Using New Mediums to Reach a Younger Audience
I would have saved myself from five hundred years’ imprisonment beneath a mountain of rock had I only realized how good it is to be a monkey. -The Monkey King from American Born Chinese
I recently finished a young adult book 
entitled American Born Chinese, the winner of the 2007 Printz Award. The book is a graphic novel that explores issues of race as related to immigrating groups in the United States. The author, Gene Yang, using imagery from Chinese culture to show the struggle a teenage boy endures as he realizes the way race and ethnicity affect his life in both positive and negative ways. American Born Chinese does an excellent job of accentuating the small issues that lead to stressful situations in day-to-day lives of immigrants, and even though it focuses on the hardships of Chinese teenagers one or two generations removed from relatives that were born overseas, the ideas Yang delivers could be applied to most immigrant groups today.
But that’s not really what I wanted to talk about today. I wanted to talk about the importance of delivering these messages in a way that adolescents and teens can understand and even relate to. Specifically, the use of the graphic novel by a young adult writer to delve into issues relating to race and ethnicity. The use of a format that is accessible and alluring for teens is important in getting some of these messages out there. Using a graphic novel to tackle tough issues such as race is an eloquent strategy, one that could be employed to deal with a plethora of issues, from sex education to the dangers and consequences of drugs and alcohol. Getting information out there is important so that adolescents and teens have the information to make decisions that are right for them. And letting them know the effects of racism, sexism and classism (just to name a few isms) can help start them out with information about variety in life in an informative and potentially critical way, rather than the complacency that they may have about these issues when information on them isn’t easily accessible or presented in an entertaining way.
There have been a few books that deal with some issues like these transferred into graphic novels. Ever tried to read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States? It’s really informative and amazingly well written. But it’s long. And a lot of people would never be interested in reading hundreds of pages on the History of the United States, especially after taking multiple classes throughout school about American history. But the content is something that people should have access to. So a few years ago, Zinn released a graphic novel version of it, very abridged but keeping the same message and the most important content, entitled A People’s History of the American Empire. The new format for the information was good; much easier to read but still with the punch of the original. The same thing was done with Studs Terkel’s Working. It was adapted into a graphic novel and a musical, allowing it to catch a wider audience than the original ethnography would have been able to access and address.
Taking information on important and relevant social issues and transposing them to a medium that more people have the desire to use is an important way to disseminate more ideas. Addressing these social issues early on can help improve the critical thinking skills for many adolescents and teens by exposing them to a broader spectrum of experiences and ideologies. Hopefully writers continue to use graphic novels as a way to reach a younger audience and educate them about tough topics.
Although it can backfire. I did see a graphic novel entitled The Book of Genesis illustrated by R. Crumb.
