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Answers to Your Questions from Gene Luen Yang
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From: Emily Townsend <etownsend_at_wisc.edu>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 10:23:35 -0600
Hi, everyone,
I'd like to share the questions from listserv members -- some were posted to CCBC-net and some were sent to me directly -- and Gene's answers with you. I'd like to thank everyone who sent us questions for Gene. I appreciated the diversity and depth of the questions. Also, I'd like to thank Gina Gagliano from First Second, who kindly offered to ask Gene to answer our questions. Finally, our biggest thank you to Gene Luen Yang for his time and thoughtfulness in answering our questions. His responses provided me insight into graphic novels, his creative and creation process as well as cultural content.
Here are the questions with answers:
1) From Alyson Feldman-Piltch:
/I am curious as to any push back or resistance Gene received about telling this story. Additionally, was there one side he enjoyed sharing more than the other?/
I haven't gotten any real push back. A few educators and parents have had concerns about the violence, and I totally understand that. It was a very violent period of time. When I was doing visual research, a few of the old black-and-white photos I found made me queasy.
I don't think I enjoyed working on one side more than the other, but Boxers definitely came easier than Saints. Historically, Boxers went on a journey from the Chinese countryside to the capital city. Their story lent itself to narrative, especially graphic narrative.
The Chinese Christians were the exact opposite. They mostly stayed in their villages and prayed for the best. Not quite as much movement, and their struggles were much more internal. Their story was difficult to tell in graphic novel format.
2) From Ginny Moore Kruse, Director Emerita, CCBC:
/I wonder what you think about your Boxer books being labeled "graphic novels." Did you think of them as "novels" while you were creating them?/
The term "Graphic Novel" was created to separate the medium of comics from superheroes, the genre that dominated it for decades. It's a clunky term. Lots of stories that get called "graphic novel" aren't novels at all. They might be nonfiction or collections of short stories. Even so, that's the term we're stuck with. That's the term everyone uses, everyone knows.
When I was working on Boxers & Saints, I did think of them as novels. I thought through the same issues prose novelists do: world-building, character development, plot. Storytelling is storytelling. The meat might be different, but the bones are always the same.
/A related question: Have you attempted to push back in the wider book community and/or the publishing industry as to how graphic literature has been "named?"/
When we're talking to each other, we cartoonists usually refer to our books as "comics" rather than "graphic novels." At the same time, we understand the reasoning behind the term's popularization. Cartoonists who primarily work outside of superheroes (like me) are grateful for the modern readership's broader acceptance of genre diversity within comics, and the term "graphic novel" - clumsy as it is - as been instrumental in that.
3) From Crystal Brunelle, Teacher Librarian, Onalaska, WI
/I read your blog about Boxers & Saints http://geneyang.com/tag/boxers-saints/page/3 and saw that it took about six years. Is that typical for your graphic novels or was that more time than usual? Did the research increase the time or are you doing a lot of research no matter the topic or genre? By the way I loved the "opera" portions. The characters and costumes were amazing./
/Thank you, again!/
Thank you! The opera parts were a lot of fun to do.
American Born Chinese took me five years. Boxers & Saints, which is more than twice as long, took me six. I'm a very, very slow cartoonist, but I guess I'm getting faster!
The research on this project was particularly intense. Much of American Born Chinese was set in an American suburb. I didn't really have to research -- I just had to remember. Boxers & Saints was a completely different culture, a completely different world. I had to learn a lot before I felt comfortable putting pen to paper. The research for the book took me a year, a year and a half.
4) From Carolyn Vidmar, Graduate Student, University of Wisconsin, School of Library Studies.
/It seems like you write about topics that maybe a lot of people aren't already familiar with, that you might be introducing people to, and I wonder how you come up with those ideas and what kind of work you do behind the scenes...especially for Boxers & Saints because that is such a big story.
/
My ideas are generally rooted in my own life. I first became interested in the Boxer Rebellion in the year 2000, when Pope John Paul II canonized a group of Chinese Catholic saints. I grew up in a Chinese Catholic community, and my home church flipped out about the Pope's announcement. This was the first time the Roman Catholic Church had honored Chinese citizens in this way.
All the festivities at my home church inspired me to look into the lives of the newly canonized saints. I discovered that many of them had been martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. The more I read about the Boxer Rebellion the more fascinated I became. The war really embodied a conflict between Eastern and Western perspectives, a conflict I've felt within my own life as an Asian American.
Making comics requires a ton of behind the scenes work. Before starting on the first page, I researched, outlined both books, gathered visual references, and designed my characters.
5) From Megan Schliesman, CCBC Librarian
/One of the things I most appreciate--aside from the clear narrative line and the moments of humor--is the wonderfully balanced treatment of both belief systems. Four Girl / Vibiana has visions of Joan of Arc. Bao and others embody gods when they fight. As a reader you can't accept one without accepting the other. I love that this parallel is developed but also love that it is not spelled out--readers can/will discover it. To what extent did you consciously consider this balance, and also leaving room for this discovery? /
I definitely wanted the two narratives to feel balanced. I wanted them to be very different from one another, but still be balanced. It was hard to figure out, especially after I realized the scopes of the two stories were so different.
I am of Eastern cultural origin, yet I belong to a Western faith tradition. At times, I feel a lot of ambivalence about that. I did this project to work through some of that ambivalence. And in the end, I don't think I've arrived at any firm answers, but I do feel slightly more at peace. I hope at least some of that journey comes across on the page.
6) From me, Emily Townsend, CCBC Librarian
/When talking to readers about Boxers and Saints, people frequently mention this sort of heightened experience of reading one story from the dual perspectives and experiences of the characters in two volumes. I also here about the social reading experience of Boxers and Saints since two people can be reading the story simultaneously but from different perspectives (One reading Boxers while the other reads Saints). I'm wondering did you always imagine these stories as a pair of a books? At what point in the creation process did you decide to tell the story from these two perspectives?/
Early on, I tried looking for a protagonist. I'd read something and feel close to the Boxers, but then I'd read something else and feel close to their Chinese Christian enemies. I just couldn't decide, and out of that indecision was born two books.
From the beginning, I've hoped that the two books can be read in either order. However, most readers have told me that it works better as Boxers first, Saints second.
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 10:23:35 -0600
Hi, everyone,
I'd like to share the questions from listserv members -- some were posted to CCBC-net and some were sent to me directly -- and Gene's answers with you. I'd like to thank everyone who sent us questions for Gene. I appreciated the diversity and depth of the questions. Also, I'd like to thank Gina Gagliano from First Second, who kindly offered to ask Gene to answer our questions. Finally, our biggest thank you to Gene Luen Yang for his time and thoughtfulness in answering our questions. His responses provided me insight into graphic novels, his creative and creation process as well as cultural content.
Here are the questions with answers:
1) From Alyson Feldman-Piltch:
/I am curious as to any push back or resistance Gene received about telling this story. Additionally, was there one side he enjoyed sharing more than the other?/
I haven't gotten any real push back. A few educators and parents have had concerns about the violence, and I totally understand that. It was a very violent period of time. When I was doing visual research, a few of the old black-and-white photos I found made me queasy.
I don't think I enjoyed working on one side more than the other, but Boxers definitely came easier than Saints. Historically, Boxers went on a journey from the Chinese countryside to the capital city. Their story lent itself to narrative, especially graphic narrative.
The Chinese Christians were the exact opposite. They mostly stayed in their villages and prayed for the best. Not quite as much movement, and their struggles were much more internal. Their story was difficult to tell in graphic novel format.
2) From Ginny Moore Kruse, Director Emerita, CCBC:
/I wonder what you think about your Boxer books being labeled "graphic novels." Did you think of them as "novels" while you were creating them?/
The term "Graphic Novel" was created to separate the medium of comics from superheroes, the genre that dominated it for decades. It's a clunky term. Lots of stories that get called "graphic novel" aren't novels at all. They might be nonfiction or collections of short stories. Even so, that's the term we're stuck with. That's the term everyone uses, everyone knows.
When I was working on Boxers & Saints, I did think of them as novels. I thought through the same issues prose novelists do: world-building, character development, plot. Storytelling is storytelling. The meat might be different, but the bones are always the same.
/A related question: Have you attempted to push back in the wider book community and/or the publishing industry as to how graphic literature has been "named?"/
When we're talking to each other, we cartoonists usually refer to our books as "comics" rather than "graphic novels." At the same time, we understand the reasoning behind the term's popularization. Cartoonists who primarily work outside of superheroes (like me) are grateful for the modern readership's broader acceptance of genre diversity within comics, and the term "graphic novel" - clumsy as it is - as been instrumental in that.
3) From Crystal Brunelle, Teacher Librarian, Onalaska, WI
/I read your blog about Boxers & Saints http://geneyang.com/tag/boxers-saints/page/3 and saw that it took about six years. Is that typical for your graphic novels or was that more time than usual? Did the research increase the time or are you doing a lot of research no matter the topic or genre? By the way I loved the "opera" portions. The characters and costumes were amazing./
/Thank you, again!/
Thank you! The opera parts were a lot of fun to do.
American Born Chinese took me five years. Boxers & Saints, which is more than twice as long, took me six. I'm a very, very slow cartoonist, but I guess I'm getting faster!
The research on this project was particularly intense. Much of American Born Chinese was set in an American suburb. I didn't really have to research -- I just had to remember. Boxers & Saints was a completely different culture, a completely different world. I had to learn a lot before I felt comfortable putting pen to paper. The research for the book took me a year, a year and a half.
4) From Carolyn Vidmar, Graduate Student, University of Wisconsin, School of Library Studies.
/It seems like you write about topics that maybe a lot of people aren't already familiar with, that you might be introducing people to, and I wonder how you come up with those ideas and what kind of work you do behind the scenes...especially for Boxers & Saints because that is such a big story.
/
My ideas are generally rooted in my own life. I first became interested in the Boxer Rebellion in the year 2000, when Pope John Paul II canonized a group of Chinese Catholic saints. I grew up in a Chinese Catholic community, and my home church flipped out about the Pope's announcement. This was the first time the Roman Catholic Church had honored Chinese citizens in this way.
All the festivities at my home church inspired me to look into the lives of the newly canonized saints. I discovered that many of them had been martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. The more I read about the Boxer Rebellion the more fascinated I became. The war really embodied a conflict between Eastern and Western perspectives, a conflict I've felt within my own life as an Asian American.
Making comics requires a ton of behind the scenes work. Before starting on the first page, I researched, outlined both books, gathered visual references, and designed my characters.
5) From Megan Schliesman, CCBC Librarian
/One of the things I most appreciate--aside from the clear narrative line and the moments of humor--is the wonderfully balanced treatment of both belief systems. Four Girl / Vibiana has visions of Joan of Arc. Bao and others embody gods when they fight. As a reader you can't accept one without accepting the other. I love that this parallel is developed but also love that it is not spelled out--readers can/will discover it. To what extent did you consciously consider this balance, and also leaving room for this discovery? /
I definitely wanted the two narratives to feel balanced. I wanted them to be very different from one another, but still be balanced. It was hard to figure out, especially after I realized the scopes of the two stories were so different.
I am of Eastern cultural origin, yet I belong to a Western faith tradition. At times, I feel a lot of ambivalence about that. I did this project to work through some of that ambivalence. And in the end, I don't think I've arrived at any firm answers, but I do feel slightly more at peace. I hope at least some of that journey comes across on the page.
6) From me, Emily Townsend, CCBC Librarian
/When talking to readers about Boxers and Saints, people frequently mention this sort of heightened experience of reading one story from the dual perspectives and experiences of the characters in two volumes. I also here about the social reading experience of Boxers and Saints since two people can be reading the story simultaneously but from different perspectives (One reading Boxers while the other reads Saints). I'm wondering did you always imagine these stories as a pair of a books? At what point in the creation process did you decide to tell the story from these two perspectives?/
Early on, I tried looking for a protagonist. I'd read something and feel close to the Boxers, but then I'd read something else and feel close to their Chinese Christian enemies. I just couldn't decide, and out of that indecision was born two books.
From the beginning, I've hoped that the two books can be read in either order. However, most readers have told me that it works better as Boxers first, Saints second.
--
Emily Townsend, Librarian
Cooperative Children's Book Center
School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Room 401 Teacher Education
225 N. Mills Street
Madison, WI 53706
608-890-0258
etownsend_at_wisc.edu
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Received on Wed 19 Nov 2014 10:24:49 AM CST
