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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780814258514 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Ohio State University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/08/2022 |
| Series: | Studies in Comics and Cartoons |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Sales rank: | 729,333 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Comics and graphic novels, like novels, poems, plays, and films, though not primarily meant to be didactic, go a long way in countering misrepresentations and myths of Asian North Americans by providing full and complex depictions of Asian diasporic subjects, by telling our forgotten or silenced histories, by presenting strong and positive examples, and by explaining structures of inequality that shape our lives. Because comics tell stories by using the pictorial and visual as well as textual, educators remark that they are accessible and are a “powerful educational tool, . . . able to combine story and information simultaneously, more effectively and seamlessly, than almost every other medium” (Blake). In his seminal book, Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud argues that we identify with “simple and basic” faces rather than a realistic drawing (36). McCloud has famously proclaimed that the power of comics comes from the way it enables us to “reach beyond ourselves” (40). He explains, “By de-emphasizing the appearance of the physical world in favor of the idea of form, the cartoon places itself in the world of concepts” (41). Similarly, Robert Petersen writes about the immediacy of using pictures and texts, and notes that in comics and graphic narratives, the “human figure provides the reader with a vehicle for emotional empathy” (xvii). Comics and graphic novels can effectively be used to inform, transform, question assumptions about, and inspire positive perceptions of Asian Americans in the twenty-first century.
This easy identification with characters, while useful, does pose some risks. In his introduction to a special issue on graphic narrative and multiethnic literature in MELUS in 2007, Derek Parker Royal discusses the effectiveness and dangers of using referential icons in comics. Because comics rely heavily on stereotyping, authors, he notes, “may expose, either overtly or through tacit implication, certain recognized or even unconscious prejudices held by them and/or their readers, . . . [and] there is always the all-too-real danger of negative stereotype and caricature” (8). In literature, film, and popular culture, Asian American and Asian Canadian authors have had to engage with and resist assumptions and prejudices about their beliefs, habits, and lifestyles based on their race. While some progress has been made in terms of discriminatory practices and media representation in the last decade, popular culture still has a “problematic relationship to ethnic difference” (Royal 8). As Min Hyoung Song remarks, “It is precisely because literature can seem so personal to raced subjects like Asian Americans that the race of the author, the race of the characters it focuses on, and the racial nature of the themes it develops are such intense objects of scrutiny in both scholarly and lay discussions” (Children 6-7).
In light of the burgeoning work by Asian American comics creators, this volume offers critical readings of works produced by Asian North American creators in the twenty-first century that address and challenge historical and present-day race relations in the United States and Canada; that explore intersectional links between gender, class, and ethnicity; that, in a few cases, do not engage with issues of racial identity at all. As Charles Hatfield notes, “Comic art, after all, is a potentially complex narrative instrument, offering forms of visual-verbal synergy in which confused, and even conflicting points of view can be entertained all at once” (127). Recent artists represent their views of the world not only in the form of autobiographical comics but also by playing with genres, borrowing from manga, superhero comics, sci-fi, and fantasy. Making the most of words and images, they theorize and are self-reflective about the writing and drawing process; they use images to rewrite history and question cultural memory, the way our memories are shaped by symbols, media, institutions, and social practices (Erll 9). They employ innovative techniques and use different conventions, including those from nonfiction documentary, the refugee narrative, popular films, and myths. In their volume of essays focusing on multiethnic comics and history, Martha Cutter and Cathy Schlund-Vials point out the versatility of the comics form: “Using the open and flexible space of the graphic narrative page—in which readers can move not only forward but also backward, upward, downward, and in several other directions—contemporary multiethnic writers present history as a site of struggle where new configurations of the past can be manipulated and alternate conceptualizations of present and future histories might be envisioned” (2). Such flexibility of form also allows Asian American graphic artists to use their textual/visual narratives to express trauma, loss, and feelings of shame and guilt. They show crucial links between politics, power, and the well-being of marginalized people in our society, how emotions and affects “shape individual as well as collective bodies” over different historical periods (Ahmed 15).Table of Contents
Introduction Asian American Literature and Asian American Graphic NovelsPart 1 Retelling History
Chapter 1 Countervisualizing Barbed Wire, Guard Towers, and Latrines in George Takei and Harmony Becker’s They Called Us Enemy
Chapter 2 Ethics of Storytelling: Teaching Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do
Part 2 Subverting Stereotypes
Chapter 3 Bitch Planet’s Meiko Maki Is Down for Justice!
Chapter 4 Anachronistic Figures and Counternarratives: Comics as a Subversive Form in American Born Chinese and Johnny Hiro
Chapter 5 “A Storm of a Girl Silently Gathering Force”: Peminist Girlhoods in the Comics of Trinidad Escobar and Malaka Gharib
Part 3 Superheroes and Race
Chapter 6 Questioning the “Look” of Normalcy and the Borders of South/Asian Americans: Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan, and the Comic Superhero
Chapter 7 (Un)Masking a Chinese American Superhero: Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew’s The Shadow Hero
Part 4 Ecology, Otherness, and Inclusivity
Chapter 8 Posthumanist Critique in Jillian Tamaki’s Boundless
Chapter 9 Drawing Disease and Disability: Ethical Optics and Space in Adrian Tomine’s Killing and Dying