Gene Luen Yang
Books by Gene Luen Yang
Dragon Hoops
by Gene Luen Yang
***2021 Michael L. Printz Honor Book (for Young Adult Literature)***
The author has humorously inserted himself into this graphic novel about basketball: “I’m just not a sports kind of guy. I’m a story kind of guy”. Yang knows where he stands with his favourite stories: heroes are heroic, villains are villainous, and good triumphs in the end. But then he realises that there is a compelling story right there at the California high school where he teaches. When a person as young as 14 steps onto the court in front of crowds, on television, they don’t know if they will make memories that will make them proud or make them cringe. Unlike in superhero comics, in sport you do not know what the outcome will be. This graphic novel celebrates the courage it takes to step into the unknown.
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.
