Oakland, California. It's the start of the 2014-15 school year and graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang has just finished the book tour of his 2 volume account of China's Boxer Rebellion Boxers and Saints. Ready to begin another year of teaching computer science at Bishop O'Dowd High School, Yang is also feeling the stress of following up his recent critically acclaimed works.
Yang is afraid that he's out of ideas. But a chance encounter with members of the O'Dowd Dragons boys basketball squad brings forth inspiration. Gene has never really been great at sports. More of a nerd than a jock, the part-time comics creator really doesn't even understand that game of basketball. But after meeting with O'Dowd's coach, Lou Richie, Yang thinks he's got the idea for his next book.
O'Dowd lost in the state final last year. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride seems to follow the boys of Bishop O'Dowd. But with the state's top prospect, Ivan Rabb along with seniors Paris Austin, Alex Zhao, Isaiah Thomas and Jeevin Sandhu, O'Dowd has a very good chance to finally win their first championship!
From pre-season practices all the way to the California High School big dance, Gene Luen Yang will travel with the Dragons to chronicle their season. Along the way, Yang highlights the team seniors, diving into the depths of their past histories. What is it like to be a young black basketball star in Oakland, America, the world? How does a Sikh Indian immigrant handle the pressure when the opposing fans brand him an Islamic terrorist? How does a Chinese basketball prospect live abroad in the United States with a host family? Can you thrive in basketball as the little brother of a superstar women's basketball prospect? These are just some of the questions about culture Yang will explore as he also takes the reader on an early history of the game of basketball.
I found Dragon Hoops a fascinating read. It's what Friday Night Lights is to football. Yang basically has to do 3 things in this book. He's got to educate us on the origins of basketball. He'll need to introduce us to all of the major characters of this book. And he has to guide us through an entire season of high school boys basketball. Gene Luen Yang balances all 3 segments of this book extremely well without once being boring or repetitive.
Dragon Hoops is just over 440 pages long. I did not want this book to end. I've been all smiles as I've Googled many of the characters in this graphic novel to see how they've fared since the end of the 2014-15 season. Yang berates himself for not being good at drawing likenesses. But I think he did a really great job at this book.
Gene Luen Yang no longer teaches. Right after this book, he devoted himself to comics full time being tasked with a run on Superman before creating a line-up of Chinese legacy heroes in the pages of New Super-Man. After both successful runs, it was nothing but up, Up and UP for Yang. But don't be surprised if we see a return to Bishop O'Dowd. Not that I think Yang is going to go back to teaching or anything like that. But I really could see this biographical graphic novel becoming a movie or TV series.
And if that happens, you read it here first!
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.
Completing this review completes Task #39 (Featuring the LGBTQ+ or different ethnic group) of the 2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.
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