Re-Gifters

Carey, M., Hempel, M., & Liew, S. (2007). Re-Gifters. New York: DC Comics. ISBN 978-1-4012-0371-9

Why read this graphic novel

When your hormones make it hard to keep your thoughts straight, you’ve got a problem, especially if you are in a martial arts competition and the object of your hormonal interest is your chief competitor. Find out how Dixie resolves her crush on Adam in Re-Gifters.

Plot summary

Dik Seong Jen – that’s her Korean name, which in English becomes Jen Dickson, even though her friends call her Dixie – is a high school student whose passion is hapkido, a form of Korean martial arts. Her dad, who moved to the United States from Korea when he was 10, and her mother, who is second generation Korean American, are proud that Dixie is keeping her Korean heritage alive. Dixie, however, is feeling kind of wacko these days. Her teacher tells her she’s one of the best hapkido students he has ever had, but he also notes that she has lately lost her ki, the spirit that informs her fighting. Dixie knows why, too. She’s got a crush on Adam, the other best fighter in the class. Hapkido and romance are resolved in sync as Dixie and Adam compete in the national hapkido competition and Dixie figures out how to regain her ki.

Critical evaluation

Dixie is a great first-person narrator, fully venting her frustrations in emotional outbursts and inappropriate displays of ki directed at innocent friends. The story is well-structured in that writer Mike Carey intertwines and resolves in a single climax the romantic issue of Dixie’s crush on Adam and the sports angle of the national hapkido competition. Carey also embeds some nice symbolism in the form of a model of a medieval Korean warrior that Dixie gives Adam for his birthday and then is re-gifted from one person to another throughout the story until it ends up with the martial artists at the finals of the national competition.

About the creators

The team that created Re-Gifters is spread across three continents. They also collaborated on the comic series My Faith in Frankie.

Writer Mike Carey was born into a working-class family in Liverpool in 1959. He was a teacher for 15 years before he began publishing comics and graphic novels. Among the hundreds of comics and graphic novels he lists on his web site are titles in the series X-Men, Fantastic Four, Lucifer, and Hellblazer. Carey has also written six novels and one book of non-fiction. He lives in London and maintains a blog at http://mikeandpeter.com (About Mike Carey, n.d.; Carey, M., n.d.).

Artist Marc Hempel was born in Chicago in 1957 and has been drawing comics professionally since 1978. He has lived in Baltimore since the early 1980s (Hempel, n.d.).

Artist Sonny Liew was born in Malaysia in 1974 and studied at Cambridge University and the Rhode Island School of Design. He began drawing comics professionally in 2001 and currently lives in Singapore (Lee, 2004). He maintains a blog at http://sonnyliew.wordpress.com/.

Genre: Asian American, Graphic fiction, Romance, Sports

Curriculum ties

Re-Gifters is a good resource for any unit dealing with identity formation. Although identity is not a key theme in the story, Dixie models how a young person with dual cultural heritage can integrate both into his or her life. Dixie also provides a good model of a female participating in co-educational sporting competition without any explicit issues around her gender from anyone involved.

Book-talking ideas

• I like the scenes where Dixie gets carried away and uses her hapkido skills inappropriately, such as pages 33-35, where she floors her friend Avril just because Avril is disagreeing with her. (Avril is right, of course.)

• The scene where Dixie resists some boys in the neighborhood who tell her to walk on the other side of the street is also a good introduction to Dixie’s high-spirited ways (pages 24-27).

Reading level/interest age

I think this story will appeal mostly to middle school students and younger high school students. Older high school students might enjoy it as a quick entertainment read, but the focus on a first crush would probably seem a little young to them.

Challenge issues

The romance is all very innocent and there is no foul language, so it’s hard to imagine a challenge to this graphic novel.

Responses

• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”

Why I chose to read this book

I asked an Asian-American teacher friend what he thought of American Born Chinese, and he gave me Re-Gifters, saying that if I liked ABC I should read Re-Gifters, too.

References

About Mike Carey. (n.d.). Mike-Carey.co.uk. Retrieved November 16, 2009, from http://www.mike-carey.co.uk/ABOUT.HTML

Carey, M. (n.d.). Mike Carey. Mike Carey and Peter Gross. Retrieved November 16, 2009, from http://mikeandpeter.com/about/about-mike-carey/

Hempel, M. (n.d.). The Mark Hempel story. Insight Studios Group. Retrieved November 16, 2009, from http://www.insightstudiosgroup.com/march/march.htm

Lee, T. L. (2004, December 14). Sonny storms into international comics circle. allMalaysia.info. Retrieved November 16, 2009, from http://www.allmalaysia.info/news/story.asp?file=/2004/12/13/msiansabroad/9396921&sec=mi_msiansabroad

Mexican WhiteBoy

De la Peña, M. (2008). Mexican whiteboy. New York: Delacorte Press. ISBN 978-0-385-73310-6

Why read this book
Danny Lopez has the fastest pitch in Southern California high school baseball, but he can’t control it. His life’s a little out of control, too, torn between an the mostly white preppy high school he attends in San Diego and the Mexican-American community his dad came from and where he’d rather be.

Plot summary
Danny Lopez is 16 years old, a good student, and the owner of the fastest pitch in Southern California high school baseball. But his life’s so miserable he can hardly talk. His Mexican father left a few years back and his white mother is dating a rich white guy who wants them to move in San Francisco. Danny’s about the only non-white kid in his preppy high school, and he doesn’t have any friends there. He’d love to play baseball, but his fast pitch is so wild the coach told him to forget it. So Danny decides to spend the summer with his dad’s family in National City, a mostly Mexican-American town south of San Diego.

Danny’s cousin Sofia is cool. She likes Danny even though he hardly ever has a word to say. She introduces him to all her friends in the neighborhood, including Uno, an African American guy about Danny’s age. Uno’s a pretty good baseball player, too, and when he watches Danny practice his pitching by himself on the field in the dilapidated neighborhood park, Uno can’t believe what he sees. Danny’s fast and wild, but Uno is a catcher, and he wants to get in on this scene. Gradually he gains Danny’s confidence and they spend the summer practicing, practicing, practicing. As Danny gains control of his pitching, Uno has an idea. How about if they hustle some of the hot young hitters practicing on other baseball fields around the area? “Twenty bucks says my Danny will strike you out before you can get a hit.” Uno’s scheme has the two of them hitting out all over southern California, hoping to stay out of trouble long enough to pick up some cash.

Critical evaluation
Matt de la Peña captures life in National City with sympathy and authenticity. He neither exploits nor minimizes the challenges of life for young people of color in a poor community. As the relationships develop between Danny, his extended family, and his new friends, it’s easy to see how the support Danny finds there makes it possible for him to confront the challenges in his life, which in addition to disciplining his fast ball include the grief caused his father’s disappearance and his confusion about his biracial identity. The setting of the story becomes an important, well-developed character its own right, a key factor in the protagonist’s resolution of the conflicts within himself. In National City, everyone has Danny’s back, unlike his life in his mostly white, upper-class high school. Through Danny’s story de la Peña challenges the “deficit model” that many outsiders, including teachers, see when they look at families in a Mexican neighborhood. De la Peña’s theme goes beyond that of the young individual rising to the occasion. This is a story about the role that a nurturing community plays in that triumph.

About the author
Matt de la Peña was raised in National City, California, a town between downtown San Diego and the U.S.-Mexican border. His father is Mexican American and his mother is white. He attended the University of the Pacific on a basketball scholarship and earned an MFA in creative writing from San Diego State University. His first novel, Ball Don’t Lie (2005), is about a young basketball player. It has been made into a movie that will be released in November 2009. Mexican WhiteBoy is his second novel. A third novel, We Were Here, will be published in October 2009. De la Peña currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches creative writing (Bowllan, 2009; Matt’s bio, n.d.).

On the importance of multicultural young-adult literature, de la Peña has said, “Maybe a biracial kid like me can read one of my books and feel like an insider. Or maybe a white kid can read one and learn about somebody who exists outside of his context. But they have to be there, right? Accessible. Because, man, these kids of color, their lives are beautiful, too” (Bowllan, 2009).

Genre: Latino, Sports

Curriculum ties
Ethnic Studies — The issues Mexican WhiteBoy presents about understanding biracial identity and the importance of community in sustaining and supporting young people are both important topics in Ethnic Studies courses.

Book-talking ideas
• Pick up on the biracial issues, which are especially cool now that we have a biracial president.
• Read some of the exchanges among the younger people in National City, focusing on how decent they are to each other.
• To catch the attention of the sports fans, read or describe one of the encounters between Danny and Uno and the other high school baseball players when Danny and Uno are scamming for dollars.

Reading level/interest age
Sports, identity, confusion — Danny’s issues are things that middle school students can relate to. The lack of sex and violence in the novel, the reading level, and the length also place it in within their reach, despite the fact that the School Library Journal review pegs it for Grade 9 and up (Walton-Hadlock, 2008). The novel’s authenticity is likely to make it a good read for high school juniors and seniors, who are Danny’s age, especially Latinos and mixed-race students.

Challenge issues
Mexican WhiteBoy includes romance but not sex, and it includes a few fistfights but no life-threatening or gratuitous violence. Some characters swear a little, but the most likely feature of the book to draw challenges might be the somewhat poor light cast on the white characters. They are never denigrated for their race, but they are mostly portrayed as less sympathetic to Danny than his Mexican-American and African-American friends and family. The most important white character, Danny’s mother, is off in San Francisco with a rich, white potential husband during most of the story, but in the end she realizes that her highest priority is to return to southern California so she can be there for Danny when he returns to high school in the fall.

Responses
• Remind the challenger of the policy (in the case of the San Francisco Public Library) to present “all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.”
• Direct the challenger to the list on the author’s Web site of awards and positive reviews the book has received (http://www.mattdelapena.com/MWB.html).

Why I chose to read this book
I found this book while perusing the young-adult section in a Barnes and Noble bookstore. I bought it because of my interest in multicultural literature.

References
Bowllan, A. (2009, August 31). Writers against racism: Matt de la Peña. Bowllan’s Blog. Retrieved September 13, 2009, from http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/620000062/post/210048421.html

Matt’s bio. (n.d.). Retrieved September 13, 2009, from http://www.mattdelapena.com/bio.html

Mexican WhiteBoy. (n.d.). Retrieved September 14, 2009, from http://www.mattdelapena.com/MWB.html

Walton-Hadlock, M. (2008, September). De la Peña, Matt. School Library Journal (54)9, 177. Retrieved September 14, 2009, from http://web.ebscohost.com.libaccess.sjlibrary.org/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=105&sid=9dd65b35-b00d-4bff-9d7b-a879d3be1871%40sessionmgr110&bdata=JmxvZ2lucGFnZT1Mb2dpbi5hc3Amc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl#db=lih&AN=34179113