TED Radio Hour - When Stories Collide

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

In the cult comic American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang weaves mythical folklore with a coming-of-age immigrant story. The author reflects on why his story still feels relevant to young readers. Host Manoush Zomorodi also speaks with Ben Wang, star of the new Disney+ adaptation of the award-winning graphic novel. TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) sponsor-free. Sign-up at plus.npr.org/ted. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

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From Ted and NPR. I'm Manushe Zamorodi. So right before I got married, I went back to my parents' house and I cleaned out my old childhood bedroom. This is Gene Luen Yang. About 25 years ago, he was a high school teacher. And his hobby was writing comic books. I would tell my classes on the first. day of every semester that I was also a comic book creator.

Because I was trying to impress them. And then I realized really quickly that it was just not impressive. They didn't find it impressive at all. So anyway, all those years ago, Gene was at his parents' house going through old letters and drawings. And I found this notebook that I had kept when I was in second and third grade. There's this cartoon in there. And on this cartoon, there's a slant-eyed buck-tooth character.

And then there's this other blonde character. And the slant-eyed bucktooth character is saying, me Chinese, me play joke, me go pee-pee, inner Coke. And then the blonde character is spitting out his coke. He didn't remember doing the drawing, but he did remember the joke. Yeah. Any Asian-American who grew up in the 80s and probably early 90s remembers that joke. But I obviously thought it was funny enough to put in my notebook.

And I wondered if my second grade self understood that that joke was aimed at people who look like me. I'm not positive he did. I'm not positive he did. But at that moment, seeing it again as an adult, Gene felt like that character was speaking to him. And so over the next six years or so, Gene started to work on a book with that character in mind. He really is all of these negative Chinese and Chinese. Chinese-American stereotypes that I had grown up with. And drawing that character on the page felt like an exorcism to me. It was almost like I was working something out, you know?

That book ended up becoming American-born Chinese, a graphic novel that came out in 2006 and quickly became a bestseller and the first graphic novel to ever become a finalist for the National Book Award. I was kind of shocked by the reaction. I was incredibly surprised and also encouraged by the amount of support that book got. From librarians and from teachers and from bookstellers, of course. But really from these readers, and they were mostly, like I heard a lot from, not necessarily Asian American readers, but from the children of immigrants.

It didn't really matter where their parents were from. It didn't matter what kind of food they ate at home. It didn't matter what language they spoke at home. It just mattered that there was this divide between the life that they experienced at home and the life that they experienced at school. And I heard from a lot of folks like that. Now American-born Chinese is a classic and required reading in many middle schools across the country. The book has also just been adapted into a Disney Plus series,

starring some of the first Asian actors to ever win Oscars. marking a new era of storytelling that has finally arrived. And so today on the show, Gene Luen Yang explains his role in a quiet but extraordinary shift in how we educate and entertain the next generation. How he went from a comic book loving kid to the writer of Superman for DC Comics, what he learned teaching high school, that he now applies to his graphic novels, and why he finally agreed to let Hollywood take a crack at the book that made him famous. We'll also hear from the young actor who stars in the TV version of American-born Chinese.

But first, we need to explain a little bit more about the book itself. If you aren't familiar with this graphic novel, the story isn't probably what you think it is, because it's actually three stories about three Chinese teens. There's Jin, a kid who moves and goes to a new school where he's the only Chinese-American student. At first, there's a twist on the ancient tale of the powerful yet fallible young monkey king. And then there's Chin Kyi, who visits his American cousin, bringing every stereotypical Chinese trait to life in a grotesque way that Gene, as a second grader, could never have imagined. We won't ruin the ending, but this.

These three stories collide at the end of the book. So that's what American War Chinese is. I came up with three different story ideas. I couldn't decide which one I like the best. And in the end, I realized that, you know, jumping between storylines, jumping between genres, that's kind of how it feels to be maybe an Asian-American in particular or an immigrants kid in general.

Most of us live in between worlds, right? We have one world at home and another world at school. And often as we go through our day, it does feel like we're moving in between worlds or we're moving in between genres. Okay, so Gene, take us back to your childhood. How did you even, like, was this just a thing that you were into from the very beginning or did someone introduce you to comics? My parents are both immigrants. And like most immigrant parents, they would tell me stories from the culture that they left when I was a kid. It was their way of keeping that connection alive.

I grew up in this house full of stories. And I also grew up drawing. I started drawing when I was two years old. My mom tells me, and I basically haven't stopped. Is it true that your mom was the person who bought you your first comic book? That's right. In fifth grade, she took me to our local bookstore. And I don't totally remember why.

But what I do remember very clearly was seeing the spinner rack in the corner, a wireframe rack that would carry a months worth of comics. And I remember her buying a copy of DC Comics Presents number 57, starring Superman in the Atomic Nights. So that was the very first comic of my collection. Were you psyched about Superman? I was not psyched about Superman. I was not a Superman fan. I had actually wanted this Marvel comic. You know, there was this Marvel 2-and-1 comic with The Thing, who's this big orange rock monster.

And Rom the Space Knight, who's like this. He's kind of a superhero that dresses up like a robot and front of. these demons from outer space. But my mom felt like those two characters look too scary. So she bought me the Superman comic instead. Because Superman is like, you know, he's like a Boy Scout. He's like very safe. Super safe.

Super, super safe. Yeah. Kind of reminds me like in sitcoms where you'd see like the bad kid in the back row with the comic book hiding behind the chemistry, you know, textbook. What was the belief that you had? Where did you see comic books fitting into your world or other kids' worlds? Yeah. It felt a little bit subversive.

The way I would get to the comic book shop was, I had a best friend named Jeremy in the fifth grade. We would get our parents to drop us off at the local library. And then they would drive away. And we would be like, oh, we're going to spend like two hours on this library. And then we would sneak out of library. We would walk 20 minutes to the comic book shop. We'd buy as many comics out of the quarter bin as we could. And then we'd take them back to the library.

And we'd check out these big, like, oversized books to hide our comics. in. So it always felt very subversive, like something I wasn't supposed to do. I remember my dad realizing that my comic book collection was growing, and he would find these articles. I don't even know where he found them. He would find them where, and

they would talk about how, like, the lettering of the comics was so small that it would ruin your eyesight if you read too much. They're dangerous. Yes. So dangerous because of the lettering. So you didn't go, though, straight into

comics and graphic novels, you first, as you became adult, you continued drawing comics, but that was seen as a thing you did on the side. Was it seen as a hobby? Yeah, I mean, that was part of it. But then as I got older, and I started going to comic conventions and exploring what it meant to actually enter the industry. This is the 90s. I realized that it was just a very hard way of making a living. So then my plan was I was going to get a day job, and then I was going to do comics on the side, more than a hobby. I thought of it more was like a in a vocation, you know, like something that was part of my, this is going to sound very high flutin, but part of my development as a person. And out of that, I came to the decision

of becoming a high school teacher and then taking comics more seriously. So, I don't know, did you incorporate comics into your teaching or the way you taught algebra or computer science? So in the beginning, I just tried to keep them separate. But then they came together. I, maybe about four or five years into my teaching career, I was asked to sub for this algebra two class. One of my colleagues in the math department had to go on long-term leave. So I said yes, but the problem was

I was also the school's educational technologist, which is spent every two weeks I would be out of the classroom in some other teacher's classroom, helping with some tech-related project. So for this algebra two class, it meant that they would have to have a sub for their sub, which was horrific, right? It's like one of the worst situations you can have.

have in the classroom. So as a way of kind of providing that continuity, I would draw these comics of myself giving lectures. And those were surprisingly really well received. Some of my students even preferred me, like, in the comic to me in real life. Here's Gene Luen Yang on the TED stage. When I talked to my students about why they liked these comics lectures so much, I began to understand the educational potential of comics. First, unlike their math textbooks, these comics lectures taught visually. Our students grow up in a visual culture, so they're used to taking in information that way. But unlike other visual narrative, like film or television or animation or video, comics are what I call permanent. In a comic, past, present, and future all sit

side by side on the same page. This means that the rate of information flow is firmly in the hands of the reader. When my students didn't understand something in my comics lecture, they could just reread that passage as quickly or slowly as they needed. It was like I was giving them a remote control over the information. So for certain students and certain kinds of information, these two aspects of the comics medium. Its visual nature and its permanence make it an incredibly powerful educational tool. Actually, this is something I talk about with my kids all the time. You know, my older son just

rips through books and he read one of years last night and stayed up most of the night finishing it. Whereas my daughter, she really has to pace herself and she needs to take her time and she knows it. But tell me more about this idea, about the rate of information flow, putting it in the hands. of your students, of your readers. Well, I'm a slow reader as well. I read very, very slowly. And I also wonder if that's one of the reasons why I was drawn to comics, because comics are this visual medium that allow you to approach it at your own pace.

It's not like animation, right? It's not like film. If a movie is an hour and a half long, every single person who watches that movie is going to take an hour and a half to watch that movie. is going to take an hour and a half to watch that movie. But a comic, you can read as quickly or as slowly as you want to or as you need to. In a minute, how Gene Luan Yang took his experience in the classroom and turned it into a book that still feels unusual enough

to grab kids' attention over 15 years later. I'm Anush Zamorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us. Friends, before we get back to the show, I want to let you know about TED Radio Hour Plus. When you become a plus listener, you get bonus episodes made just for you with more ideas from TED speakers and you'll go behind the scenes with our producers. What you won't get, though, are those sponsor messages interrupting the show.

And that's because you are directly supporting our work at NPR. So if you'd like to show your support, learn more and subscribe at plus.npr.org or write in the Apple Podcasts app. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zamorodi. And on the show today, I am talking to Jean Luen Yang, author and illustrator of the graphic novel, American-born Chinese. So during your teaching career, you started working on your graphic novel, American-born Chinese, which you wrote and illustrated yourself. It came out in 2006, and now, you know, here we are over 15 years later.

And it's required reading in middle schools across the country. And it still feels revelatory. Well, thanks, thanks. I've been doing comics for about five years, and I'd always had these Asian-American protagonists, but their Asian-Americanness was never an important part of the story. It was always like, you know, they would eat with chopsticks or something. There'd be like little hints of their culture throughout the narrative, but it wasn't central to the narrative.

I wanted to do some kind of story where that was the center. When I started working on it, I was doing it as mini comics, which meant I would write and draw a chapter. I'd take it to my local kinkos. I'd run off copies. I'd staple them by hand. And then I would sell them. I'd sell them to local stores. There would be a couple of stores that would carry handmade comics on consignment in the Bay Area.

And at the end of the day, I'd move maybe 20 copies or 25 copies. So I was working at a very, very small scale. And I knew most of the people who were going to read that book. So I think that in a way gave me the courage to do a character like that cousin character. Gene, this cousin character, I mean, he really is every uncomfortable stereotype of Asians and Asian Americans all kind of wrapped up into one. I'm just looking at the page right now, and he has slanted eyes, light yellow skin, teeth like a beaver. He quotes Confucius a lot. I mean, I am cringing as I turn to this other page in the book where he's at school eating a dead cat and noodles out of a Chinese takeout container for his lunch.

Yeah, that cousin character is definitely the most controversial part of the book. My publisher actually sent out a whole bunch of these review copies. to different independent bookstores all over America. And more than one Asian American bookstore owner flipped through the book, saw that character, and refused to carry the book. So I ended up having to write this essay about what I was trying to do with that character. My publisher put that up on the web. That convinced those Asian American bookstore owners to actually read the book.

And now they're among my most ardent supporters. But it took a little bit. I mean, he is, this character is so ridiculous that I started laughing at his scenes. But then I was like, is that bad that I'm laughing? Like, I don't know. Was that okay? These are the three big reactions that I've gotten from that character. So one is it's usually from older Asian Americans.

They'll tell me that they get to those portions of the book and they find that character so painful that it's hard for them. to finish the book. And I kind of think that's okay. I kind of think that that's sort of what I was going for. And then the second reaction, and this is very rare, I would get somebody coming up to me at a comic book convention and they would say, you know that cousin character in their book is so cute. Do you have like a t-shirt with his face on it? And when I would get a reaction like that, I'd be like, yeah, you just did not understand what I was trying to do with that character. The other reaction is usually from younger folks and it's sort of like yours

people will tell me I found that a character really funny but I felt very uncomfortable laughing and I think that's okay too I think that's also kind of what I was going for because in a lot of ways like if you look at American comedians we just have a lot of race-based humor

but I think the race-based humor comes in two different flavors one is people make jokes about race because they think the stereotypes are true. And that's a, I mean, that's just straight up racist humor. The other way I think people make jokes about race is they use jokes to point out the absurdity of the stereotypes. Because deep down inside, we know that it's not right to smush down three-dimensional people into two-dimensional stereotypes.

So that is sort of what I was going for with this character as well. Like, I did want him to be absurd, but I wanted him to be absurd because he is the embodiment of absurd ideas about Asians and Asian Americans. I heard that when the book was first published, a couple people in Hollywood also took notice and that you did get an offer, but you didn't take it. Am I getting this story correct? Yeah, that, it was from a major studio. Then when I dug in very lightly, I was told that they were interested in it because it had the word Chinese in the title. And they wanted something to coincide with the Chinese Olympics that happened in 2008. How did that make you feel?

I mean, it did not make me feel awesome. Now that I've, you know, dip my toe into Hollywood, I kind of get how in order for the stories to exist that are told in Hollywood, you do have to ride that line in between art and commerce, right? it's just part of being able to do what they do. I get that. But I think when I heard that, it felt like they didn't necessarily have an understanding of the spirit underneath the book. And then internally, I was always kind of freaked out

about how that cousin character would make the leap from the page to the screen. And this might be like a bias of mine because I'm a book person. But I kind of trust readers a little bit more than I trust viewers. And my biggest fear was that if the story was ever adapted, that scenes with that cousin character would get clipped and show up on YouTube completely decontextualized. And that would be a complete nightmare for me. Okay. So here we are.

An American porn Chinese has been made into a TV show. What changed both for you and for Hollywood? On the Hollywood side, I think they've become much more open to a diversity of stories. Black Panther came out and crazy rich Asians came out and both of them made boatloads of money. And I do think that was a watershed year. Folks in Hollywood realized, oh, these stories can actually work. They can work both creatively and financially. I think that was very important.

But, Dean, you know, a lot of people don't get a second chance. Like, a book comes out. If you're going to option it, it's got to happen then because people forget what happened. How did interest spark up? Or was it bubbling along all this time? Yeah, I wouldn't say it was bubbling along. I do think it was after that year, after the Black Panther Crazy Rich Asians year, there was this renewed search for stories that might have been missed simply because

the protagonist didn't fit, you know, the standard boxes. And I started getting some interest. The big turning point was meeting Kelvin and Charles Yu, who ended up writing the pilot together. So they're two brothers. They're both incredibly talented. we sat down for a conversation, and their solution to my fear that I had had for years and years and years

was to simply put it into the script. So in the pilot episode, that fear that I had of the cousin character, getting clipped and put on YouTube decontextualized, that actually happens. That's part of the plot. So in a lot of ways, what Kelvin and Charles are doing in that story

is sort of teaching the viewer what to think about that. When they walked me through that solution, I was like, okay, I trust these guys. But it's true. As you mentioned, the TV adaptation of the book, it's very different. Was that hard for you to see your baby morph? Or were you okay with that? Like, how do you, was this your first time sort of thinking, like, how do I take the essence of my book,

but turn it into something that makes sense for someone who maybe has never read anything that I've ever written? I was okay with it. I felt like before we started working on this, I had made peace with the fact that the adaptation would be very different from the original book. And I think some of that comes from just watching adaptations of other books. Different media have different strengths. And I think in order for you to take advantage of the strength of one medium, you do have to change the storyline. So early on, Kelvin and Charles and I, we have these conversations. about boiling the book down into its essence and then letting it re-expand into the shape of an eight-episode season of television.

So with the book, it's a 200-page graphic novel. It has one beginning, middle, and end. Whereas with television, because there's eight episodes, you do need at least eight beginnings, middles, and ends. So how do you get there? How do you get from one place to the other, you know? The other thing we had to talk about was pretty early on we made the decision to move the time period of the story from the late 80s, early 90s, which is vaguely when the book is set into the 2020s. The conversation about Asian Americans has changed between then and now. And those changes have to be incorporated into the story as well. In the TV version, Jin is a present-day high school student who just wants to fit in. How's cool?

It was good. School is fine. I've got American Lidd, Bio2, Trigg, World History, which I think is way too broad art. And I also have PE this year, which I can sub for a sport. So I was thinking maybe I could do soccer. Not too many activities. Just stay focused, study, work hard. That is enough. So that's Jin with his parents. And the cousin character we talked about now only exists in your own. clips from a cheesy 90s sitcom. When one of the kids at school mocks Jen by comparing him to that old 90s show, we see how old stereotypes die hard. Then there's also the Chinese mythological characters woven in, the Monkey King, and many more, including a goddess played by Oscar winner Michelle Yeo.

But I want you to know it will be difficult and dangerous. And remember, the fate of it. of your world hangs in the balance. Jin is played by Ben Wong, who was born in Beijing and immigrated to Minnesota around age six. He had never read Gene's book until he auditioned for the part. My job was on the floor. I had never gotten like a material that reminded me so much of my own life before. I called Ben a few weeks ago to talk to him about being in the series.

I was in Stanford, Connecticut at the time, shooting another film. And I had an off day, so I ran to the Stanford Public Library, and I found the graphic novel in the children's section in the basement. And it was like 7.58, and they closed at 8. And I was like on the floor, like crying my eyes out on the carpet. And the janitor was like, sir, you need to leave. And I was like, stop, I can't leave. I feel seen for the first time in my life.

Please let me cry on your carpet. I mean, can I just ask you? What was making you cry, do you think? So I didn't realize this really until I had read this book. But for me, growing up, consuming media was always an act of empathy. It was always about me learning about something else or someone else's life. And for the very first time, maybe in my entire life, I read something that felt like a reflection of my own specific circumstances. In an instant, I felt less alone.

Amelia. Jen, it's nice to meet you, sort of. Sort of? I just meant, because we sort of know each other because we went to elementary school together, but then you went to Crest Road Intermediate. I went to Dorothy Nichols Middle, and now I'm kind of creeping myself.

I should stop. You know, I think I do remember you. I mean, you kind of stand out, obviously. I do. Hey, you trying that for soccer? Yeah. Or, you know, I don't know. Maybe.

Oh, that's cool. I was actually going to try it, too, but my mom wants me to do drama because she did drama in high school and apparently we have to have all the same interests. Your parents ever like that? I'm not actually sure if my parents have any interests. I mean, at its core, Jin is just a regular American kid, trying to do regular American kid things, right?

He wants to join the team and he wants to get the girl and you go to the dance and do all the things that he saw on TV growing up that, you know, the world tells you a kid's supposed to be. to be doing. But his life keeps getting interrupted by Oscar award-winning actors and actresses who crash in through a ceiling and they tell him, you have to save the world, Jan, and you're like, why do I have to do this Oscar award-winning actress Michelle Yeh? And she's like, because you have to. And I always thought of it as a wonderful sort of metaphor, right? Jin is this character who's trying to live a normal life. But there's this whole other world of the mythological of sort of

Kung Fu and fantasy and deities and folklore that sort of invade his life and he feels like he's being pulled between these two worlds. And I think, you know, what better metaphor is there for sort of the immigrant experience and the Asian American experience, right? Because that was what it was for me. I was trying to just be this normal kid, but I always felt like there were these, this other world that I had responsibilities to, this other world that I didn't think any of my friends could understand, that I felt like I was being pulled between. And ultimately, the show, the lesson of the show is learning to embrace all of the worlds

that you are a part of, that they don't have to be separate, that you don't have to reject one to live in the other. You can live in both at once, and that will be even fuller and more beautiful life. So I was looking at your Instagram, and I guess this must have been right when you were filming the show. And you posted something about being cast, and you said that, this is a quote, growing up, I could either watch American shows or I could watch Chinese shows. I didn't realize there could be Chinese American shows. Boy, was I dumb. But in some ways, I don't know.

I don't know. Do you feel like you are kicking off a new genre? Was that something that the producers of the show told you that they were hoping to do? I think everybody knew this show was very special from the start, from just seeing the words on the page. We all knew. And then in making it, yeah, going on set every day and seeing all of these Asian people making a movie. the funny thing is, right before American-born Chinese, I made a movie called Chankan Dunk, starring an Asian-American lead. I played his best friend, and it was written and directed by a Chinese-American guy,

Ching-Shiao. And so I had just come from this Asian-American movie to this Asian-American TV show. And right before that, I had done this indie film about this Chinese-American eye doctor that, again, had a majority Asian cast. And those are really the only three movies I've done in my career, and they have all been these Asian-American stories told by Asian-Americans. And so in a way,

I almost forgot sometimes that this, how special it was. Isn't that, that's just such an incredible privilege to be able to forget for a second like, whoa, I'd be like, yeah, this is normal. I've done three of these. What? Is this weird? But, you know, very quickly, you're reminded by the people who have been doing this for a long, long time, that, no, this is a really amazing and incredible thing. Do you think that's the goal, though, that eventually, you get to the point where you won't even need to think about who's making it, and that won't even be an issue that you're Asian, or are we at this place where identity has to be part of telling our stories?

I think both are good. I think both are necessary. There's a character in the show who has this incredible line where he basically says, you know, I was a working actor, and in the industry back in the day, the only roles I got offered were nerds and ninjas. And to me, the problem is not that it's not a problem for Asian Americans to play nerds and ninjas. The problem is that for so long, that's all we were allowed to play. And I think the world that I want to be an actor in, and I think the world we're getting into is one where we can play anything as big as our humanity can encompass.

Anything as big as our imaginations are able to dream. We can be. to feel like we're allowed to do this or we're not allowed to do that. That's where I want to be. That's Ben Wong, star of American-born Chinese, out now on Disney Plus. In a moment, more from Gene Luen Yang, his latest graphic novel, Dragon Hoops, about the history of basketball and the year he spent embedded with a high school team. Plus, how he writes in the voice of Superman for DC Comics.

I'm Anoush Zamorodi, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anoush Zamorodi, and I am spending the hour with the award-winning writer and illustrator Gene Luen Yang. After American-born Chinese, Jean kept teaching high school and writing graphic novels on the side. Pretty soon, the opportunities started rolling in to write for the big leagues like DC-King. comics. But Gene had already started researching his latest graphic novel, Dragon Hoops. For one year, he was embedded with his high school's basketball team in Oakland, California. They were competing

for the state championships. Some of these kids would likely end up playing professionally, and they captured Gene's imagination, even though he hated sports as a kid. I did. I did hate sports as a kid. Mostly because I was really bad at it. I'm very uncoordinated. I flinch anytime somebody throws a ball at me. Even though I really, really try hard not to, I still flinch. And the worst part about basketball is

I was one of the taller kids. I was 6'1. So people would like expect me to be okay at it and I was like horrible. I was like the worst one on the court every time. So it was always this arena of humiliation. I did dragon hoops in part because I found this

incredible story that was so compelling I could not ignore it. It's the story of a high school basketball team, the team of the high school where I used to teach, the varsity men's team during the 2014-2015 season when they were going after the California State Championship. So a part of that narrative is also about how that team affected me. One of the things that I realized about sports during that season

is that I think people go to watch sports because we want to watch like courage and perseverance and tenacity on display. That's what I think the court is for most people. It's not an arena of humiliation. It's an arena where courage can be shown, right? And we want to watch it so that a bit of that courage

that the players show on the court ends up rubbing off on us. I think that happened for me. You know, I followed these kids. All these young men were half my age. And I'll watch them step out on. out of the court, sometimes in the face of these opponents that were, at least on paper, much stronger than them, and play their hearts out.

You know, so when the D.C. offer came in, it was actually the third time they approached me, and I turned them down twice because I didn't want to leave my teaching job. But when this offer came in, I just thought, I just thought I had to do it, even though it felt very risky to me. My wife and I, we have four kids. I ended up doing it, in part because of the example, I think, of that team. Yeah, so you profile each player on the basketball team, and that includes a lot about their identity, whether it's their religion, their race, or their financial situation. And you also, you know, you are a character in this book, and you really express your

awe in some ways of these kids, that their ability to be so focused on the court and also so a peace with themselves in many ways, well beyond their years. Yeah, yeah, that's right. The thing that most depressed me about them, the thing that I couldn't wrap my head around was how they could make a mistake on the court. You know, they could miss a pass or do something that might even be so embarrassing that the crowd would react, you know? They could do something like that and still keep their head in the game and still, like,

focus on the next thing that they had to do. Like, push that failure of size. and keep pursuing the goal. It was shocking to me because I feel like when I make a mistake, I dwell on it for like days or weeks. I feel like it takes me forever to recover. That was something that I wanted to emulate in my life, to not dwell on mistakes so much,

and just to keep going forward. You know, I also learned a lot in this book about the history of basketball. I had no idea about the origins of the game that it was founded by a guy, named James Naismith in 1891 at Springfield College in Massachusetts. Why did you want to weave the evolution and history of the game into the story about the kids on the team at Bishop O'Dowd?

That book just kept growing. I think I started reading books about basketball history because I was such a basketball noob. I didn't know anything about the sport and I just felt a little bit inadequate. And the more I read about it, the more fascinated I became. I just found all these really, really interesting characters in basketball history. And then I realized that reading the basketball history affected how I was watching these games play out on the court. I can give you an example.

So, you know, I would go to these games. And usually on that court, it was just a bunch of kids from a bunch of different cultural backgrounds all playing together. You know, there were white kids or black kids or Asian kids. there were. You know, it's Oakland. It's any background you can imagine. And it was just something I didn't think about because that's what my classroom looked like. But then I read this book called Tricksters in the Madhouse about this milestone game between the Minneapolis Lakers and the Harlem Globe Trotters. And in that book, they go into just how unusual it was at the time for players of different races to be on the court together.

There is the deep fear that if you had people of different cultural backgrounds, playing sports together, it would inevitably lead to violence. And it would inevitably lead to conflict. So simply by playing that game, they were proving something, you know? The Globetrotters won. But in some ways, it almost didn't matter that they won. It mattered that they played. It mattered that they played.

So I would read this book, and that I would go to the next game, And I'd watch all these kids from all these different backgrounds interacting with each other. Like it was just super normal because it is now, right? It is normal. And I would think about how, like how much blood and sweat it took to get to this point where it was normal where nobody thought about it. Nobody in the gym thought about it, you know? So you put this this team's experience in historical context. And as you mentioned, you also weave in your own story.

your wife and kids make appearances, and you really break the fourth wall, talking straight to the reader about your process and some of the difficult choices that you have to make about what to keep in the book and what to leave out. Tell me more about why you wanted to take the reader behind the scenes. Like what you think we get by getting a front row seat to your, I guess it's your inner creative turmoil a lot of it.

Yeah, that, this book was really hard for me to do because I was dealing with real people that I had real relationships with. You know, these are not just random strangers that I was following. They're friends. And I wanted to do right by them. At the same time, I wanted to do right by reality. You know, like I wanted to do a nonfiction graphic novel. And I had the struggle early on with the act of cartooning.

Like when you're cartooning, you're simplifying. So is it even possible to do a nonfiction graphic novel? Because just by the act of drawing. Just by the act of creating a cartoon of a real person, you're adding this layer of fiction on top of a real story. Like, I've come around. I definitely, like, after doing this book, I definitely think nonfiction graphic novels is clearly a category. And I hope it's a category that will grow. But when I was working on that book, I was struggling through all of that, you know?

And part of the way I did that was by just footnoting the crap out of that book. So there are some people who won't be surprised that there are historical graphic novels like Dragon Hoops. But back when you first published American Born Chinese, it still felt unusual. I mean, of course, you weren't the first person to publish these books. But what's the history there? How did it all start? So first, I do think that it was part of this wave of graphic novels that you could point to maybe mouse starting, right? When Mouse won the Pulitzer Prize in the 90s, there was this promise of a new kind of comic book or graphic novel that would deal with more literary topics.

And then there were books like blankets. There's just, there was like a slow buildup. And by the time American War Chinese came out in 2006, I think that buildup had become a wave. And the term graphic novel was being widely used by teachers and librarians. And I think there was this openness to using books in that publishing format, you know, in the classroom, to kind of experiment with comics and figure out how to pull out as much of the medium's inherent educational potential as possible. Well, you're really reminding me of your 2013 graphic novels, Boxers and Saints, where you tell the story of the boxer rebellion, the anti-Christian uprising. in China at the turn of the 20th century. And it's a historic perspective on being both Chinese and Christian.

What were the parallels that you saw to your own life? I'm curious, I mean, that's another story about people experiencing devastation and trying to relate it to now. Yeah, yeah. I grew up in a Chinese Catholic community. I'm still a practicing Catholic, although now I go to a Korean-American church, because my wife is Korean-American. And there is this tension, I think, between Western faith and Eastern culture. It's a tension that I wasn't aware of when I was a kid.

Because, you know, as a kid growing up at that church, anytime people were talking about God and Jesus, they're doing it in Chinese. So for me, they kind of went hand in hand. It wasn't until I was older and I started reading more about history. And especially the Boxer Rebellion that I realized that that wasn't always the case. So the reason why I wanted to do Boxers and Saints was because I felt like the Boxer Rebellion as a historical event mirrored a tension that I had felt in my own life, you know, between East and West. I think that the root of the tension is this difference in value hierarchies and how you decide what is more important. I think that Eastern and Western ways of thinking, the value hierarchies are similar, but the differences can cause a lot of tension in like an Asian-Americans' life.

Did you feel like you were able to, I don't know if it reconcile is the right word, but feel like you understood those tensions better? Yeah, I think so. I think most of my books were like self-therapy. You realize, like sometimes you have to make a choice and you realize that, between the options that are presented to you, there is no option that will make you feel perfectly at peace. You know, like, you'll make a decision based on the Eastern hierarchy, and you'll know, like, that Western part of your thinking is going to make you feel weird about it. Or you'll do the reverse. And you just kind of have to accept the fact that there's going to be that weird feeling after you make this choice.

I mean, these are pretty adult issues, ideas. I mean, there's a lot of violence in Boxers and Saints. that's the reality in dragon hoops. You bring up the accusations against one of the coaches who has been shunned by the school. Do you try to write for a specific age group or does the story just have to be told the way it has to be told? I do think it's the second for me. You know, I came up in comics. So in like in the 80s and 90s, your average comic bookstore, there might be a kid's shelf with like the Disney

Duck Comics. And there might be an adult shelf with like very adult things. But the vast majority of comics were just in this middle section. And age demographics just aren't a really big deal. It wasn't until I signed with First Second Books. It's a part of McMillan. They were really the ones that categorized my books as Y.A. And now that they did that, I think I fit really well there. But age demographics aren't something I think about when I'm working on my books. So at this point, you have written dozens of comics and books, including Superman for DC Comics, Shangxi for Marvel, the Avatar comic book series.

I mean, Gene, is this a dream? If you had told that fifth grader who was sneaking from the public library down to the comic book store that this is what you would end up doing, would he have believed it? That fifth grader would have peed his pants. He would have been so excited. I think in a lot of ways the answer is yes. It absolutely is a dream to be doing what I'm doing. I do think that my dreams have changed, though, since I was in fifth grade. You know, in fifth grade, I think it was about writing my favorite superhero characters.

And there still is that piece in me that really, really loves that and gets excited about that. But now I kind of think of storytelling as a way for us to work out what it means to be human. And there's no end to that because it's such a complex question. I think it's just a constant conversation that you have to continue to participate in. So what is your process then for, I mean, we've talked about characters that you know, you're the first person ever writing them. Either you come up with them or you're basing them on real life people. But what is your process for writing for characters who are icons that people feel like they already know and love? I mean, how do you keep the essence of Superman but add your Gene Luen Yang twist to it?

Yeah, that Superman has been around for a long time. He's been around long enough that there are multiple iterations of him. You know, like his powers will change depending on the era you're in. Even his love interest will change. You know, sometimes he's in love with Lois Lane. Other times he's in love with Wonder Woman. So for Superman, I think I just tried to find the Superman that most overlapped with my own interests, you know, like my own concerns. The thing that I love the most about Superman is that he is essentially like an immigrant.

Right. He's from another planet. Yeah, he's from another planet. He's from a different culture. I think he's a science fiction version of the American Jewish experience, which does, of course, have a lot of overlap with just the immigrants experience in general, you know, the American immigrants experience in general. But I leaned into that. I leaned in the fact that he is this foreigner and he kind of has to balance these two different identities just to get through his day. Okay, so last question. If you were a superhero, who would you be? Who is your role model, Gene?

Who would I want to be now? I think I would want to be multiple men. Multiple man is somewhat of obscure Marvel Comics character who can multiply himself. And the reason why I would want to be multiple men right now is because I am really behind on a deadline. And I think if I could make two or three of myself, maybe I would finally catch up. Gene Luen Yang, this has been a delight. Thank you so much for your time and your amazing brain. Thank you. Thank you so much, minutia is wonderful to talk to you. This was really an honor. Thank you.

Jean Luen Yang is the author of the graphic novel, American-born Chinese. It is now a series on Disney Plus starring Michelle Yeo and Ben Wong, who we heard from earlier. Gene's next project is the comic book series Books of Clash, which is based on the popular mobile game. He also writes for DC Comics and Marvel, and you can see his full talk at TED.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week. It was produced by Rachel Faulkner White and edited by Sanaz Meshkampur and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes James Delahousie, Harshanah, Andrea Gutierrez, Lane Kaplan Levinson, Fiona Guren, Matthew Cloutier, and Katie Montalione.

Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our audio engineer was Margaret Luthor. Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablewe. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Michelle Quint, Alejandra Salazar, and Daniela Balorezzo. I'm Anoush Zamoroti, and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.