Almost American Girl: An Illustrated Memoir
By Robin Ha. Balzer + Bray, 2020. 240 p. Ill. ISBN 9780062685094 (paperback), $12.99.
Mimosa Shah, Graduate Student, MS/LIS
School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Reviewed July 1, 2021
Almost, not-quite, askew: immigrant kids often contort themselves, code-switching to meet an idealized sense of what it means to be American while contending with the distinct cultures of their families and ancestry. In Almost American Girl, Robin Ha (author of the bestselling comic recipe book Cook Korean!) revisits her teen and young adult years with pathos, humor, and wit. Ha begins her story as Chuna, dealing with an awkward adolescence coupled with the stigma of living with a single parent. What Chuna thinks is an excursion abroad ends up being a permanent change when Chuna finds out her mother has decided to marry a Korean man living in Alabama. Culture shock, bullying, and a difficult transition to living with step-siblings mark Chuna’s first few months. Yet there are moments of joy as well, including a scene in which Chuna chooses an American name. As a form of meditation and mode of expression, drawing grounds Robin and gives her freedom to explore ideas that she isn’t able to verbalize.
Ha’s words and illustrations come together to form a warm, steady gaze, at times remembering acute trauma with rose-colored lenses and at other times quickening our pulse with narrow escapes. Drawings are loosely rendered and accented with lighter colors, while flashbacks are fleshed out in sepia tones. Despite the serious issues that she addresses, Ha has a playful approach to the figures. Almost American Girl is a tender graphic novel that charts the territory of navigating Asian American identity, tenuous mother-daughter bonds, and gender oppression with muted tones and cutting prose. I highly recommend this book for both public and academic libraries that would like to expand their collection of first-person graphic memoirs, as well as Asian American authors. This book is suitable for middle-grade users, as well as teens and adults.