Boxers & Saints

I’ve always loved Hong Kong New Wave movies, but they often emphasize action and flashy melodrama over historical context. For someone wanting to dig a little deeper, the graphic novel Boxers & Saints is a look into the parallel lives of two Chinese teenagers during the Boxer Rebellion—One is a red-blooded patriot eager to fight Western invaders. The other is a troubled girl who finds liberation in Christianity. Both characters are carried along, motivated, and then betrayed by fanaticism. When their paths cross, they are forced to learn the difference between religious faith and religious mania. The simple artwork isn’t… show more.

Bound and sold separately, Boxers and Saints are really two halves of a single graphic novel, best read in quick succession by readers mature enough to handle honest depictions of historical violence. Along with luminaries like Grace Lin, Gene Luen Yang is rightly celebrated for his contributions to children’s literature on Chinese-American themes—his American-Born Chinese is especially powerful in this regard. In contrast, these volumes are set in China during the Boxer Rebellion. Picking up Boxers, I was instantly immersed in the social and cultural tensions of northern Chinese villages circa 1900—and then I flipped to the back and found… show more.