In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Becky Barsi and Joe Acone sit down with award-winning graphic novelist, educator, and former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Gene Luen Yan.
In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Becky Barsi and Joe Acone sit down with award-winning graphic novelist, educator, and former National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Gene Luen Yan.
Gene is best known for groundbreaking works like American Born Chinese, Boxers & Saints, and Dragon Hoops, which have helped redefine what comics and graphic novels can do in classrooms. His stories blend humor, heart, and mythology with his own personal experiences and explorations of identity, belonging, and the power of storytelling. In this conversation, Gene reflects on his creative journey, the responsibility and possibility of making art for young readers, and how comics can act as a bridge between cultures, generations, and lived experiences.
You can find Gene’s work at www.geneluenyang.com, and follow him on Instagram at www.instagram.com/geneluenyang.
Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. Creative Guts recently moved our newsletter to Substack, and you can find us at creativegutspod.substack.com.
If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com.
Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
Any views or opinions expressed by our hosts or guests do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of Creative Guts.
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:00] BB: I’m Becky Barsi.
[0:00:01] JA: And I'm Joe Acone.
[0:00:02] BB and JA: And you're listening to Creative Guts.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:18] BB: Hey, friends. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Creative Guts.
[0:00:21] JA: Today for our mini episode, we have Gene Luen Yang, an acclaimed author and cartoonist behind celebrated graphic novels like, American Born Chinese, Boxers & Saints, and Dragon Hoops.
[0:00:31] BB: As the Library of Congress's fifth national ambassador for young people's literature and the MacArthur Genius Fellow, Gene champions the power of diverse stories, encouraging all of us to read beyond our comfort zones.
[0:00:44] JA: His award-winning books blend sharp storytelling, humor, and emotional depth to illuminate the lives of young people and explore identity, history, and belonging.
[0:00:53] BB: Let's jump into this episode of Creative Guts with Gene Luen Yang.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:01] BB: Thank you. We know that you have a jam-packed day today. So, I gave you a little bit of information about Creative Guts earlier that,again, started as a podcast just about celebrating what creativity is all about, but also helping people to foster their own understandings of their own creative practice and the challenges that often go along with that. We've been doing this now since 2019.
[0:01:25] GLY: Oh, wow. That's a long time.
[0:01:26] BB: We’ve interviewed – Yeah. Yeah, it's been great, and an evolution into a nonprofit, but whenever we have an opportunity to interview a creative such as yourself and be able to get a little insight, we are so grateful for the time. What you were able to offer to our students today at our community meeting was spectacular.
[0:01:46] GLY: Oh, thank you.
[0:01:46] BB: It was so, so great.
[0:01:47] JA: It was phenomenal.
[0:01:47] GLY: Thank you. Thank you.
[0:01:51] JA: I saw a student drawing while you were talking.
[0:01:52] GLY: Oh, awesome, awesome.
[0:01:53] JA: Just immediately, they couldn't withhold their inspiration.
[0:01:55] GLY: Yeah, that’s great.
[0:01:57] BB: For listeners that may not know anything about you, could you just briefly introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are as a creative?
[0:02:04] GLY: My name is Gene Luen Yang. I'm a cartoonist. I write and draw comic books and graphic novels. I did a book called American Born Chinese. That was eventually turned into a Disney+ show. I did another book called Dragon Hoops, a nonfiction graphic novel about basketball. I've worked for both superhero companies. I've done some work for Marvel and for DC.
[0:02:21] JA: I like the way you framed it as superhero companies. It’s a very accurate –
[0:02:25] BB: Yeah. How bizarre that we live in a world where we have superhero companies.
[0:02:28] JA: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:02:28] GLY: That’s right. That’s right.
[0:02:30] JA: I mean, I could really just dig in on the Avatar: The Last Airbender stuff, because I'm a huge fan of all of it.
[0:02:35] GLY: Oh, awesome.
[0:02:36] JA: And you're working it and whatnot. I do want to couch things around, thinking about advice for creatives. Because I think that comprises most of the folks who listen to our podcast. I'm genuinely interested in things like, maybe, the very mundane stuff. What is a day in the life of a studio day look like for you?
[0:02:52] GLY: Yeah, yeah. Right now, I use a workspace. I live in San Jose, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. We have all these workspaces all over. I rent a desk out of a workspace. I'm the only one that is working on stories there. Everybody else is in tech, like marketing people, or like coders, or something. A normal day is: I drop my daughters off at school. Then I go to the workspace. I get there maybe around 8.30, and then I leave around 4.30 to 5, and I go pick my daughters up and go home.
[0:03:25] JA: Okay. You got that work-life balance.
[0:03:26] GLY: That's a normal day. That's a normal day.
[0:03:28] BB: Did you choose a workspace, rather than working at home, because –
[0:03:33] JA: Constraints, or like –
[0:03:34] GLY: It's because there's a pantry at home and there's a bed at home, you know?
[0:03:38] JA: Sure.
[0:03:39] GLY: It's way more comfortable to work at home. I have found that I get way more done at the workspace.
[0:03:45] JA: Makes sense. It's good to check out and go leave the home for sure.
[0:03:48] GLY: Yeah, that's right.
[0:03:49] JA: What did that look like for you while you were teaching?
[0:03:53] GLY: Yeah. When I first started teaching, when I was a full-time teacher, during the school year, my first maybe three years, during the school year, I was too exhausted to do anything else. I was trying to figure out my curriculum. I was getting used to the viruses that I was getting from my students.
[0:04:07] BB: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[0:04:08] JA: Back to school plague.
[0:04:09] GLY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Back-to-school plague. After that, once I got my curriculum settled, once my immune system got up to par, I would work on comics before I went to work, and then after I came home. If I had a deadline, I would wake up at 5 in the morning, I'd get an hour or two in, and then I would go to work. Then, when I came home, I would just work until I had to go to bed. Now, I remember my wife and I, we lived in this tiny apartment, and I had a drawing table that was right next to the TV. I couldn't see the TV when I was sitting at my drawing table, and she would watch TV while I was working almost every night. For a long time, I knew what all the characters on The Office sounded like, but I had no idea what they actually looked like. It was just that for a while.
[0:05:01] BB: Yeah. Being able to transition into a different space was helpful for the creative practice, perhaps.
[0:05:05] GLY: Yeah, yeah. For a long time. I taught for 17 years. For the first half of that, I was a full-time teacher. For the second half, I was a part-time teacher. And we were on a block schedule. I would be on campus one day, and then the other day, I would be at home working on comics. That was my favorite balance, I think I've ever had in my life.
[0:05:23] BB: You didn't go to school to become a comic artist. You went to school for what?
[0:05:28] GLY: I got a major in computer science. I was a programmer for a couple of years before becoming a computer science teacher. I did a minor in creative writing, though.
[0:05:35] BB: Nice.
[0:05:36] GLY: That, I think, now my minor in creative writing is so much more important to me than my major.
[0:05:41] JA: Sure. Yeah, of course. Right. Yeah, and then all that experience too, making comics and selling them when you're in school.
[0:05:47] GLY: Yeah, that's right. That's right.
[0:05:48] JA: Yeah. I love that.
[0:05:49] BB: When did you make the decision, like, okay, this is really going to be a full-time thing? Because are you still teaching, or?
[0:05:56] GLY: I’m not. I'm not. Yeah. I'm full-time now.
[0:05:58] BB: What made you jump ship?
[0:05:59] GLY: It was really hard. It was a very hard decision. The immediate thing that happened was I got an offer from DC Comics to write Superman. DC had actually approached me a couple of times before that with smaller books, with lower profile books. Even though I love DC, right, because I grew up with superhero comics, I always turned them down, because I didn't want to leave teaching. Then Superman, I was just like –
[0:06:20] BB: How do you turn down Superman?
[0:06:22] JA: No.
[0:06:23] GLY: I could not turn down Superman. I could not turn down Superman. It was a scary thing. To be honest, I went to therapy. I went to therapy to get over my fear of leaving.
[0:06:31] JA: Wow. I really appreciate you being open about that, too. That's awesome. We're trying to be more, break down the stigma, right? I love that. Because there's a lot of fear about just fiscally, right?
[0:06:40] GLY: Yes. Yes. There's a lot of fear fiscally. Because the way superhero comics work is you sign for 12 issues at a time. You sign for a year. I was like, if I leave and I only have a year of guaranteed work, what's going to happen? Then, we had four kids. My wife was not working. It was like, it just felt really scary.
[0:06:58] BB: Sure.
[0:06:58] GLY: Then, I was going to lose my health insurance. I'd have to buy it myself. It was just very scary.
[0:07:02] BB: That is really scary. I mean, clearly it's panned out. Things are working, and –
[0:07:07] GLY: Yeah, yeah.
[0:07:09] BB: But to overcome that fear, and I think, like you said, having the opportunity to talk to someone and overcome that anxiety, that is a huge life shift. But you did it. You had the creative guts to just, you know what? This is where the next stage is. This is where I have to go. Whether it was with American Born Chinese, or –
[0:07:27] JA: Dragon Hoops.
[0:07:28] BB: Dragon Hoops. You're getting national recognition, a national book award, and becoming the ambassador of the young people's literature. How has that changed the way that you see your role as a creator? You're getting all of this acknowledgement. Now you're communicating and celebrating, and sharing this important tool in this way of communicating. How has that changed your practice?
[0:07:50] GLY: It's wonderful. It's amazing, because creativity, at least in comics, is such lonely work. It's just you in front of a drawing table. At the same time, I think the actual act of creating a book is the same. I still sit down. I still outline after I finish my thumbnail sketches. I still get feedback from the same friends that I used to get feedback from.
[0:08:12] BB: That’s wonderful.
[0:08:13] GLY: The actual creative process is still pretty much the same.
[0:08:17] JA: How does that break down in your studio practice now? Are you like, 50-50 writing and thumbnailing and cartooning?
[0:08:23] GLY: Yeah. I'm definitely more of a writer right now. I put our proposal for a book that I both write and draw, but it hasn't gotten approved yet. I'd like to get back into a space where I'm doing a lot more drawing, but right now I'm definitely doing a lot more writing.
[0:08:37] JA: I mean, I think that's awesome, too. I feel like the boundaries are like, it doesn't really matter that much, especially if you're coming up through cartooning and everything in comics. Some people write as they draw; their drawing is their writing. There are a lot of blurred lines there for sure.
[0:08:50] GLY: Yeah, yeah. That’s right. That’s right. Even with the turtles, the Ninja Turtles book that I'm writing right now, I turn in a script that looks like a movie script. There are no pictures in it. But as I'm writing it, I'm actually sketching it out. I have a sketchbook next to me, and I'm doing little sketches.
[0:09:03] BB: That’s great.
[0:09:04] JA: But it's cool too, because then you can collaborate with other artists, other visual artists as well.
[0:09:06] GLY: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
[0:09:08] JA: I apologize. The book that you're really proud of that you collaborated with?
[0:09:11] GLY: Oh, Lunar New Year Love Story.
[0:09:12] JA: Lunar New Year Love Story. Yes.
[0:09:13] GLY: Yeah. I got to work with LeUyen Pham, who is a Caldecott Honor winner. She's one of our most celebrated children's book illustrators. She does comics every now and then. We became friends. I was very happy that she said yes to collaborating.
[0:09:25] JA: Yeah. What does that collaboration look like?
[0:09:28] GLY: That was really fun. I mean, part of it was because we're really good friends. It's a rom-com about two teenagers that fall in love. LeUyen and I we're actually just a day apart. We're almost the same age.
[0:09:38] BB: Oh, that’s so fun.
[0:09:39] GLY: Yeah. So, we grew up in the same generation. At the beginning, what we did was we got on the phone, and we just talked about what it was like to date and have crushes in high school as an inspiration. Then, out of that, I did a couple of rounds of outlines with her feedback. Then I actually did the thumbnail sketches. Then she did the art based on the thumbnail sketches.
[0:10:04] JA: I'm picturing that image that you just shared in your talk to our students of working with your buddy who became a radiologist.
[0:10:10] GLY: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[0:10:12] JA: You’re just reliving that experience, because it’s like through –
[0:10:14] GLY: Yeah, it is a little bit like that. Yeah, it is a little bit like that. It's really fun. I mean, I think when you collaborate with somebody, you really get to know them as a human being. That's always incredible.
[0:10:23] BB: Yeah. Well, it can always be easy, too. Can you describe some of maybe, the creative blocks or challenges that you've had to overcome in your time as a cartoonist and writer?
[0:10:32] GLY: Oh, I think you get blocked all the time. I get blocked all the time. I think my blocks as a writer are different from my blocks as an artist. With writing, sometimes you get to these impasses where you just have no idea how to move your story forward. You might have a vague idea of what the ending is, but you have no idea how to get from where you are to the ending. One of the things that has happened as I've gotten older and as I've been doing this longer is I just do a lot more prep work. The very first comic that I ever did, I just made it up as I went along. Now, I do a lot of work using post-its on a wall to try to map out my story.
[0:11:08] JA: In your workspace?
[0:11:09] GLY: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:11:09] JA: Wow.
[0:11:10] GLY: Yeah. Then I'll do an outline. I'll write an outline based on the post-its. Then, from the outline, I'll do either a script or thumbnail sketches. The process has just gone longer. That's part of it. Then the other one is like, I take a lot of walks. I drink coffee. I've been trying to use coffee as a – this is something I learned from my 21-year-old son, is that if you drink coffee every day, your brain gets used to it and you don't get the creative kick. If you want to use coffee as a creative kick starter, you actually have to not drink coffee. Then, when you need it, you drink it.
[0:11:48] BB: Wow.
[0:11:49] JA: I literally just stopped drinking coffee –
[0:11:50] GLY: Did you?
[0:11:51] JA: - for the same exact reason.
[0:11:51] BB: Wow.
[0:11:51] JA: Yeah. It takes three days, or four days. The come down is actually pretty easy.
[0:11:56] BB: I can't imagine.
[0:11:56] JA: Which is nice. Yeah.
[0:11:57] BB: I don't know how I would. My life –
[0:11:59] GLY: I do decaf. I do decaf.
[0:12:00] BB: Oh, all right.
[0:12:01] GLY: Then when I need it, when I need it, I'll do regular coffee.
[0:12:03] BB: Nice. Nice.
[0:12:05] JA: It’s strategic.
[0:12:05] BB: We all need to detox from our caffeine every once in a while.
[0:12:06] GLY: Yeah, strategic, strategic. Yeah.
[0:12:08] JA: Strategic caffeine.
[0:12:08] BB: Right. That's right. That's good. This is probably, I don't know how you can maybe sum this up in a small bite, but what advice would you give to an emerging cartoonist, or artist who really wants to try and find their voice?
[0:12:22] GLY: I think in the beginning, you should not work on the comic book, per se. You should work on the comic book factory.
[0:12:28] BB: What do you mean by that?
[0:12:29] GLY: Toyota, when they release a new version of the Camry, they're not just designing the car. They're also designing the factory that produces the car. You have to think in the same way. Your life is that factory, and you have to set up your life in a way that will allow you to do creative work. That means organizing your schedule in a specific way, keeping certain times sacred.
[0:12:49] BB: Detoxing from caffeine.
[0:12:51] GLY: Detox from caffeine.
[0:12:52] JA: Saying no to things, right?
[0:12:53] GLY: Yeah. Saying no to things and making it a priority. I think young creators sometimes will get so focused on the end product that they forget that they should actually be focusing on the factory. If you get your factory right, the first things that you produce, you're probably not going to be proud of. But sooner or later, if that factory runs long enough, you're going to have things that you feel like are good.
[0:13:15] BB: Yeah. You've got to keep things well-greased and keep things loose, so it's all working well.
[0:13:21] GLY: Yeah. I think finding your voice is part of that process, right? I think the longer you create and the more you create, the more your creativity will fall into certain patterns, and those patterns are going to be your voice.
[0:13:35] JA: I think we're talking life design now at this point.
[0:13:37] GLY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like life design. That's it.
[0:13:38] JA: Wow. I love that.
[0:13:40] BB: We don't have too much time left. But one of the things that I was just really, really inspired by is your reference to Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop and talking about, and just in terms of literature and the way that we as a society consume text. Can you talk a little bit about your reflection on her words, books, or sometimes windows, windows are also sliding glass doors? Can you talk a little bit about that?
[0:14:04] GLY: Yeah. I mean, I really love that article. I draw pretty heavily on that article, especially when I was a national ambassador for young people's literature. I think the idea of having stories that show you a life that's very different from you, I understand the – I think she's right. That's really important. That's important for building bridges across communities within our nation. That's important just in your everyday interactions with somebody who might, on the surface, seem very different from you. I do, also think, especially as somebody who grew up in a minority community, that seeing your own story reflected in stories is also super important. Somehow, figuring out that your own life is worthy of a story, it's worthy of being written down, it's worthy of being embodied in a book. I think it really does help you love yourself, right?
[0:14:53] BB: Yeah.
[0:14:55] JA: Following that, we usually do a rapid fire, a bunch of questions, but we don't have enough time. The one that we definitely wanted to ask you was, if you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?
[0:15:05] GLY: Oh, do not stress out so much. I probably should give myself that advice right now. I love a stress case now. I do think, comic book people in particular, maybe creative people in general, I think, struggle with anxiety, probably more than the general population. When I was going to therapy to convince myself to give up my day job, one of the things that the therapist said was, when you're working on stories, stories are all about conflict, and conflict is all about bad things that happen to you. Your whole job is imagining bad things happening. It's natural for you to take that and apply it to your own life, right? That's something that I think we, as creative, have to figure out how to deal with. The imagined things are not real.
[0:15:48] BB: Yeah. Don't let it just eat away at that creative spirit.
[0:15:50] GLY: Yeah. That's right.
[0:15:51] BB: That’s great. Well, Gene, thank you so much for your time today.
[0:15:54] GLY: Oh, my pleasure.
[0:15:55] BB: This is great.
[0:15:56] GLY: This is great. Yeah. Thank you for having me.
[0:15:59] BB and JA: Show us your creative guts.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:16:05] BB: All right. This was a pretty cool episode. We were able to snag Gene Luen Yang from his very busy day, visiting the Dairy Field School and sharing his work with our students in our community, and to have just less than 20 minutes to sit down and chat about his background. Wow.
[0:16:22] JA: Yeah. Oh, it was short and sweet. I feel like we could have talked – I want to pick his brain so bad about so many of the properties that he's worked on and just talk comics with him. But it was such a lovely chance to chat, and we got a lot in that short amount of time.
[0:16:34] BB: Yeah. My heart was racing from the beginning, because he's like – like, oh, he's a celebrity. What he's done is just so amazing. His talk today with our kids was so inspiring.
[0:16:45] JA: Yeah.
[0:16:46] BB: I especially loved his reference to the Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s writing, just about books are sometimes windows. These windows are also sliding doors. A window can also be a mirror, and how important that is to be able to read a diversity of work throughout your time and to put yourself out of your comfort zone in your reading, because it opens up this whole world of possibilities and connection. Now, how he's able to even do that in his own writing. He spoke about his childhood and upbringing, and not being an athletic kid, and not understanding, or liking basketball, but then he was reading about it, and then he was working alongside the basketball coach at the school where he taught. He ended up writing a book about that basketball team. It's important and ingrained into his creative practice now.
[0:17:34] JA: He just embodies curiosity, which I feel is so essential, and it's so helpful to be reminded of that. When we interview these artists, and we get a chance to break down their creative practice, it's always just grounded in being curious and wanting to make cool stuff. He's the spirit animal of that, it seems.
[0:17:50] BB: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, we will provide a whole bunch of different references and links in our show notes, as always. You can find these links in our episode description and on our website, creativegutspodcast.com.
[0:18:03] JA: You can also find us, Creative Guts Podcast, on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. If you're not on social media, but you want to stay in the know about what we are doing, join our newsletter list. We're on Substack, and you can find the link to sign up on our website.
[0:18:16] BB: This episode is sponsored in part by the Rochester Museum of Fine Art. Thank you to our friends at Rochester for their support of the show. If you love listening and you want to support creative guts, you can really help by making a donation. Leave us a review, interact with our content on social media, purchase some merch, whatever you do, we really appreciate you.
[0:18:36] JA: Thank you for tuning in. We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode of Creative Guts.
[END]