Written and illustrated by Laura Gao, Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American is a Harvey-nominated coming-of-age story about the hardship of identity and the beautiful but messy journey to find it. After spending her early years in Wuhan, China, Laura immigrates to Texas with her family, where she finds herself constantly having to navigate the complexities of being a queer Asian American youth. When Wuhan becomes a household name in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Laura must confront her Asian American identity once more while tackling misconceptions about her hometown and the discrimination towards Chinese/Americans.
Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American has text and illustrations by Laura Gao and color and art assistance by Weiwei Xu. It was published by Balzer + Bray in 2022.
When I first read Messy Roots, I was immediately drawn to colorist Weiwei Xu’s tendency to utilize only a few distinct colors. The two main colors that appear most prominently in the text are red and yellow. From a basic visual standpoint, Laura can be easily identified throughout the text because of her signature red shirt and yellow-toned skin. However, the two colors also relate to her Chinese identity (hint: Mainland China’s flag is red and yellow). For a good portion of Laura’s adolescence, Xu exclusively sticks to red and yellow hues for character outfits and backgrounds—perhaps to make Laura’s feelings of cultural isolation more prominent.
It isn’t until Laura becomes a college student that blue becomes a central part of character outfits and filled-out backgrounds. From this point on, Xu incorporates white gutter spaces alongside the color palette of blue, red, and yellow, which just happens to be a fusing of the U.S. and Chinese flag colors. I interpret the expanded combination of colors as Xu’s way of intentionally showing readers how Laura’s two identities (American and Chinese) have now merged and co-exist within her.
If we’re to continue reading these white, blue, red, and yellow color combinations as indicative of a fuller-formed Chinese American identity, then it’s worth noting how our very first introduction to Laura’s character is in the Prologue, when she’s a college student embodying these four colors (and a dual identity). She’s shown to be learning about COVID for the first time in January of 2020 and gets incredibly upset when a friend pokes fun at Wuhan, China being at the center of the virus.
Throughout the book, Gao switches seamlessly between the past and present, which allows us to see how starkly different Laura’s early life was in her hometown of Wuhan (a happy place filled strictly with warm yellow and red hues) versus the present (where additions of white and blue contribute to a more melancholic vibe of life in America). Also, despite Laura and her brother both being fully integrated Chinese Americans when they’re at an airport in February of 2020, the rise in COVID cases jeopardizes their ability to be viewed as Americans. Initially, they are depicted as blending right into the blue background alongside other miscellaneous folks sitting at a terminal. However, once Laura and her brother become conscious of themselves for being the only Chinese people in the terminal, Xu depicts them with distinctly red and yellow shirts, hereby separating them from everyone else still colored in blue.
This moment encapsulates the idea of Asian Americans being viewed as perpetual outsiders, regardless of however much they feel tied to their American identities. While Laura immigrated to the U.S. from China at a young age, her brother was actually born in the U.S.—and Gao emphasizes how normal struggles for Asian Americans to fit in with Western standards and society has only been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic.
From there, Gao continues to move between flashbacks and the present, detailing significant periods of her life from early childhood all the way to adulthood. Having spent her formative years in Wuhan, the Chinese language is a large aspect of Laura’s life growing up and Gao frequently includes Chinese characters in the text. One thing that I appreciate about Messy Roots is Gao’s refusal to gatekeep the Chinese language (and more specifically, the Wuhan dialect that Laura and her family use). Gao frequently incorporates pinyin transliterations/English translations of written Chinese speech bubbles. Through her efforts to include both English and Chinese, it’s clear to me that Gao is attempting to reach a diverse group of readers.
Although Laura’s experiences with growing up as Chinese American are distinctly her own, Gao makes the memoir interactive by including a chart full of Wuhanese-specific phrases and their meanings in English. She even writes that this chart is meant to be bookmarked by readers). Yet, she doesn’t stop there when it comes to making the memoir relatable for a variety of readers, as she intersects Asian American identity with queer identity—a move that is significant because there truly aren’t enough depictions of it in YA comics. Also, I love the way that Gao addresses Laura’s navigation of her sexuality throughout her adolescence in a rather subtle and gradual way. Although many readers might immediately read Laura’s middle school crush on a girl from the basketball team as highly indicative of being queer, Laura’s own recognition and acceptance towards her queerness doesn’t occur until she’s well into college and takes (and retakes) a “Buzzbeed” quiz to see if she’s queer. I like how Gao displays results such as “You are Gay AF” and “You Got Queer” prominently enough to make readers feel as though they’re the ones receiving the results instead of Laura. While Laura’s story speaks to a special group of fellow queer Asian Americans, Gao shows us that her story can also speak to a wider audience.
In a flashback to her early days as in America, Laura struggles at first to adjust to the cultural differences. However, she eventually comes across a comic called American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (perhaps you’ve heard of it?). American Born Chinese ends up having an incredible effect on the young Laura, who can see herself in the main character Jin, a fellow Chinese American kid who’s dealing with identity issues and microaggressions himself.
Gao has the chance to inspire the younger generation through Messy Roots, a work that sets itself apart from American Born Chinese by employing color, pinyin, and English translations as significant means to convey the nuances and challenges of dual cultural identities.
Since its first publication in 2006, the impact of American Born Chinese has been monumental for Asian American youth being able to see themselves represented both visually and textually over the last 17 years. Gao recognizes the profound impact of Yang’s work, as it was the first story that made her feel she wasn’t alone in her struggles as an Asian American youth. Fast forward to today, Gao has the chance to inspire the younger generation through Messy Roots, a work that sets itself apart from American Born Chinese by employing color, pinyin, and English translations as significant means to convey the nuances and challenges of dual cultural identities. Furthermore, Messy Roots has the capacity to reach an even broader audience: one that includes queer Asian American adolescents (especially girls).
Within the last three years, Asians and Asian Americans have been the targets of pandemic-related hate crimes and speech—and dealing with the impacts of such trauma has been exhausting. To my own knowledge, Gao is the first author to publish a work of literature addressing the intersections between Asian American identity and queer identity in the context of COVID-19, and she does it so well. If you’re a fan of comics such as I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib and American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, you’ll love Gao’s funny, intimate, and fresh takes on life as a queer Asian American youth.
