Interview with
GENE
LUEN YANG
Author of American
Born Chinese
(First Second Books, 2006)
On
November 7, 2007 at a café inside a Borders bookstore in Fremont, our editors sat
down with Gene Yang to discuss his graphic novel, American Born Chinese, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award
and recipient of the 2007 Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult
Literature.
There
was no debate that Kartika wanted
Gene Yang to be the first author interview we published. The editorial board
unanimously held American Born Chinese
in the highest regard. To say the editors were excited about meeting Gene would
be an understatement. After this interview, the editors at Kartika admire him even more.
In
person, Gene exemplified one of the most unpretentious writers in the literary
community. He spoke candidly about his opinions and life experiences and it is
no wonder he has gained a wide following of fans in just two years.
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SUNNY WOAN: Assimilation is a major
theme in American Born Chinese (“ABC”). One view on assimilation, as espoused
by Eric Liu’s The Accidental Asian defines assimilation as “becoming whiter.”
Have you reached any conclusions regarding the duality of being Asian American?
GENE
LUEN YANG: No, I’m still trying to figure out what it means to be Asian
American. I think I’ve progressively gotten away from shame in my own culture,
although it’s still there. Even as an adult, there are still times I feel a gut
reaction, such as when I meet a new immigrant and he speaks a certain way and
there are other people around, I can feel it inside of me. There’s a little
jump. There’s definitely a temptation to become fully assimilated, fully a part
of
SW: You have said in prior interviews
that your personal upbringing is not the same as Jin’s upbringing in ABC. Since
the story is not autobiographical,[1] was your goal then to tell an “Asian American” story?
GLY:
Yeah, Jin spent a portion of his childhood in San Francisco Chinatown. I was
basically born and raised in the suburbs. The community that I had Jin grow up
in wasn’t as complex as the community I grew up in. I grew up in
SW: In telling Jin’s story, what
facets of the Asian American experience did you know you definitely wanted to
include?
GLY:
There’s a principle in cartooning where you try to capture the essence of
something with the fewest number of lines. You figure out which lines are most
important and those are the ones you draw. I was trying to do that with writing
as well by focusing on this isolated experience of shame and figuring out what
the most important lines of the story were.
SW: Your interpretation of the Monkey
King story in ABC adopts a Christian context, replacing the original Buddhist
context in the myth. You have been quoted to say this was “necessary” in making
it an Asian American re-telling. Why do you think that is?
GLY:
Did I use the word “necessary”? [2]
SW: I think I have it in quotations.
GLY:
Well, that would probably be the number two most controversial part of the
book. Chin-Kee would be number one and the Christian element would be number
two. I think I was really intimidated by the Monkey King story. I really liked
it when I heard it as a bedtime story in my youth, but when I started thinking
about incorporating it into my comics, I was very intimidated because in Asia,
pretty much any comic book artist worth his or her salt has done something with
the Monkey King, so I didn’t think I could bring anything new to it. So then
ultimately I hit onto this idea of doing an Asian American take. Now within my
own experience of being an Asian American, religion does play a part in the way
I view life. Also, I see a trend in Asian Americans converting to Christianity,
more so than folks of other ethnicities. I went to
SW: In a book review of ABC by Ned
Vizzini that appeared in the New York Times, Vizzini described your book as “needlessly crass,”[3]
citing that it opened with a joke about breasts and peaches. Since ABC is often
categorized under the children’s or young adult’s section, what would your
response be to Vizzini’s statement?
GLY:
There are some of my friends who have said the same thing, that my comics are a
little bit crass. My parents have, and my dad especially, a crass sense of
humor and I think that is just part of the DNA of my family to make body jokes
and fart jokes.
SW: ABC has gotten a lot of acclaim.
Has your life changed in any way since publishing ABC or its National Book
Award nomination?
GLY:
It has. Well, first of all, I’m doing stuff like this. Nobody wanted to talk to
me before. I’ve also gotten the opportunity to travel to many library events
and school presentations. That’s been great. Also, the biggest thing would be
that I am able to justify this part of my life now. Before when I did comics, I
was losing money at it. Only two years ago did that turn around and now I’m not
losing money from it. I have a four-year-old boy and a seven-month-old girl.
Before, I think if I had continued to lose money at drawing comics, at this
point I would have had to give it up or at least scale back drastically. With
the nomination [of the National Book Award], it eases my mind as a dad to be
spending this much time on it.
SW: On your website, there are sites
where you use comics in education. Now that you’ve gained literary acclaim, you
would be able to launch any personal goals or ambitions to pursue comics in
education.
GLY:
I have a couple more stories I want to do in comics. Both comics and education
are passions of mine. They’re just now beginning to come together, but at this
point I don’t have any definitive plans.
SW: Any plans to do a sequel with Jin
Wang, Wei-Chan, or Suzy Nakamura, like you did with Gordon Yamamoto and Loyola
Chin?
GLY:
No, I don’t. [laughs] I have other stories, but they don’t revolve around them
at all.
SW: It’s been said that some writers
subconsciously write to please a particular person. If so, then who do you
write for?
GLY:
When I first started working on ABC, the comic book industry was falling apart.
That was around 2000. My friends and I would go to comic book conventions and
listen to these talks by publishers, artists, and writers and they would say
that comics were at the end of the rope and that they would go the way of
poetry, becoming a niche medium that just a few people read and a few people
work on. Then we would all go to McDonald’s and cry over milkshakes about what
we’re doing and how we should go into animation. Since then, though, there’s
been this huge turnaround. I started ABC within that context so when it first
published, I had it on the web and in mini-comics. There is this whole
underground culture of mini-comics. Mini-comics are just hand-printed comics.
You would draw your comics and take them to Kinkos, got them Xeroxed and
stapled, then either trade them with your friends or take them to shows and try
to sell copies. Maybe if you sold 12, then you’ve done really well. So
initially, my audience was just my mom, my brother, and a couple of friends.
That’s who I was thinking of when I created ABC.
SW: Have you ever considered writing a
traditional novel, i.e., not in the graphic novel format? Or do you want to
continue to focus in comics?
GLY:
I love comics and I want to keep working in comics. I have an idea that might
work better as a traditional novel, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever get around to
doing it. I did a lot of prose in college, since I minored in Creative Writing.
However, the prose was always just practice for comics, since I had comics in
mind.
SW: One project you’re working on is Three Angels with Thien Pham. How has collaborative work
differed from working on ABC on your own? Also, could you offer us more details
on that project?
GLY:
The title “Three Angels” is up in the air right now. It’s been a rougher
project than ABC, but not because of Thien. It’s probably because I tried
writing in a different way [for “Three Angels”] and it didn’t really work, so
I’m going through a series of re-writes right now.
SW: How do you two allocate who does
what?
GLY:
That’s also sort of in flux right now, too. I’m doing the thumbnails while he
will be doing the finishes and colors.
SW: When is that book anticipated to
be released?
GLY:
I don’t know, man. But I do have another book that I collaborated on with
another friend that will be out late 2008 or 2009.
SW: The project with Derek Kirk Kim?
GLY:
Yes. That one was a lot easier. It’s called tentatively “Second Lives.” The
project consists of three short stories about the connection between reality
and fantasy. It’s a little bit inspired by Second Life and that whole
subculture. I have a lot of students who are into World of Warcraft and that
kind of stuff, so that sort of opened up to that project. [Also,] Derek is an
amazing artist, absolutely amazing. The work he did on this project is the best
work I’ve ever seen him do. He’s like a real artist. There’s some of us who are
just cartoonists, like I’m just a cartoonist. But [Derek is] an illustrator. He
actually knows how to use other media.
MIKE LEE: You mentioned earlier that
you had tried one approach first for Second Lives, then abandoned that approach. What was that first approach and how
did it differ from your approach to ABC?
GLY:
This is what happened. With ABC, I basically wrote from the gut. I had an
outline of where I wanted the story to go and then each piece I wrote from the
gut. Then after I got signed on with First Second and they started talking to
me about doing a second book, I got a little freaked out because I was like,
man, writing from your gut—there’s no method to it. It’s not something you can
easily control. It’s not a skill. So I started reading all these books about
story construction and writing novels. Then I wrote the second story based on
all these techniques I had read about. It just didn’t work out so hot. It just
kind of sucked. I was trying to devise a formula and treating creativity as a
technique and it just didn’t work out.
SW: For ABC, how long was the idea
just in your head and how long did it take you to write?
GLY:
It was an idea for a couple of years. It started off as three separate ideas,
then I decided to weave them together. The actual putting down of the ideas on
paper took about five years in total, but ABC wasn’t all I was doing in those
five years.
SW: This is just a tangential
question, but I looked up the comic book The Rosary. And I was wondering if you planned on pursuing comics in religious
studies as well?
GLY:
Well, I think for myself, the two biggest pieces of my identity are my
ethnicity and my religion. One I don’t have any choice in and the other one I
do. I think there’s also this tension between the two, too. As a Roman
Catholic, Catholicism is really foundational within the Western world and there
are things that grew out of Catholicism that are not necessarily definitive of
the Eastern way of thinking, even antithetical. We constantly have this
East-piece and West-piece fighting and struggling within ourselves. That’s
definitely something I want to explore. I’ve always been interested in
religion, not just religion itself, but also religion’s tension with the other
pieces of a person’s identity. Even with the Rosary comic, there was some
tension about the skin tones that were used. Lark colored it and we tried to
use a wide variety of skin tones for both the humans and the angels. There was
some tension that arose about the use of varied skin tones within the
distribution chain.
SW: What is the hardest part of your
craft?
GLY:
The whole thing is really hard, man. Comics – I love comics, but it’s really
time-consuming. Writing is probably the worst, though, since that is the stage
where something is made or broken. If you don’t do a good job in your writing,
then everything else that follows is just crappy. The best art in service of
the worst story is still just…crap. I think every medium has its challenges.
There are definitely some things easier to do in comics than in pure prose,
such as setting up a scene. In comics you can do it with a single image whereas
in prose you have to figure out how to describe things in a way that would
carry the reader along.
SW: In a book around the same length
as ABC, how long would it take you to draw?
GLY:
It takes me between 4 to 8 hours per page. I have a simplified drawing style so
I can go faster. Derek, for example, can take up to 2 to 3 days to do a page,
depending on the page.
SW: Do you have any words of advice to
young artists or writers who aspire to do what you’re doing now?
GLY:
Get a day job. Honestly, I’ve been thinking about this, especially since I
became a dad. A lot of my comic book friends have asked me if I’d let my
children be comic book artists if they want to. I just don’t know. I think that
early on, if you want to pursue art, you have to make this choice of whether
you want to do it as a way of expressing yourself or doing it as a way of
feeding yourself, because those things don’t always go hand in hand. In fact,
most of the time they don’t go hand in hand. So if you want to feed yourself
with your art, then you pursue it in one way. If you want to use it as pure
self expression, then you pursue it in a different way. To feed yourself, you
would become an animator, an illustrator, a web designer, or that sort of
thing. And you would have to let go of your art to a certain point where you’re
okay with other people telling you what to do and how to create and having
someone else have the final yes or no over your creation. But if you want to
pursue it as self-expression, I think you really need to find a good day job.
Because if you don’t have that day job, then the practical need for money is
going to end up pushing you in a direction you don’t want to go. It’s going to
end up pushing yourself into feeding yourself with your art. I think that’s a
struggle I see in myself and in a lot of my comic book artist and writer
friends. There’s always this tension between business and art and I think the
ones who have navigated through that the best are the ones who have day jobs
that are flexible that allow them to pursue their art on the side.
SW: What are you currently reading?
GLY:
I’ve been reading a lot of books on the Boxer Rebellion. I recently read a book
called “The Origins of the Boxer Uprising” by Joseph W. Esherick, which is sort
of an academic book, and this other one called the “Ho Chi Tuan Movement.”[4]
It was this little pamphlet put out by Communist China in the 70s as
propaganda. I’m also reading an audio book…ha, “reading” an audio book…called
“The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck. I’m almost done with that.
SW: Are you currently reading any
graphic novels?
GLY:
You know, I haven’t gone to the comic book store in a really long time. The
last graphic novel I read was one called “The Mourning Star,” by [Kazimir
Strzepek]. It’s on the border between a mini-comic and an independent comic.
It’s all about this dystopian world. Also, Jeff Smith is one of my favorite
comic book artists. I recently read one to my son which he really liked,
“Shazam” by Jeff Smith. I also read “Regifters.” It’s a graphic novel by Mike
Carey and Sonny Liew [and Marc Hempel] targeted at teenage girls, but I still
liked it.
ML: Who are your favorite artists?
GLY:
I have a list as long as my arm. I love Jeff Smith who did “BONE.” I like this
guy named Jason Little who does a comic series online called “Bee.” Then
there’s Derek [Kirk Kim], of course; Jason Shiga, another Bay Area cartoonist; Lark
Pien; and Osama Tezuka, who did “Astro Boy.” Adrian Tomine, Lynda Barry…
SW: One last thing. What was your
inspiration behind the illustration on the very last page? [5]
GLY:
Oh. The Backdorm Boys.
SW: They have a name? I didn’t even
know they had a name.
GLY:
Did you see their little video? [6]
SW: I did. That was how I knew the
reference behind that illustration. It made me laugh so hard because it was
just one of those subcultural references you either got it or you didn’t.
GLY:
For the Backdorm Boys, I think they’re hilarious, first of all. And it’s sort
of a part of American culture, even though they’re Asian-Asian. But I think
they provide a really good contrast to William Hung. These are both Asians that
are singing American pop songs and they’re both funny, but I think the reason
why they’re funny is really, really different. For the Backdorm Boys, they mean
to be funny and I think they are actually in a sense lampooning American
culture and making fun of Backstreet Boys and boy-bands. On the other hand,
William Hung is almost like a victim. He doesn’t mean to be funny. In Backdorm
Boys, the funniness comes out of them, but in William Hung, the funniness comes
from outside, from his context, from the way American culture perceives him.
SW: That feeling of shame you
mentioned in the beginning of this interview, that little jump you talked
about, is what comes to my mind.
GLY:
Yeah, exactly.
ML: So any last word on future
projects we can look forward to?
GLY:
There’s the short story collection, there’s the book that used to be called
“Three Angels” which we don’t have a name for yet, which is based on my
brother’s experiences as a medical school student. Those are both
collaborations with other artists. The next story I will be drawing myself will
be a historical novel set in
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For
more information on the author, visit Gene Yang’s website, “Humble Comics” at http://www.humblecomics.com.
■
Reproduced below with
permission from First Second Books is the “Backdorm Boys” illustration referenced
in the interview on page 86:
By Gene Luen Yang…
The original…