Arc, On Ramps, Rebellion/Survival, Random Tidbits

Arc, On Ramps, Rebellion/Survival, Random Tidbits

by Hannah Jane

Arc:

We don’t find out in the middle of her father’s narrative that Yang has survived an abusive relationship. We learn in the first three pages that this is part of her experience. This story is an ancestral tale, and it would have felt different, or been about something else, if Yang revealed this to her reader by pivoting from her father’s story to her own.

Because Yang situates the reader in the heart of her present pain -- not looking back, and not revealing Rotten Egg through flashbacks mixed in with her father’s narrative -- we are able to trace how Belle Yang’s personal story exhibits a similar arc to that of her family history.

In a short span of time, Yang has gone from an abusive situation with Rotten Egg to experiencing freedom for three years in China; but not too long after, the political environment turns violent in the late 1980’s and she has to come home and start all over. This is where the book starts. Belle Yang’s up-down, up-down arc is parallelled by her family’s rise from poverty to wealth, and wealth to poverty again.

On ramps:

There are many on-ramps for the reader of this graphic novel:

- An empathic on-ramp is Yang’s abusive relationship with Rotten Egg and the reader’s desire to see her heal and grow, tracing that progression.

- There is a historical on-ramp with WWII and her father’s recollection of the past that makes up the bulk of the graphic novel.

- There is a cultural on-ramp between Yang and her father’s different experiences (Belle Yang grew up in America, her parents grew up in Taiwan, and the byproduct of their different cultural experiences creates tension).

- There is a HUGE artistic on-ramp literally on every page… the layout is like nothing I’ve seen before, how Yang moves between frames… and how a whole page could be one illustration, filling your entire visual field with intense emotion (either terror with Rotten Egg, or the feeling of peace with a gorgeous landscape).

- There is a poetic on-ramp as Baba remembers poetry his father recited to him growing up (p. 208) as well as Second Uncle’s recitation of a Tang Dynasty poem (p. 151).
- I am sure there are more on-ramps, so I'm eager to hear others' thoughts!

Rebellion/Survival:

Those thought bubbles stood out to me as critical moments when Yang fights back against the oppression she is experiencing. Yes, her parents take her in and help her heal, but they also blame her and make her feel worthless during a critical point in her recovery. The moments when she “talks back” in thought bubbles feel like the self breaking through.

When other characters display thought bubbles, I feel a nudge of “who is the narrator, and how does the narrator know this?” I feel as though it is the presence of Yang, here, as the characters in the story “talk back” the way she did. This is another way that Yang’s journey parallels that of her family history… She feels herself in her ancestors, has her pulse on their pain and their survival. She is able to capture the emotional truth of their thoughts…

Random tidbits:

There is a video of Yang speaking at the Asian American Writer’s Workshop in 2010 in which I learned that prior to the Immigration Nationality Act of 1965, only 145 Chinese immigrants were allowed into the country each year. Yang and her family came to the U.S. in the early 1970’s. She talks about her artistic techniques for this graphic novel -- I was freaking out a little when I found out she wrote the whole thing in prose first, and then trimmed it down to fit its current form. Isn’t that wild? Also, the typeface is based off her own handwriting, which according to Yang, peaked in third grade. Ok, last random tidbit: she used a brush rather than a pen and ink, and she comments in this video that “black and white have a color of their own.”