Graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang’s life is a bit surreal right now, and that’s more than all right with him.
The San Jose resident and East Bay native is in demand, with people clamoring for his thoughts on Disney+’s eight-episode adaptation of his award-winning 2006 graphic novel “American Born Chinese,” which debuted May 24.
Yang has also been hobnobbing with people in high places, including a recent stop at the White House for a special screening where he met, among others, President Joe Biden and Oscar winner Ke Huy Quan (who’s a co-star in “American Born Chinese”). Yang also appeared this month onstage at the Castro Theatre for a Q&A and screening as part of the CAAMFest Asian American film festival.
In between all that, he’s been hustling on two prominent projects. One is writing a series of books with illustrators Les McClaine and Alison Acton that “further fleshes out” the popular “Clash of Clans” and “Clash Royale” games by Supercell (the first release is due out May 30); the other a rom-com with children’s book author and illustrator LeUyen Pham.
It’s a lot to juggle but the 49-year-old UC Berkeley alum who received a Master’s degree at Cal State East Bay doesn’t mind at all. He’s having a grand time riding this wave.
“It’s been a very strange few weeks,” he admits during a Zoom interview. “The last couple weeks have been really, really weird in a good way — a very good way. In some ways I feel like I’m living somebody else’s life because things are so unexpected.”
Then again, unexpected things have been happening to Yang, a 1996 MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, since the release of “American Born Chinese.” The work was the first graphic novel to win a Michael L. Printz Award, which recognizes excellence in teen-oriented fiction, and first to be named a National Book Award finalist. All the awards and attention has left Yang a tad distracted, he admits. He’s also shifted away from teaching computer science (he taught at Bishop O’Dowd in Oakland), now devoting full time to a thriving career in the comics industry.
“I’m a little bit behind on my deadlines,” he laughs.
Laughs certainly aren’t lacking in Disney+’s version of “American Born Chinese,” which is also chock full of exciting martial-arts action, emotions of all sorts and sharp commentary about what it’s like to be an Asian American high school student.
Although Yang has an executive producer credit on the series, it is Kelvin Yu, an actor and the executive producer and writer of “Bob’s Burgers,” who ran the show.
Of course, changes had to be made, with the three separate stories told in Yang’s mind-bending book now interconnecting from the start.
“My hope is that the book and the television series kind of dialogue with each other,” he said. “Like part of that dialogue is what has happened to us as a community in the intervening 17 years (since the graphic novel came out). I think some things have gotten a lot more complex. In some ways, it feels like we’re moving forward and in other ways it feels like we’re falling backwards in time.”
“American Born Chinese” does stay true to the book’s central themes and the juxtaposition of the everyday life of uncertain teen-ager Jin Wang and the dynamic presence of Chinese mythological characters.
Given that the series runs eight episodes and Yang’s book is a mere 240 pages, there’s more time for massaging other elements of the story, exploring more about Jin’s relationship with his parents. Yang appreciates that as well.
“I’m so grateful for that because the parent-child relationship is such an important part of being Asian American.”
Talented Ben Wang makes a perfect fit as Jin, a compliant sophomore who’s starting to flex a rebellious streak after hearing one too many offhand racist jibes from classmates. His soccer buddies rebound — or so they think — by saying they’re not racist, you know, they’re just joshing. When nerdy new student Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu) from China arrives, educators put the two together even though they have little in common. Soon after, a series of fantastical situations happen, including the arrivals of the Monkey King (played by Berkeley native Daniel Wu) and the mystical Guanyin (Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh). Oscar winner Quan pops in as a sitcom star who’s a stereotypical TV character and remains the butt of winceable pratfall jokes that come with a canned laugh track. He finds himself in an existential crisis of sorts. Other “Everything Everywhere All at Once” players Stephanie Hsu and James Hong also appear.
Since Yang’s graphic novel took place before social media took on such a commanding presence in everyday living, the series has to tap into its influence, including when a dreaded and embarrassing viral video of Jin gets shared and mocked.
Social media wasn’t around while Yang was growing up in the South Bay. But he did experience, at points, the ugliness of racist remarks. While those don’t inflict physical damage, they do do harm, he said.
“It didn’t happen super often,” he recalls. “But it happened often enough that it affected my childhood. I remember being a kid and then somebody yelling something out of a car window as they drove by. That kind of stuff happened more than once. Or we would walk down the halls and we’d pass like a group of kids and they would yell something racially insensitive.”
While he says that still happens today, it’s less accepted by society, and the old fallback response that it’s “just kids being kids” isn’t accepted either.
But in some ways, it does feel like the community is failing backward at the same time, he said.
“When I was a kid I don’t remember seeing news story after news story about elderly Asians and Asian Americans getting beat up in the streets,” he says. “Whereas I have seen that over the last year and a half. So it’s both progress and also moving backwards.”
The present and the past do collide in “American Born Chinese” – the book and the series – with lessons being learned from both.
As for possible future adaptations of Yang’s work — such as 2013’s “Boxers & Saints,” 2020’s “Dragon Hoops,” or his 2019 DC Comics project “Superman Smashes the Klan” — Yang is asked if he’d want to take a more prominent role in their development.
“That’s definitely interesting to me, but at the same time I do primarily think of myself as a comics guy,” he said. “So I’m super excited and happy to explore storytelling in other media. But at the same time, I also hope that I will always find my way back home.”
