Boxers and Saints (Graphic Novel Review)

 

On a friend’s recommendation, I just finished reading Boxers and Saints, an amazing graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang.

Done as two volumes, the combined pages total close to 500. Did I mention I read them both in a single day?

It’s one thing to read a book you can’t put down. It’s quite another to read a book that refuses to put you down, that won’t let go of you until the end.

It’s that good.

Volume 1 is called Boxers, and recounts the life of a young Chinese boy who gets caught up in the Boxer Rebellion on the cusp of the 20th century. As a child, Bao witnesses the shocking behavior and detrimental imports of Christian Europeans: opium, the suppression of Chinese traditions and customs, the allegedly “feminine” and “weak” Christian religion, and so on. Then one day a hero shows up, and Bao sets out to help him liberate China. Inspired by the spirit of Ch’in Shih-huang, founder of China and the man who built the Great Wall, Bao and his fighters make it all the way to Peking before they are finally stopped. Along the way, Bao confronts a series of choices that for good or ill shape his character and the lives of those around him.

Volume 2, Saints, runs in parallel with Boxers, this one about a young Chinese girl. Her family mistreats her and calls her a “devil” (they don’t even give her a proper name), and she finally decides she’ll become the worst devil she can. In pursuit of this end, she hears about the hated “foreign devils” (Christians) and resolves to meet them. (There’s a hilarious scene where she learns about Jesus from an acupuncturist, and she thinks the Crucifix is a statue of one of his patients!) Eventually, she is baptized and takes the Christian name Vibiana. She also starts to periodically meet a strong and beautiful young girl with foreign features, who is eventually identified as St. Joan of Arc. Encouraged and challenged by Joan and the other Christians, Vibiana struggles to figure out her vocation, eventually dying while caring for orphans when the Boxers invade Peking.

The story (by which I mean both volumes) is artfully constructed. The truly obnoxious priest seen at the beginning of Boxers, whose rude and judgmental acts begin the chain of dominoes that drive Bao into the rebellion, reappears in a more sympathetic role in Saints—no less judgmental, but a more three-dimensional character whose attitude and decisions are understandable, even if poorly chosen. The bloody, often cruel, and quasi-epic feel of Boxers is offset by the humor and tranquility that appears much more frequently in Saints. Bao’s “spirit guide” Ch’in Shih-huang appears as a ghost representing the past, and driving Bao towards a new future; by contrast, Vibiana’s encounters with Joan are just as mysterious to the French saint as they are to the Chinese girl, and Joan’s story runs in parallel with Vibiana’s.

Hmm. That last part might require a bit of explanation. It’s like… when Vibiana meets Joan, Joan behaves as if she is still alive, still a shepherdess, then a young woman on a mission, then a general, and finally a martyr burning at the stake. At each encounter, Vibiana and Joan see how much the other has grown and changed, and neither knows what lies ahead. It’s as if Joan is living her life at the same time as Vibiana, despite having died centuries earlier.

There’s one element that I think sets the story head and shoulders above similar ones: a feature we might call “open-endedness”. Think of a story like one of Aesop’s fables (e.g., “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”). A fable has a single ‘frame’ or perspective or conclusion that defines how it is to be interpreted. (Cardassians notwithstanding.) Such stories have their place, but they are hardly the most intriguing tales. Stories that leave multiple possibilities for interpretation I find to be far more enjoyable. In Boxers and Saints, the author Yang overlaps multiple ‘frames’ for interpreting the religious and moral experiences of the characters. Is Ch’in Shih-huang truly a sage bent on using Bao to save China, or is he an evil spirit driving him to moral and physical destruction? Or is he a figment of a cracking mind? (We are shown Bao’s father having a mental breakdown, too, after all.) Is Christianity an unalloyed good or evil to the Chinese? The Christians themselves are neither: The judgmental Fr. Bey is courageous and takes care of many people; the likeable Dr. Won turns out to be a hypocritical opium addict, and then again sacrifices his life to save another’s. Is Joan really there, or a phantasm of Vibiana’s young and overtaxed spirit? Or for that matter, what about the giant talking raccoon who tries to turn Vibiana to the “dark side”?

You may not agree with the choices of each of the characters, but you will come to understand them. And that’s a mark of a really good story.

PS

On a different note, Boxers and Saints would make for good reading for any young person unsure about how to proceed in life. The choices that Bao and Vibiana have to make reflect those that any young person must.