Boxers and Saints
by Gene Luen Yang
Boxers and Saints is a graphic novel about the Boxer Rebellion, the anti-foreign, anti-Christian revolt that shook China from 1899-1901, not long before the last Chinese dynasty fell in 1911. Famously, the Boxers believed that they were invulnerable to bullets. The two volumes need to be read one after the other, as they tell the story from different sides.
“It’s very cool. I think it’s better known in the United States because of the splash he made with a book called American Born Chinese. He wrote about his ethnicity and he did this dual book on the Boxers because he said he grew up a Christian but Chinese ethnically, so he didn’t know who to root for. He pairs a story of a boy who becomes a Boxer and a Chinese girl who becomes a Catholic.”
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, China specialist and history professor at UC Irvine, on Boxers and Saints
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