Names and Faces - by Leise Hook (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

A graphic memoir-in-essays examining the in-betweenness of being mixed-race and the cultural confrontations inherent to forging one's identity

Who are you? What are you? And how does it feel to be you? Leise Hook was asked these intrusive questions so many times growing up that they haunted her like ghosts. Born to Chinese and German parents, and growing up in Michigan, Tokyo, and Virginia, Leise Hook was never sure where she fit in. More white-passing than her Chinese friends and family, but with the Mandarin skills of a native speaker, she was constantly exceeding some expectations while failing to meet others. From moving to Beijing, to dying her hair blonde, to exploring self portraiture, Hook struggles to figure out who she is and where she belongs.

In the vein of Cathy Park Hong and Gene Luen Yang, Hook's graphic memoir-in-essays rendered via her signature, award-winning style, explores what it means to come of age as a mixed-race woman, forging a singular identity in a world intent on putting her into ill-fitting boxes.

About the Author

Leise Hook is an Asian American cartoonist and illustrator currently based in Stockholm, Sweden. Her work has appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker, and Catapult, and has been shortlisted for a National Magazine Award for Digital Storytelling and for the Cartoonist Studio Prize. She received the Electronic Literature Organization's 2021 Robert Coover Award for a Work of Electronic Literature.

Hook grew up in Virginia and Michigan, and previously worked in art museums in NYC and Beijing, China. She is a graduate of the MFA program at The Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont.