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Summary
Summary
A graphically rendered account of China's Boxer Rebellion in 1898 is told from the perspective of Little Bao, who joins an army of kung fu-trained commoners who fight for freedom from the oppression inflicted by foreign missionaries and soldiers. By
Author Notes
Gene Luen Yang was born on August 9, 1973 in California. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in computer science and minored in creative writing. After graduating in 1995, he worked as a computer engineer for two years. He decided that he was meant to teach and left his job as an engineer to teach computer science at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California.
He is a writer of graphic novels and comics. His first published comic, Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks, was published in 1997 and won the Xeric Grant, a self-publishing grant for comic book creators. His other works include Loyola Chin and the San Peligran Order and Avatar: The Last Airbender. He won the Michael L. Printz Award in 2006 for American Born Chinese and the Eisner Award for best short story in 2009 for Eternal Smile.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Horn Book Review
Saints by Gene Luen Yang; illus. by the author; color by Lark PienMiddle School, High School First Second/Roaring Brook 172 pp.Yang's latest graphic novels are a "diptych" of books set during China's Boxer Rebellion of the early twentieth century. Boxers follows Little Bao, a village boy with an affinity for opera; Saints centers on Four-Girl, an unloved and unwanted child who perfects a revolting "devil-face" expression. They meet fleetingly as children, foreshadowing their respective roles in the conflict to come. Little Bao, with the help of an eccentric kung fu master, learns to harness the power of ancient gods, forming the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist in an attempt to rid China of the "foreign devils" who spread Christianity across the country. Four-Girl sits squarely on the other side of the rebellion. After repeat visits from Joan of Arc in mystic visions, Four-Girl comes to the conclusion that she, too, is destined to become a maiden warrior. She converts to Christianity, takes the name Vibiana, and strives to protect China against the Little Bao-led uprising. The inevitable showdown between the two characters leads to a surprising and bleak conclusion. While neither volume truly stands alone (making for a significant price tag for the whole story), Yang's characteristic infusions of magical realism, bursts of humor, and distinctively drawn characters are present in both books, which together make for a compelling read. sam bloom(c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Printz Award winner Yang's ambitious two-volume graphic novel follows the intertwined lives of two young people on opposite sides of the turn-of-the-20th-century Boxer Rebellion. Little Bao, whose story is told in Boxers, grows up fascinated by the opera's colorful traditional tales and filled with reverence for the local deities. Appalled by the arrogant behavior of foreign soldiers, Christian missionaries and their Chinese supporters, he eventually becomes a leader of the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist, fighting under the slogan "Support the Ch'ing! Destroy the Foreigner!" The protagonist of Saints--an unlucky, unwanted, unnamed fourth daughter--is known only as Four-Girl until she's christened Vibiana upon her conversion to Catholicism. Beaten by her family for her beliefs, she finds refuge and friendship with foreign missionaries, making herself a target for the Boxers. Scrupulously researched, the narratives make a violent conflict rarely studied in U.S. schools feel immediate, as Yang balances historical detail with humor and magical realism. Ch'in Shih-huang, the first emperor of China, and Joan of Arc serve as Bao's and Vibiana's respective spiritual guides; the rich hues of the protagonists' visions, provided by colorist Lark Pien, contrast effectively with the muted earth tones of their everyday lives. The restrained script often, and wisely, lets Yang's clear, clean art speak for itself. This tour de force fearlessly asks big questions about culture, faith, and identity and refuses to offer simple answers. (bibliography) (Graphic historical fiction. 12 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
New York Review of Books Review
THE SLOW CRACKUP of China's last imperial dynasty during its "century of humiliation" was so fantastical it could have been made up by a comic book artist: an aspiring civil servant failed his entrance exam, fell into a delirium, dreamed he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ sent to deliver China from the Qing dynasty and ignited the Taiping Rebellion in 1850. Twenty million people died in the ensuing chaos. In the late 1890s, peasants from the north, affronted by Western influence in the empire, formed a secret society to practice the martial and spiritual disciplines of Chinese folk religion, which some believed made them invulnerable to European bullets and cannon fire. The belief did not survive the test of experience, but did earn the Boxer Rebellion an enduring place in popular memory. An alliance of British, French, German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, American, Italian and Japanese soldiers easily crushed the Boxers and the imperial Chinese soldiers who joined them, but not before the Boxers had killed more than 30,000 Chinese Christian converts. The Westerners had arrived preaching a Christian message of peace and compassion. They also came in search of easy profits from the opium trade, and waged a war to ensure those profits kept flowing. The indie comic artist Gene Luen Yang, a child of Taiwanese immigrants to the United States and an observant Roman Catholic, wrestles with the central ambiguity of colonialism throughout his remarkable set of linked graphic novels, "Boxers" and "Saints," recently named to the long list for the National Book Award in young people's literature. The nuance conveyed in the dialectical design of the companion volumes counteracts the mythmaking that can resuit from combining history and fable in comic book form. In "Boxers," the story of a Chinese village boy who grows up to deliver martyrdom to the Christian heroine of "Saints" with a thrust of his sword through her heart, Yang depicts resentful peasants turning into vengeful warrior gods. In these sections, the sepia-toned palette that predominates elsewhere explodes into vivid colors that impart a heroic aura to their actions. But when they set fire to a church full of women and children, they remain the dun-colored peasants they really were all along. Both volumes show how everyday humiliations by foreigners bred fear and hatred in the Chinese. But Yang also portrays the missionaries' tireless efforts to spread Christian learning and help orphaned children. Though many Chinese found Christianity threatening (and with good cause - it stirred up social conflicts that killed millions), the faith liberated and strengthened others, like the heroine of "Saints," a fatherless, outcast girl whose nocturnal visits from the spirit of Joan of Arc help her imagine herself a Christian warrior. Despite the ostensibly evenhanded way Yang presents opposed perspectives, it's clear he views the Boxer Rebellion as a series of massacres conducted by xenophobes who wound up harming the very culture they had pledged to protect. In order to attack a group of foreigners who had taken shelter in Beijing, they burned down the imperial library that housed much of the ancient literary legacy of China. GENE LUEN YANG shot to prominence in 2007 when his book "American Born Chinese" became the first graphic novel to win a Printz Award for young adult literature. In it, a first-generation Taiwanese-American youth learns to accept his Chinese identity after "selling his soul" in order to become a white boy able to win the romantic affection of a white girl. Though Yang makes no explicit connection between the atrocities recounted in his new magnum opus and the superior desirability of the white boy in "American Born Chinese" - that would be absurd - both works proceed from the insight that what we love and whom we worship are always conditioned by relations of power. In the fraught confrontation of West and East, staged on battlefields in the 19th century, or on school playgrounds and in cafeterias in late-20th-century San Jose, the continuing story is one of inequality. WESLEY YANG, a contributing editor at New York magazine, is writing a book about Asian-Americans.
Library Journal Review
History clashes with the idealizations of fiction in these interlocked tales of teens caught up in China's Boxer Rebellion between 1897 and 1901. Who is "right"? The Western missionaries who preach the Christian gospel but whose ranks include bandits and exploiters? Or the boxers, who call upon their pagan gods to help kill the Christian intruders and their Western protectors? Little Bao is a peasant lad whose village suffers at the hands of the missionaries. Inspired by visions, he joins in violent rebellion with thousands of other angry and hungry Chinese who deplore the greedy Westerners. But in another village, unwanted Four Girl finds a home and new name-Vibiana-with Christian missionaries. Through Bao and Vibiana, we see how no crusade is "pure." VERDICT This excellent two-part graphic novel teaches history through a double-lens narrative, showing how factors interact to create unwanted tragedies by both sides. The winsome, magical-realist art of Yang (American Born Chinese) plays ironically against the bloody conflict enhanced by artist Lark Pien's colors. Heartbreaking and sometimes funny, this boxed set is for teens and adults interested in international politics and people's rebellions.-M.C. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.