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BookDragon Blog

17 Aug / The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen [in Booklist]

*STARRED REVIEW
The magic happens here on every page, the perfection personified by debut author/artist Trung Le Nguyen’s autobiographical homage to the infinite power of storytelling. The opening page ingeniously distinguishes three interwoven narratives with three color palettes: red is the urgent now, about young Tiến and his mother learning to communicate through the language of fairy tales when difficult conversations can’t yet be uttered; brown is the older past, of Tiến’s mother’s cleaving journey from war-torn Vietnam to become a U.S. citizen; blue are the stories we tell to help understand, shape, and even save our very lives.

Tiến has a secret he desperately needs to declare, especially to his mother, but she’s suddenly called back to Vietnam when her own mother dies. Three parallel stories bind the generations together: mother and son read aloud Alera, a Cinderella-esque story of cross-dressing true love; mother-in-mourning and her elderly aunt recall the fairy godparent-like magic fish; mother-returned and son-in-waiting share a different magic fish, a voiceless mermaid who learns to speak through dance. Such are the stories that will reveal the truth.

Even as his panels end, Nguyen’s magic continues – as writer, his spare author’s note is an articulate reclamation, even reinvention, of the immigrant narrative; as artist, his detailed commentary on illustrative genesis – European, colonial, Asian, American Midwest inspirations – provide both historical and personal revelations.

Review: “Graphic Novels,” Booklist, July 2020

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2020

By Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Middle Grade Readers, Repost, South Asian American, Southeast Asian, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers Tags > BookDragon, Booklist, Coming-of-age, Family, Folklore/Legend/Myth, Friendship, Historical, Identity, Immigration, LGBTQIA+, Love, Magic Fish, Mother/daughter relationship, Parent/child relationship, Refugees, Trung Le Nguyen, War
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