Yang, Gene Luen (1973-…), is an American cartoonist and author of children’s books . He has written a number of popular graphic novels . A graphic novel is a book-length story that combines text and illustrations . Beginning in 2016, Yang served a two-year term as the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature , a position for which he was chosen by the United States librarian of Congress . Yang was the first graphic novelist to be so honored. The position involves traveling and speaking to groups of children, parents, and teachers to promote the joy of reading .
Yang was born on Aug. 9, 1973, in Alameda, California , the son of Chinese immigrants , and grew up in the San Jose area. He began drawing and writing comic books in the fifth grade. Yang completed a bachelor’s degree at the University of California – Berkeley in 1995 and worked as a computer engineer for two years. He then began teaching computer science at a high school in Oakland . In 1997, Yang received a grant for his comic Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks, which was eventually published by a comic book company. He earned a master’s degree in education from California State University at East Bay in 2003.
Yang’s first graphic novel, American Born Chinese (2006), won the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association (ALA) for best young adult book. The book includes three stories about struggles with one’s identity, a theme common to many of Yang’s works.
From 2012 to 2017, Yang wrote several graphic novels in the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” series. Yang also wrote and illustrated Boxers and Saints (2013), a set of two intertwined graphic novels about the Boxer Rebellion . The Boxer Rebellion was an uprising in northern China in 1900 in which hundreds of Chinese people and more than 200 people from other countries were killed. In 2015, with illustrator Mike Holmes, Yang began writing the “Secret Coders” graphic novel series for middle-graders. The series follows a group of students who use their computer programming skills to solve mysteries. That same year, Yang became a full-time writer.
In 2016, Yang began writing the graphic novel Superman , illustrated by Klaus Janson and others, an updated version of the famous American superhero comic book series; and New Super-Man, illustrated by Viktor Bogdanovic, a comic book series featuring a Chinese version of the character. In Superman Smashes the Klan (3 issues, 2019-2020; collected in book form, 2020), Yang expanded on a tale from the 1946 Superman radio show to create a new story about the original Superman character aiding a Chinese American family targeted by the Ku Klux Klan and learning to accept his own interstellar heritage.The graphic novel Dragon Hoops (2020) includes details from Yang’s own life as he tells the story of the Dragons, the varsity basketball team at the school at which he taught, and their quest for the state championship.
