore this old Canadian story. Laura Ellyn’s book will delight readers interested in labour activism, World War I, or Vancouver Island’s industrial past.

– Susan Mayse, author of Ginger: The Life and Death of Albert Goodwin

This boldly illustrated volume makes a welcome visual companion to the standard Goodwin biographies.

– BC Studies

As workers look for new ways to reignite the fight against capitalism, the story of Ginger Goodwin is as important today as it was a century ago. Ellyn’s personal reflections are insightful and thought-provoking, yet she leaves room for the reader to grapple with the challenging, contradictory, and vital lessons to be drawn from Goodwin’s life. Equally important are the questions she raises about community and contemporary resistance. The result is an accessible, deeply moving, and inspiring book.

– Mark Leier, Department of History, Simon Fraser University, author of Bakunin: The Creative Passion, and Rebel Life: The Life and Times of Robert Gosden, Revolutionary, Mystic, Labour Spy

Laura Ellyn’s beautifully illustrated comic book reminds us of the inspirational lessons from Ginger Goodwin’s life. Ginger Goodwin: A Worker’s Friend is a welcome addition to the growing collection of comics on Canadian working-class history.

– The Graphic History Collective

Writer and artist Laura Ellyn has succeeded in bringing the Ginger Goodwin story alive in a new, appealing, and interesting form—graphic history. It is a welcome addition to the available literature about Goodwin, his times, his struggles, and those of the working class in early twentieth-century British Columbia and, by extension, Canada.

– Roger Stonebanks, retired journalist, author of Fighting For Dignity: The Ginger Goodwin Story

Ginger Goodwin: A Worker’s Friend is brilliant in every way: a close reading of working-class history and a unique comic art style with stunning use of color. In all, this book is a great triumph for the author/artist and for its publisher.

– Paul Buhle, labour historian, editor of Wobblies!, Che, and graphic adaptations of books by Howard Zinn and Studs Terkel