The Graphic Novel Book Club at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Woods Run branch will discuss two books on the immigrant experience on June 29: Shaun Tan's Arrival and Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese. Tan summarizes The Arrival on his official site:
The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope.Here is an excerpt from a 2016 PBS NewsHour interview in which Yang discusses the characters in and inspiration behind American Born Chinese:
For about five years, I had done a few stories with Asian American protagonists, but their cultural heritage never played an important part of the story. I knew I wanted to do some kind of story where that was the focus, because my own cultural heritage played such an important part in how I find my place in the world.The meeting runs from 6:30 to 7:30 pm at 1201 Woods Run Ave. (map) and is free and open to the public.
For “American Born Chinese,” I really wanted to tackle stereotypes head on. I just think it’s more powerful when you do it visually. Like, if I were to describe the Cousin Chin-Kee character to you in text, I don’t think it would have the same sort of emotional impact as seeing him on the page.
