"The Shadow Hero" signing with Gene Luen Yeng, August 16th!
Gene Luen Yeng is coming for a signing of his latest book The Shadow Hero on August the 16th. Here is a book trailer!
He’s a Chinese American comic artist and teacher. At first he was self-publishing under his own imprint “Humble Comics” and then joined First Second Books as well as other publishers (such as Marvel or Dark Horse). He wrote a lot of graphic novels, in collaboration with other artists, or on his own. Currently he is writing some of the Avatar Airbender comic series for Dark Horse. Gene Luen Yeng really believes in the educational power of comics and graphic novels, he has worked on this subject for his master’s project and created an online comic for teachiong math.
American Born Chinese won a lot of prestigious awards, such as the Eisner Award. There are three storylines in this graphic novel. The first one is an adaptation of the Chinese story of the Kung Fu practicing Monkey King. The second storyline is about the childhood of an American born Chinese and his identity struggles. Finally, in the third and last story line we follow an American boy who is ashamed of his Chinese cousin here in the US for a visit. On his website Gene Luen Yang explains: “Since my own ethnic heritage is such an important part of how I understand myself, I knew I wanted to…. I came up with three ideas and couldn’t decide which one was the best. American Born Chinese is me doing all three at once.”
A more recent project,Boxers and Saints is a very interesting concept. Two books are compiled in a beautiful box; the books relate the same story through the eyes of two different characters. Moreover it is the story of the Boxer Rebellion and war, taking place in China between 1899 and 1901 according to both sides. It is crazy how you will find sympathy for the camp of the first one you read, and then will think completely differently while reading the second one.
You can find a lot of information on the author’s website: http://geneyang.com/