Graphic novels have become a way for Asian American authors “to explore history and fight racism.”

Graphic novels have become a way for Asian American authors “to explore history and fight racism.” Graphic novels have grown in popularity as a literary genre to “explore the legacy of racism and the complexity of the immigrant experience.” In recent years, Asian American writers have been publishing works that reckon with the country’s racial injustices. In The Legend of Auntie Po, Shing Yin Khor used watercolors and folklore to “bring alive” a late-19th century Sierra Nevada logging camp where some of the earliest Chinese immigrants lived and worked; Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do recounts how her family escaped to America from war-torn Vietnam; Laura Gao’s The Wuhan I Know follows her journey from China to Texas while facing discrimination during the pandemic; Mira Jacob’s Good Talk documents the conversations she had about race with her young biracial son; and actor George Takei’s memoir They Called Us Enemy recounts his childhood years in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. According to one professor, the growth of graphic novels and memoirs can be attributed to the “coming-of-age” of certain Asian American subgroups that haven’t received as much attention in mainstream narratives. (NBC News, Input)