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Yang was born in Alameda or Fremont (he can’t recall which one) and grew up in a Catholic family in San Jose and Saratoga. Yang was one of few Asian Americans at his grade school and his classmates taunted him. Since then, he says he’s always been uncomfortable being Chinese. One year, a new student arrived from Taiwan. The boy didn’t speak English, so Yang’s teachers wanted him to befriend the boy.
“I really wanted to get away from the kid. He followed me talking in Mandarin,” Yang says. “Me and a friend ended up throwing tan bark, getting him to go away.”
Yet at home, his parents kept their culture alive through storytelling. His mom read him books her parents shipped over from Taiwan, and his father improvised scatological stories (loosely autobiographical) about Ah Tong, a Taiwanese village boy forced to do a lot of chores.
Yang started drawing as a toddler, and in second grade, he and a friend created several hundred cartoon characters with big noses and sunglasses they called “wee bees.” Ignoring sports, music and other interests, Yang drew for several hours each day. “I doodled a lot in class,” he says.
Yang’s earliest dreams were to become an animator, but he developed an obsession with comics in fifth grade, when his mother bought him his first comic book. Yang had pushed her to buy a book about the Thing, but she thought it was too scary. Instead, she bought him a Superman rag. She didn’t realize that the issue focused on the atomic bomb obliterating much of humankind.
Yang started collecting Smurfs, Transformers and Spider-man comics, but the accumulating was interrupted in junior high, when a friend told Yang comic books were geeky. This friend had a girlfriend, so Yang listened to him.
In high school, the zeal for comics re-emerged. Yang, like many of his Asian American classmates, enrolled at Foothill Community College to study math and science in the summers before taking the classes for high school credit. Yang’s parents allowed him to elect one fluff course, so Yang picked up a cartooning class. He also worked in the men’s clothing department of Montgomery Ward to fund his comics addiction, and soon acquired a couple thousand magazines, including small runs of the Hulk, Uncle Scrooge and the Spirit.
“It’s almost like a puzzle,” Yang says. “The last couple of pieces, you want to find them and put them in the right place.”
He went as far as buying acid-free backboards and plastic sleeves in which to store the books, but he’s quick to mention that his collection is nothing compared with those of true fans.
“Honestly. People collecting at my age have whole garage fulls,” Yang says.
In college, Yang hoped to major in art, but instead chose computer science with a minor in creative writing.
“My dad said, ‘Do something practical. After graduation, I’ll leave you alone,’ ” Yang recalls.
Yang gave up his animation dream after taking a class and realizing how tedious the work was. Yang focused on comics because they were more story-driven and he could create them independently.
College was also a time when Yang encountered an incredibly diverse pool of people and ideas, which forced him to ask questions such as, “Does God exist?” and “How do I live my life?”
Yang finally made a decision about God during an InterVarsity Christian Fellowship retreat his freshman year, right after he finished walking through the woods “to pee,” as he puts it.
“It wasn’t intellectual. Something just hit under the starry sky,” Yang said. “Nature is profound.”
He decided to make Jesus the center of his life.
After graduating, Yang volunteered as an InterVarsity staff member for a year and worked a day job as an engineer for a firm in Emeryville. At the end of his volunteering stint, he and the other staff workers prayed about their futures. “Publishing a comic book came up for me. It was always a lifelong dream. I had to publish one book before I died,” Yang recalls.
Two years into his engineering job, Yang attended a five-day silent retreat where he tried to figure out God’s plan for his life. “When you don’t talk, your thoughts become clear. It’s a gradual process. A media and noise detox,” Yang explains. “It was a feeling.” Ignoring letters his father sent him that included newspaper clippings about engineering salaries, Yang quit his job and began teaching.
Four years and four projects later, Yang started “ABC.” Initially, he planned to make copies of the book and sell it at comic conventions. At most, he’d self-publish or go with a small publishing company. But a friend, Derek Kirk Kim, an award-winning cartoonist, sent “ABC” to Siegel and called him repeatedly until he read it. Publisher Siegel saw Yang’s talent immediately.
“He has a sense of command as a storyteller,” Siegel says. “His artwork has an iconic quality, very clean and crisp. There’s also a humor and humanity to it. It should speak to people well outside of the comics world. There are human things, big things, issues of race, being true to yourself, the masks we put on.
Yang says he always struggles with balancing faith and work. He didn’t want to proselytize, but he wanted to capture why so many of his Asian American peers are Christian.
“As Asian Americans, we don’t feel like we belong in the culture we find ourselves in, or our parents’ culture,” Yang says. “To know that God intended you, that’s powerful.”
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