"Do What You Love and the Love Will Follow": The 2023 NSK Prize Lecture
2023; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 98; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/wlt.2024.a916070
ISSN1945-8134
Autores Tópico(s)Comics and Graphic Narratives
Resumo"Do What You Love and the Love Will Follow"The 2023 NSK Prize Lecture Gene Luen Yang Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 44] After accepting the NSK silver medallion, certificate, and a check symbolizing the $35,000 award, Gene Luen Yang delivered a heartwarming story about the arc of his career, making art with friends, and the earned wisdom of what creating comics has taught him. THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE TO THANK: • God, for both the blessings and the trials. • My wife, Theresa, who is not a comic book person but supports my love of comic books anyway. • My kids, who love comics but not as much as me. • All the people responsible for the Neustadt Lit Fest. Nancy, Kathy, Sam, the entire Neustadt family, RC, Terri, Daniel, Kay, Parker, and everyone else. It has been such a pleasure getting to know you all these past few days. • Trung Lê Nguyễn, not just for nominating me for the prize, but also for being one of the brightest new stars in the American comics scene. • My agent, Judy Hansen, for two decades' worth of wisdom and advice. • My editor Mark Siegel and First Second Books. I'm so grateful for the home for cartoonists that you've created. • All the other publishers I've worked with: Dark Horse Comics, DC Comics, and Marvel. • Teachers, librarians, bookstore owners, and comic shop retailers. Without you, storytellers like me would not be able to do what we do. • And finally, our readers. Thank you for choosing to spend time with our stories. I became a comic book nerd when I was in the fifth grade. Before that I was just a run-of-the-mill nerd, no modifier. When I was a kid, every local bookstore had what was called a spinner rack. This was a wire frame rack that would sit in the corner of the store. It would carry a month's worth of comics. The whole thing would spin so you could see all the comics. One night, my mom took me to our local bookstore and bought me a comic book from that spinner rack: DC Comics Presents #57 starring Superman and the Atomic Knights. I brought it home and read it, and by the time I got to the last page, I was in love. When I found out there was something called a comic shop, a store full of nothing but comic books, I was astounded. Every weekend, I begged my mom to take me. Occasionally, she relented. When I got my driver's license at age sixteen, I drove straight to my local comic shop. Not my girlfriend's house; my comic shop. Back then, Friday was New Comic Book Day. For the uninitiated, New Comic Book Day is the day of the week that comic shops get their shipment from the distributor. Nowadays, it's Wednesday (or Tuesday for DC Comics) but back in the 1980s and '90s, it was Friday. Throughout high school, my good friend Jason, my younger brother Jon, and I had a ritual. Every Friday, we'd pile into Jason's Volvo station wagon and go to our local comic shop. That might've been my most regular habit while I was in high school. I'd bring home a stack of comic books. I'd spend hours reading them, then carefully put each issue into a clear plastic sleeve with a cardboard back. I'd use a small strip of scotch tape to secure the plastic sleeve's flap and store them in alphabetical order in a long box. I had several of these long boxes in my closet. My room was almost always a mess. I had clothes and schoolbooks and mix-tapes everywhere, but my long box was never a mess. That long box might've been the most organized part of my life while I was in high school. Now, my dad watched me do all this and he was pretty disgusted. I am the son of two immigrants. My mom was born in mainland China and my dad in Taiwan. They came to the United States for graduate school, met, fell...
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