On August 12, join the US-China Education Trust and the 1882 Foundation for a virtual discussion featuring graphic authors Ruth Chan, Leise Hook, Kathy MacLeod, and Malaka Gharib. Part of USCET’s Asian American Authors Series, the event will explore how graphic memoirs combine words and images to illuminate experiences of identity, migration, family, memory, and belonging.
Through this conversation, the authors will reflect on their creative processes, the relationship between illustration and written narrative, and the ways visual storytelling can challenge stereotypes and give form to experiences that are difficult to express through words alone.
The conversation will highlight their recent works, including Chan’s Uprooted, which recounts her move from Toronto to Hong Kong as a teenager; Hook’s Names and Faces, which examines the cultural “in-betweenness” she felt growing up with a Chinese mother and white American father; MacLeod’s Continental Drifter, which recounts her time as a Thai-American girl navigating between Bangkok and coastal Maine; and Gharib’s I Was Their American Dream and It Won’t Always Be Like This, which explore her experiences as a first-generation Filipino Egyptian American.
Join us online from 10:00 am to 11:00 am ET for this program, which will include a moderated conversation followed by audience Q&A.
Biographies
Author
Leise Hook is a cartoonist and illustrator whose work has appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, Catapult, and Spotlight PA. Her graphic memoir Names and Faces examines mixed-race identity, cultural belonging, and the search for self across the United States and Asia. Previously based in New York City and Beijing, Hook is a graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies and currently lives in Stockholm.
Author
Ruth Chan is an award-winning author and illustrator of comics and children’s books. Her graphic memoir Uprooted earned a Boston Globe-Horn Book Nonfiction Honor, an SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Illustrated Book/Graphic Novel for Older Readers, and was named an NPR Best Book of 2024. Before illustrating full-time, she spent her teens in China and worked for a decade with youth and families in underserved communities.
Author
Kathy MacLeod is an illustrator and cartoonist, and the author of Continental Drifter, an award-winning middle-grade graphic novel about growing up between Thailand and the United States. Winner of the American Library Association’s Asian/Pacific American Award for Children’s Literature, Continental Drifter explores bicultural identity, family, and the search for belonging. MacLeod’s work has appeared in The Believer, Catapult, The Hairpin, and Lucky Peach.
Author
Malaka Gharib is a journalist, cartoonist, and graphic novelist. She is the author of I Was Their American Dream, a graphic memoir about growing up as a first-generation Filipino Egyptian American, which won the 2020 Arab American Book Award, and It Won’t Always Be Like This, a graphic memoir about her childhood summers in the Middle East. Her comics, zines, and writing have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nib, The Believer, Catapult, and other publications.
Asian American author series
USCET’s Asian American Authors Series brings outstanding Asian American authors to Chinese audiences to introduce their literary works and discuss their experiences with American multiculturalism. This series was launched in November 2012 with award-winning Chinese American Author Gish Jen at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Following the successful launch, USCET brought a number of other acclaimed Asian American authors to China, including Shawn Wong (2013), Helen Zia (2017), Cheryl Tan (2018), Karen Yamashita (2018), and Shirley Lim (2018).