Lectures from the Allen Room & Wertheim Study: Asian American Comics in a “Post-Race” Era

Caroline Kyungah Hong presents Asian American Comics in a “Post-Race” Era

Though Asian American artists have long been important contributors to US comics, there has been, till recently, an absence of Asian American protagonists and stories. In this talk, Caroline Kyungah Hong will explore an emergent tradition of Asian American graphic narrative that is garnering critical attention and gaining popularity with diverse audiences.
 
Asian American comics often expose the ways in which race and racism persist in a so-called “post-race” era, and they offer alternative representations to prevalent stereotypes of Asian Americans as the yellow peril, the perpetual foreigner, and the model minority. Works like Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese (2006)—the first graphic novel ever to be nominated for a National Book Award—demonstrate the heterogeneity of Asian American cultural productions and their potential impact on the larger US cultural landscape.
 
A writer in residence in the Library’s Wertheim Study, Dr. Caroline Kyungah Hong is an assistant professor of English at Queens College CUNY. She is currently working on a book on comedy and humor in Asian American literature, film, and popular culture. She is also the co-managing editor of the peer-reviewed online Journal of Transnational American Studies (JTAS).

For other lectures by writers of the Wertheim Study and the Allen Room, click here.