A Review of Eddie Ahn’s Advocate (Ten Speed Graphic, 2024)

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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape

Well, I know summer is on the way, because I’m starting to catch up on some reading and writing up some reviews. Let’s let the official marketing description get us situated with Eddie Ahn’s textured graphic memoir: “Born in Texas to Korean immigrants, Eddie grew up working at his family’s store with the weighty expectations that their sacrifices would be paid off when he achieved the ‘American Dream.’ Years later after moving to San Francisco and earning a coveted law degree, he then does the unthinkable: he rejects a lucrative legal career to enter the nonprofit world. In carving his own path, Eddie defies his family’s notions of economic success, igniting a struggle between family expectations, professional goals, and dreams of community. As an environmental justice attorney, he confronts the most immediate issues the country is facing today, from the devastating effects of Californian wildfires to economic inequality, all while combatting burnout and racial prejudice. In coming fully into his own, Eddie also reaches a hand back to his parents, showing them the value of a life of service rather than one spent only seeking monetary wealth. Weaving together humorous anecdotes with moments of victory and hope, this powerful, deeply contemplative full-color graphic novel explores the relationship between immigration and activism, opportunity and obligation, and familial duty and community service.”

I’m always looking for new material to add to my race and graphic narrative course; this one definitely fits the bill. What I especially love about this graphic narrative is the honesty with which Ahn is able to articulate the complications of parental expectations against his growing sense of ethics and duty. In this particular case, you can fully understand why his parents are driven so much by the importance of the money that Eddie can make. His parents’ business fails, and they end up divorcing. In the wake of these personal tribulations, Eddie’s career seems to be one of the few, clear bright spots, so he becomes the beacon of hope for the family at large. Of course, working at the intersections of social justice, nonprofits, and environmental law is not necessarily lucrative, so the Ahn’s text finds its rich foundation on this particular site of tension. Ahn’s professional trajectory is ultimately very intriguing and offers much in terms of the so-called “model minority narrative” and how it is finally subverted. Ahn’s artistic approach to the memoir is notable. He reminds me most of Tomine in the use of standard, geometric panels; his icons and images tend toward realism (rather than a cartoon-ish style), which is fitting for this work given the content. I always appreciate diving into a new graphic memoir, and this one is definitely a standout. Highly recommend!

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A Review of Justin Torres’s Blackouts (FSG, 2023)

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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape

Occasionally, you read outside of your established field and want the world to know about a book you’ve read. Such is the case with Justin Torres’s Blackouts, which follows his equally stunning but very different debut We the Animals. Torres’s signature, gorgeous prose grounds us, but Blackouts is a different “beast” entirely, made of up archival documents, pictures, redacted portions of apparent academic studies concerning sexology and queerness, especially as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s clear that Torres had to engage in some robust research for this work, which informs and animates his characters and the narrative itself.

Let’s let the publisher do some work for us: “Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book—Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns—and its devastating history. This book contains accounts collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. The voices of these subjects have been filtered, muted, but it is possible to hear them from within and beyond the text, which, in Juan’s tattered volumes, has been redacted with black marker on nearly every page. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator recount for each other moments of joy and oblivion; they resurrect loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. In telling their own stories and the story of the book, they resist the ravages of memory and time. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?”

I was thinking about Torres’s choices here: to reconsider the place of both women and minorities in the archive of queer studies. Their lives and their histories have been typically marginalized and, in some cases, as this novel shows, co-opted entirely by other scientists and scholars. Torres seems to be interested in reminding us though that erasures create other erasures. If Jan Gay’s name is buried, so too is Juan’s presence as well, which leads us back to the presence of the narrator, who exists as a kind of younger foil to Juan, someone eager to discover the history of a kind of queer, BIPOC ancestor. I do not know if Torres found robust evidence of such figures in the archive, but the confluence of documents collected (whether fictionally generated or not) suggests that BIPOC individuals were typically objects of study. Thus, narrative provides Torres the apparatus to reconsider the centrality and psychic/emotional expansiveness in characters like Juan and the narrator, while also reminding us that the toil of existing on the margins is truly a madhouse that one is never guaranteed to survive.

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A Review of Justinian Huang’s The Emperor and the Endless Palace (MIRA, 2024)

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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape

Justinian Huang’s debut novel, The Emperor and the Endless Palace (MIRA, 2024) was one that was recommended to me by two former students of mine. I occasionally keep in touch with former students through unofficial reading groups. I’m glad I got to read this one, which is sort of a low-fantasy, silkpunk inspired work involving queer Asian American romance.

Let’s let the official marketing description give us some context: “In the year 4 BCE, an ambitious courtier is called upon to seduce the young emperor—but quickly discovers they are both ruled by blood, sex and intrigue. In 1740, a lonely innkeeper agrees to help a mysterious visitor procure a rare medicine, only to unleash an otherworldly terror instead. And in present-day Los Angeles, a college student meets a beautiful stranger and cannot shake the feeling they’ve met before. Across these seemingly unrelated timelines woven together only by the twists and turns of fate, two men are reborn, lifetime after lifetime. Within the treacherous walls of an ancient palace and the boundless forests of the Asian wilderness to the heart-pounding cement floors of underground rave scenes, our lovers are inexplicably drawn to each other, constantly tested by the worlds around them. As their many lives intertwine, they begin to realize the power of their undying love—a power that transcends time itself…but one that might consume them both.”

Huang clearly has some knowledge of Chinese cultural and historical contexts, which is crucial to the two sections set in 4 BCE and the 1700s. Here, the novel treads silkpunk fantasy grounds, as we’re in periods where palace intrigue and fox spirits are respectively integrated into the narrative. The novel is primarily anchored in the present day, as River, a queer Asian American man, has a mysterious run-in with a handsome stranger named Joey. The weirdest element of this contemporary storyline is that River meets Joey at a party, but while he is traipsing through the palatial estate in which the festivities are being held, he accidentally steps into a room filled with statues with individuals who look like him. River questions his perception of the experience, as he comes to the party under the influence of drugs. Nevertheless, River is under the impression that there is something more to this connection to Joey, which propels the plot into motion. Interspersed with the contemporary sections are the parts set in the Chinese past. Each of these earlier narratives also involves a romance plot between two men, or at least two individuals who appear to be men. The romance quotient in this novel is high, as this text comes out of MIRA, which is something I should have expected, but nevertheless there were moments I was pulled out of the plot, as Huang wanted to make clear that these relationships are not only illicit but very charged as well. The most interesting aspect of this novel for me was trying to figure out how the narratives would come together. As it becomes clear that Huang is playing with tropes of reincarnation, he still has a couple of tricks under his sleeve because we do not exactly know how River and Joey are situated in those past narratives. It is only within the last 100 pages or so that Huang begins to reveal his cards. Naturally, it is in this phase that the novel moves quickest, as we begin to see how River and Joey’s love has been thwarted over time. What I appreciated most is how the novel ultimately gives us a historically-expansive narrative involving queer Asian and queer Asian American men, something which is still fairly uncommon in contemporary fictional cultural productions. A fun read involving queer Asian/American romance, mischief, with some magical realism thrown in to keep us on our toes.

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A Review of Sumni’s Firebird (HarperAlley, 2023)

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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape

I was sad to see that Sumni’s Firebird (HarperAlley, 2023) didn’t have too many reviews for it, but at least we’ll remedy that issue by covering it here at AALF! Let’s let the official marketing description give us some key contexts: “Sunmi’s gorgeous two-color teen graphic novel debut examines the power of resilience and reinvention, following the lives of Caroline and Kim, two queer, Asian American teenagers growing up in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area, as they forge an unexpected connection. Caroline Kim is feeling the weight of sophomore year. When she starts tutoring infamous senior Kimberly Park-Ocampo—a charismatic lesbian, friend to rich kids and punks alike—Caroline is flustered…but intrigued. Their friendship kindles and before they know it, the two are sneaking out for late-night drives, bonding beneath the stars over music, dreams, and a shared desire of getting away from it all. A connection begins to smolder…but will feelings of guilt and the mounting pressure of life outside of these adventures extinguish their spark before it catches fire?”

I loved this graphic novel for its streamlined, yet nuanced rendering of burgeoning queer, racialized friendships and relationships. It is Kimberly Park-Ocampo who is the free spirit of the two. Though she comes from a family that is under financially strained times (as a note, I believe that Kimberly is part Filipinx-Korean), she always maintains a positive attitude, especially toward her younger siblings. When Kimberly meets Caroline for the first time, you can tell that Kimberly has the upper hand, but Kimberly’s so down-to-earth that she instantly can make friends with pretty much anyone. Caroline is far more uptight, with a complicated living situation, just like Kimberly, as their fathers are essentially both absent figures. Caroline feels pressure from her mother to perform well in school, but she’s always seeking social outlets and the possibility of romance. Eventually, Kimberly and Caroline begin to bond, with the clear sense that something else might be on the horizon. Sunmi’s expertise is in the understated way she keeps pacing readers toward what will eventually be a satisfying conclusion between these two characters. The art has a cartoon-ish style that I very much appreciated, though at times the cursive writing was a little bit hard to read. This one is certainly a graphic novel I could see myself adopting in a future course of mine. My sibling and I agreed: this work is the type of graphic novel we needed when we were younger so that we could see the complex lives that queer, racialized teenagers could lead and that even romance could be possible.

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A Review of Susan Lieu’s The Manicurist’s Daughter (Celadon Books, 2024)

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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape

So, I’ve been a little bit on a memoir kick as of late, and I saw Susan Lieu’s The Manicurist’s Daughter (Celadon Books, 2024) and tackled it while I was in Washington DC over the last year. The official marketing blurb gives us these tidbits: “An emotionally raw memoir about the crumbling of the American Dream and a daughter of refugees who searches for answers after her mother dies during plastic surgery. Susan Lieu has long been searching for answers. About her family’s past and about her own future. Refugees from the Vietnam War, Susan’s family escaped to California in the 1980s after five failed attempts. Upon arrival, Susan’s mother was their savvy, charismatic North Star, setting up two successful nail salons and orchestrating every success—until Susan was eleven. That year, her mother died from a botched tummy tuck. After the funeral, no one was ever allowed to talk about her or what had happened. For the next twenty years, Susan navigated a series of cascading questions alone—why did the most perfect person in her life want to change her body? Why would no one tell her about her mother’s life in Vietnam? And how did this surgeon, who preyed on Vietnamese immigrants, go on operating after her mother’s death? Sifting through depositions, tracking down the surgeon’s family, and enlisting the help of spirit channelers, Susan uncovers the painful truth of her mother, herself, and the impossible ideal of beauty. The Manicurist’s Daughter is much more than a memoir about grief, trauma, and body image. It is a story of fierce determination, strength in shared culture, and finding your place in the world.”

One of the main takeaways from this book is the endurance of grief. For Lieu, the sudden death of her mother from plastic surgery becomes a void that impacts her family for decades. Indeed, it is clear from Lieu’s memoir that her mother was the congealing force not only behind her nuclear family but her broader extended family as well. The complications of her mother’s death also influence the trajectory of their family business. Having built a thriving nail salon business, her mother enabled her immediate and extended families to have a measure of financial security as refugees and immigrants. In the wake of her death, the family struggles to evolve the business, and Lieu must soon make her way through the world with limited finances even while still pushing herself to succeed. One of the most interesting aspects of the memoir is when Lieu begins to explore the importance of performance and art for her life. She makes forays into the world of theater with solo shows that begin to give her an outlet to explore her complicated, intersectional background. The concluding arc of the memoir is perhaps the most poignant, as Lieu really seeks to dive into her past, especially with respect to the circumstances of her mother’s death. In the process, Lieu comes to terms with the oppressive nature of gendered/racialized beauty standards, while also acknowledging the incredible obstacles that refugees must overcome simply to survive. An arresting work!

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