Fans know cartoonist and Bay Area native Gene Luen Yang for graphic novels, including American Born Chinese, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Dragon Hoops. Yang recently expanded his reach with his first museum work, Bay Area Hoops, a basketball-focused commission for SFMOMA’s Bay Area Walls series.
Tell me about your Bay Area Walls project.
GENE YANG: The museum invited me to design a mural to accompany the sports-themed exhibition Get in the Game due to my graphic novel Dragon Hoops that came out in 2020. It’s about the Bishop O’Dowd Dragons, a high school basketball team out of Oakland. I taught at Bishop O’Dowd High School for 17 years, and, in my last year, I followed the varsity men’s team and did this graphic novel about the team and basketball history.
This project features three comic book pages, each focusing on a basketball player with a tie to the Bay Area: Jeremy Lin, who became a professional, but we focus on him as a high school player; Fran Belibi, a college player; and Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors. We use distance to talk about basketball. There’s a hoop on the right side of the mural. A cartoon of Curry taking a three-point shot is 23 feet, 9 inches away from the hoop, the same distance as the NBA three-point line. A cartoon of Lin dribbling past the free throw line is 15 feet away from the hoop, the same distance as a standard free throw line. And a cartoon of Belibi dunking is right next to the basket.
What was it about the stories of Curry, Belibi, and Lin that intrigued you?
GY: I wanted players from three distinct levels who exemplified these three shots. If you’re talking about the three-pointer in the Bay Area, it’s going to be Curry. For the slam dunk, Belibi is an extraordinary athlete who played for Stanford until 2023. She’s the daughter of immigrants and didn’t play basketball until high school but became a McDonald’s All American. And there are few high school games with Bay Area ties that rival Lin’s championship game with Palo Alto High.
So, basketball is your sport?
GY: It is now. Growing up, I didn’t like basketball. I had a tough time with any sport that had a ball because I’m not very coordinated. I had a growth spurt in junior high and high school, so I was on the taller side, which made basketball extra embarrassing. It wasn’t until Dragon Hoops that I began to understand the sport and became a fan.
What additional research have you done for this project?
GY: With Belibi, I read articles and she was gracious enough to grant me an interview. I ended that interview as an even bigger fan. For Lin, I reached out to his high school coach and interviewed him. Information about him is not hard to come by. The same is true for Steph Curry. The difficulty with Curry is choosing which three pointer to feature. There are so many choices!
Many of your works focus on the ability of the average person to achieve greatness or make a difference. How does this perspective apply to this work?
GY: One thing that made me go from avoiding basketball to admiring it was realizing its role in American history. It’s an arena where America can work out some of our issues. An example is this historic 1948 game between the Minneapolis Lakers and the Harlem Globetrotters. It was one of the first times white and Black players played on the same court. The Globetrotters won, but the significance went beyond that. There was a fear that if you had players of different races on the court, violence would break out. The fact that that didn’t happen, in large part because of the sportsmanship of the players on both teams, was huge.
These three athletes show the importance of basketball to Bay Area culture and of the Bay Area to basketball. Curry has really changed the game, the way that young people think about basketball, and what a basketball star looks like. He was not expected to be an NBA star because he’s on the smaller side. Lin is an Asian American icon. He’s a classic example of someone underestimated who smashed all expectations. Women’s sports has always struggled with respect; Belibi’s dunk demonstrates a level of skill, commitment, and athleticism that is inarguable. She left basketball to pursue her dream of becoming a pediatrician. It shows that the virtues you develop on the court can often translate into other parts of your life.
How does creating a mural compare to creating a graphic novel?
GY: I’m essentially doing a comic on a wall. There’s still a writing component and a research component. The difference is the size. I had to figure out what font size to use. I think about page real estate when I’m working on graphic novels, but this is a whole different level of thinking about physical space. It gives me a lot of admiration for people who regularly display art in museums.
Do you use a story mapping system?
I do. Even though each player’s story is only nine panels, I’ve tried to make sure there’s a beginning, middle, and end.
As a former teacher is there a lesson in each of your works?
GY: I learn from every project. My most recent graphic novel, a collaboration with my friend LeUyen Pham, is a romcom called Lunar New Year Love Story, about two teenagers who live in Oakland who join a lion dancing team and fall in love. That story shows how love comes with all these risks, but the risks are worth it. Dragon Hoops was about stepping out of your comfort zone. This project touches on those same themes of stepping out, and not being afraid to make a splash.
What came first for you, art or storytelling?
GY: I wasn’t interested in drawing for drawing’s sake. Early on, I knew that I wanted to draw in order to tell a story. That comes from my parents. Growing up, they told lots of stories from Chinese culture. It was their way of building a bridge between the culture they left and their children.
Did your parents encourage your art and the path that you took?
GY: I don’t know about encouraging. My mom was more sympathetic. My mom had an appreciation for art, but my dad was very much an immigrant father, so he was not very pleased when I decided to dive into comics.
Are your kids artistic?
GY: They all do art, but none of them wants to be an artist. My oldest wants to do pure computer science. We’ve had the opposite fight compared to me and my dad. I’m like, “You can do coding, but you can do it in a way that overlaps with art.” My second child wanted to be an interior designer, but now says she wants to be a doctor. I told them that they should have been my dad’s kids!
When you write, do you intentionally focus on an aspect of the Asian American experience or do the cultural references happen organically?
GY: Like most creatives, I pull heavily from my own life. I’ve lived an Asian American life. My interest naturally gravitates towards Asian and Asian American topics. Once I’ve gotten started, I do research to fill it out.
What was it like to see a very intimate story like American Born Chinese transformed into a TV show?
GY: It was a fun experience. The show runner, Kelvin Yu, and I have become friends. Early on, we decided the show would be different from the book. The differences stem from two decisions. One, we set the show in the 2020s as opposed to the eighties and nineties, when I was growing up and when the book is set. Two, we made it a TV show instead of a movie, so the world it’s set in must support multiple beginnings, middles, and ends. My hope is that when you read the book and you watch the show the differences between the two say something about how Asian America has changed from the time setting of the book to the time setting of the show.
What inspires you to take on a graphic novel job like Avatar, with a rabid fan base and beloved characters, and expand on that world?
GY: Avatar was fun because I’m a fan, but it was also nerve-wracking because of the intensely devoted fan base. I mean, for some, Avatar is a lifestyle. I learned a lot. There’s a big difference between doing something for Avatar, DC Comics, or Marvel and doing my own stuff. You don’t have as much control working with other people’s characters or worlds. But because of those constraints, I learn more about storytelling and making comics. I have valued all my experiences in other people’s worlds.
What new projects do you have in the pipeline?
GY: I’m doing a middle grade series called Books of Clash, based on the popular mobile game Clash of Clans. It’s with First Second Books and Supercell, the company that puts out the game. And then I’m at the very beginning of another project, a science fiction project.
What advice do you have for young people interested in a career in the arts?
GY: The most important thing is having enough respect for your own art to carve out time to do it. Have regular time every week or, even better, every day to work on your art. If you’re talking about comics, if you do a panel a day or a page a week, soon you’ll have a graphic novel.
Bay Area Walls: Gene Luen Yang is on view August 31, 2024, through June 2025, on Floor 2. Learn more at sfmoma.org/bay-area-walls.