Pornsak Pichetshote

My friend Melissa recommended this to me a while ago, and I finally got around to it since the library has volume one. I'll definitely be picking up volume two!

The Good Asian is a noir set in 1930s San Francisco Chinatown, following Honolulu cop Edison Hark who's come to the mainland at the request of an old family friend. As the last decade before the Chinese Exclusion Act dropped, tensions run high, and an American-born generation struggles with xenophobia from the country of their birth. A lot of the historical background is in my wheel house, but I love setting this in the 1930s (as I feel like a lot of historical fiction about Chinese Americans skews towards late 1800s or post-1965). My own great-grandmother came in the 1920s, so it's startling to consider that Yeh-yeh would've been the age of one of the kids Edison talks to.

The creators definitely did their homework, and I'll be seeking out more of their work.… (mais)

This is an absolutely important work of sequential storytelling. In her introduction for Infidel, American author Tananarive Due talks about how in the age of Jordon Peele’s Get Out, a new wave of horror has arrived, bringing with it stories featuring inclusive characters all readers can identify with while using the genre to reflect on real-life horrors such as racism and xenophobia. This new wave is here and after the protests we been witnessing across the United States, this new wave is so vital. Indidel is genuinely creepy and riveting haunted house story on the surface but it is actually about how there are spiritual forces at work that are trying to divide us, when we the human race, although diverse, are one. The story follows an American Muslim woman (Aisha) and her multi-racial neighbors who move into a building haunted by xenophobia. When the demonic entities within her building frame Aisha for murder, it is up to her best friend to solve the mystery at the center of this story and destroy this haunted house of hatred for good.

Infidel is both timely and freaky and it left me an emotional wreck. Get it. Read it. Freak out. Weep.… (mais)