AAS 10
Reading + Drawing Asian American Graphic Narratives Winter 2025

While some of the first visual depictions of Asian immigrants in the United States were often racist caricatures, Asian Americans have been recording their own experiences in comics as early as the 1930s. Early examples include Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama’s The Four Immigrants Manga and Miné Okubo’s Citizen 13660, both depicting the experiences of early Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans in California. More recently, Asian American graphic novelists and memoirists have published diverse works that use the combinations of words and images to explore race, gender, sexuality, class, and immigration. In this course, students will read both historical and contemporary examples of Asian American graphic narratives (fiction and non-fiction) as well write and draw their own. Students do not to have experience in comics, just an openness to experiment and sometimes draw “badly.” Class sessions will include conversations about assigned readings, time to draw and write together, and opportunities to share and discuss one another’s work.