Well-known for her work in children’s literature, Belle Yang has a prominent reputation as a leading multicultural children’s author. Some of her more prominent adult and children’s titles include Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father’s Shoulders, Hannah Is My Name, and Foo, the Flying Frog of Washtub Pond.

Recently, however, Yang has entered the graphic novel world. With the publication of her first graphic novel, Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale, Yang has particularly taken on the graphic memoir. Reminiscent of Satrapi’s Persepolis, Bechdel’s Fun Home, and Spiegelman’s Maus I and Maus II, Yang’s book focuses on her relationship with her father. Taking refuge in her parents’ home after a failed relationship with an abusive, stalker boyfriend (whom Belle and her family identify as “Rotten Egg”), Belle begins to bond with her father as they each come to a better understanding of each other. In the end, Belle finds comfort and empowerment in learning about how her father and her ancestors struggled and survived in China in during World War II.
 
 
 
What made you decide to move from children’s literature to graphic-novel adult nonfiction?
I started out writing nonfiction for adults in the late ’80s. Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father’s Shoulders and The Odyssey of a Manchurian were published by Harcourt Brace. These books contained 25 pieces of my four-color art. It was in the late ’90s when I began to work as picture-book writer/artist. Picture books are also a sequential format of storytelling through words and pictures. It was in 1996 when Alane Salierno Mason, my talented editor at W. W. Norton and Company, suggested I turn Forget Sorrow in its original prose and art format, like Baba, into a graphic memoir. She asked me to take a look at Persepolis and eureka! I’d finally found the perfect medium to tell my story about my King Lear–like great grandfather.
 
The truth is, I don’t begin my projects by considering the categories: fiction, nonfiction, adult, and children. Stories are stories. They emerge as a project and then become categorized by the needs of the market. I just write and draw what I want to tell and the format is decided for me as the project emerges.
 
 
Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale is an extremely sensitive and yet also empowering story about yourself and your family. What was it like to write and illustrate such a familial story that reveals so much about yourself and your family?
 
I had a tendency to tell more than was necessary for the artistic shape of the book. I am a huge fan of Emily Dickinson, an admirer of her brevity of thought revealed at white heat. My struggle has been less about what I have revealed, but more about what I have decided to hold back. I had to discard material that was absolutely fascinating but didn’t help the flow of the story. The graphic memoir could have ended up with an additional one hundred pages. Brevity is power; I wanted to maintain the poetic power of Forget Sorrow.
 
 
 
Have you shared Forget Sorrow with any of your family members? What were their reactions?
My father and mother have read the book. They were with me every step of the way on this 14-year-long journey from inception to publication. They were with me during multiple rejections, so my parents were overjoyed—perhaps more than I am. My father has annotated his copy of FS in Chinese with thoughts upon reencountering the pain of the past.
 
My family in China would not care too much about a book, because the mainland Chinese are engrossed in their transition to capitalism. When I was studying in Beijing, my kinfolk would ask me why I was wasting my time with art when I could be doing import-export work and making lots of money.
 
 
The illustration in Forget Sorrow is extremely detailed and, as such, emotionally powerful. On page 13 of your graphic novel, your artistic mentor advises you that “Chi–the breath of life–must be loaded into your brush.” Did this advice influence the way you illustrated Forget Sorrow?
 
Yes, we are born with chi. We die when chi deserts us. The more obstacles are thrown my way, the greater my personal chi grows. When a Western person first meets me, he or she will think me quiet and reserved, but I like my tire pressure analogy. If you keep spewing out the chi, soon you won’t have any left for travel. And travel I have in my solitude and quietude, working in my room for two decades, my strength of chi having taken me on a long journey to reach my goal of bringing my great grandfather’s spirit to rest by completing and publishing Forget Sorrow.
 
 
 
Since Forget Sorrow is not only personal and familial, but also historically relative, what kind of research did you undertake in order to support your writing?
I consider my three-year sojourn to Manchuria, into the Gobi Desert, to Hunan Province and various cultural capitols my real study. I retained a lot of the visuals, the sounds, and feel of the landscape. Then on returning home after the Tiananmen Massacre, I studied Chinese history and literature intensely with my parents in the ’90s. They have a deeper understanding than those who teach at universities on these subjects. I was very lucky. I didn’t have to fly to centers of learning or search through vast databases. I could tap into their knowledge any time, even over dinner.
 
 
On page 30 of Forget Sorrow, one of your characters says, “You may know a man’s face but you can’t know his heart.” In your opinion, how does this theme play itself out in Forget Sorrow?
 
You are quoting the Patriarch’s words when he learned that his Second Daughter’s husband had been philandering. But the Patriarch in his turn did not know what lay in his children’s hearts. His Third Son and his Fourth son took every opportunity to display their loyalty to him. Their wives sweet-talked, cooked for him and the matriarch whenever the opportunity arose. His youngest daughter was coddled and never allowed to go to bed upset lest she have bad dreams. She was given everything she asked for. You would think he would be able to find solace with one of his favorite children when the communists took over. Instead, he was pushed out of their homes as an undesirable beggar. Only my grandfather, who had gone against the Patriarch about land division, and thus estranged from the Patriarch gave him shelter, claimed him as blood and buried him with due rites.
 
 
 
Another quotation that seems extremely relative to what you yourself learned from writing Forget Sorrow is when your father says to you, “A smart person learns from the mistakes of others.” Belle, what have you learned from some of the mistakes and the successes of your family, especially those chronicled in Forget Sorrow?
 
I’m not sure I’ve learned anything from other people’s mistakes. I’ve always argued with my father that I have had to make my own mistakes to gain real, bone-deep knowledge. I’m sure there are “smart” folk who learn from others, but I think they are rare. I am still trying to absorb the philosophy of my father’s Taoist Second Uncle, who pointed out to my grandfather that the reason he has not attained enlightenment is one simple word: greed. Greed is the toughest human stain to rub out. I have gone for months believing I have kept an unhealthy level of desire at bay, only to trip on that very thing at my feet. I do not belong to any organized religion, so the struggle with greed is something I have had to creatively dispel. I’ve written to you about my love of hiking to the top of Big Sur mountains. Buddhists, Taoists, the Western pagans loved mountains, where they were able to throw off the carcasses of their greedy selves and leave them at the foot of the mountains. I leave mine at sea level, at the continent’s edge.
 
One great lesson I learned while writing Forget Sorrow and the earlier sister books was that I could survive emotionally with very little. The less I had, the freer I became. I was stuck inside a house with no exit to the future because of my stalker, but I learned to love my small space. It was as big as the universe for my roaming imagination. I also learned to sit still.
 
Meditation is an overt symbol of the stillness we must achieve in order to center our bodies within our soul, our actions within our bodies. I don’t do sitting meditation, but the continuation of my work without significant pause is a form of meditation.
 
 
One of the most important areas of need in the graphic novel world is for more multicultural graphic novels. How do you feel Forget Sorrow can contribute to this need?
 
I’ve spent the past two years delving into the Western sphere by reading various books on the history of the Roman Empire. I came to understand that my parents and I have arrived in California, which is the Western-most edge of Roman culture’s continental reach. The Romans gave birth to Christianity (even if they first tried to quash it) and we walk a Christian land, even if other religions are “welcomed” to a limited extent.
 
China, the land of my ancestors, is as different as a culture can be from Roman legacy. Its history—its thought processes, its bureaucracy, its aesthetics, the ruler’s relationship to the ruled—has had no brush with democratic processes. China and the West has had no contact except for middlemen on and beyond the Silk Road. Both cultures were invaded by the horse-riding Huns in the Third Century, but that does not make for much of a cultural exchange, does it?
 
Forget Sorrow is all about the power structure within the multigenerational family of yore, which is in fact a microcosm of the State. The large family ruled by a patriarch and the rest kowtowing to his demands is China. In reading FS, you get the ultimate contrast and comparison to America and the West.
 
 
 
In speaking with you via email, you mentioned wanting to explore more of Second Uncle’s life and philosophies. Why Second Uncle? And, if you do end up exploring his life and philosophies, will you see it as a complementary graphic novel to Forget Sorrow?
 
What I meant was exploring more of his philosophies as it pertains to lessons about greed and grasping. I’ve now written three tomes on Manchuria and my father’s side of the family. It’s high time to give my mother’s side of history proper scrutiny.
 
 
What projects are you currently working on? Will you be writing more children’s literature, graphic novels, or both?
 
I am working on a Chinese learner for the very young; another picture book, The Dumpling Thief; and closest to my heart is Umbilical Cord, about the colonial history of Taiwan under Japanese occupation. My mother’s family was native to Taiwan, but the ancestors came from the mainland. My mother’s people hailed from the Hakka (Guest People) tribe, who were pressed south by the nomads, including the Huns in the Third Century. The Hakkas were stubborn about maintaining their own language and way of life; they were marginalized in the bad lands of the southern provinces. Some groups of Hakka took to the sea and started new lives in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia. The book is about identity, about home, about the changing perception of race and nationality in a time of turmoil and political chaos of the Second World War.