It’s a common and tired trope of storytelling that the geek shall inherit the Earth. Revenge of the Nerds might actually be the pinnacle of this geeky genre. What makes Jason Shiga’s new graphic novel Empire State: A Love Story (or Not) interesting is that, win or lose the girl, Shiga’s loser character still will win your heart. Part of that appeal rests in the ethnic challenges that the Asian-American Shiga gives to his Asian-American young man. Way back in the 1970s, Love, American Style tapped into the declining “Summer of Love” zeitgeist. In Empire State, Shiga serves up a slice of “Love, Asian-American Style,” which might become the prevailing theme of romance in the multiethnic, multicultural 21st century. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Love, Asian-American Style: Jason Shiga’s Empire State."
[Many thanks to Abrams ComicArts for providing me with the image above from and a review copy of Jason Shiga’s Empire State: A Love Story (or Not).]
