Among May’s Disney+ releases is the fantastical coming-of-age series American Born Chinese. The latest TV series from the streaming service stars the likes of Oscar winners Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, amongst a predominantly Asian cast and crew. American Born Chinese had to start somewhere and that place was the mind of Gene Luen Yang. As the graphic novel writer and cartoonist recalled to CinemaBlend, when he first created panels for the story inspired by Chinese folklore, he was just ”making it for my friends” without an ambition in the world that it would become the series it is today.
Yang shared that American Born Chinese started at a self-published comic that he’d draw and send off to Kinkos to print up copies and staple by hand before it was published in 2006 and went on to win an Eisner Award. During our interview with the author, he shared that he had no idea it could ever be among Hollywood’s upcoming book adaptations and why it took a decade to agree to hand it over to showrunners. In Yang’s words:
