I've collaborated with Robin Ha and Jeff Yang to write a story in COMIC FORM!!!!
MAJOR thanks to
ROBIN HA, the AMAZING ARTIST who drew this pencils and Jeff Yang from
Secret Identities for allowing me to be part of his crew. Also thanks to Perry Shen, Keith Chow, Jerry Ma & Jef Castro.
I'm beyond excited. I wrote a story for a fictitious comic about Ching Shih (a real life pirate) for the second volume of
Secret Identities the Asian American anthology of the anti-hero.
A few years ago I read about this pirate woman, Ching Shih on
CNN by Maggie Koerth.
To summarize, Ching Shih was an actual woman who lived in the 19th century and worked as a prostitute. Eventually she married a pirate and when he died, she took over and was one of the most successful pirates of her time. (To add to her badassery, after her husband died she married her adopted step son!) The British tried to get rid of her but she proved elusive and ended up living a very long and prosperous life.
The story struck me as so unusual because most stories about Asian women are how they had been physically abused but remained ultra loyal to an elusive man and their reward is that they sprout into a beautiful blossom flower.
Sometimes I hang out at Drawbridge, a illustrator and cartoonist studio in Brooklyn and sat at Robin Ha's desk when she wasn't in. It was very obvious that this RISD graduate and fine artist was a master. When I sat at her desk to draw my feeble cartoons, I would stare admiringly at her drawings that had such energy and fluidity.
Occasionally I would see her and some how I relayed this story to her and she agreed that it was a cool story. And we left it at that.
A year later, Jeff Yang sent out an email for stories to be included in his anthology, I knew this would be an excellent opportunity to tell her story.
This is a project is something that means a lot to me and something I'm very proud of (Once again, thanks to
Robin whose work feels like it was literally taken from my brain and, of course, Jeff Yang.)
xo,
