First Second has really become a home for me, as it has for many other cartoonists. I thank Mark Siegel, my editor, for dreaming up First Second Books and then making it a reality. I thank my agent Judy Hansen for her wisdom and advice. She made my comic look about a million times better. I thank my friend Lark Pien, who colored Boxers & Saints. I also thank my family, especially my lovely wife Theresa. You’ve dedicated your careers and your lives to promoting good stories.įirst, I thank God for the blessings and the trials. You all understand the importance of stories. Stories can empower us, or they can destroy us.Īnd that’s why it’s such an honor to be recognized by all of you.

The Boxers loved their stories so much that they wanted to become them they wanted to embody them. I’m fascinated with the Boxer Rebellion for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the way it highlights the importance of stories. Here in the West, we refer to these young people as the Boxers. They made it all the way to the capital city, where they were finally put down by a foreign coalition in the summer of 1900. It was like ancient Chinese Shazam.Īrmed with these superpowers, the teenagers marched through the countryside, fighting European soldiers and missionaries and their Chinese Christian allies. The gods would possess their bodies and give them superpowers. To empower themselves, the teenagers created a ritual that they believed would summon the Chinese gods, the heroes of the operas they watched every spring at their village fairs. They felt helpless and hopeless, and they were angry that the Europeans and the Japanese had established concessions in their homeland. These young people were supposed to be farmers, but there was nothing for them to farm because a drought had killed all their crops. On the other side was a ragtag army of poor, starving teenagers from the Chinese countryside. On one side of the conflict were the Europeans, the Japanese, and the Chinese Christians. This is an incredible, incredible honor.īoxers & Saints is a two-volume graphic novel about the Boxer Rebellion, a war that was fought in China in the year 1900.

Thank you to the Horn Book and the Boston Globe.

Boxers gene luen yang