Kate Evans, the author of a new Rosa Luxembourg graphic biography called "Red Rosa," told teleSUR'S Rear Window that she started out as an activist rather than a cartoonist and that her latest work is centred around transforming historic events into a deeply personal experience.
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Based on the life of the revolutionary socialist and Marxist theorist, Luxembourg was an accomplished revolutionary during WWI.
“Red Rosa was the project of Paul Buhle who is a distinguished comics academic in Chicago and he is dedicating his retirement to getting graphic biographies written of various left-wing figures,” Evans said.
Buhle has previously edited a comic history of the industrial workers of the world, "so he knew that Rosa Luxemburg was an obvious next choice," added Evans.
Evans was first asked to draw the graphics for the book but the project excited her so much that she eventually took on both tasks.
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“But then I was like no, no, I want to script it too,” a giggling Evans added. “So I jumped right in there with her literature and letters and I knew there is a lot there to build her book on.”
Red Rosa is an attempt to bring the works of Luxembourg to a much wider audience for "people who would not necessarily be able to get through 600 pages of analytical text," added Evans.