I just couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I woke up in the morning and set aside everything I had to do that day. I heard about the shooting from a friend and like many others, I couldn’t sleep that night. L&S: Your recent Instagram comic seemed to appear almost immediately in the aftermath of the Atlanta shootings, generating nearly 19,000 likes. The only difference is that with coding, it’s a set of instructions and with comics, it’s a set of panels. And then you’re laying out these concrete pieces in sequential order. For both, you’re taking abstract ideas in your head and breaking them out into concrete pieces. When it comes to coding and writing, I actually see a lot of overlap between the two. After being in comic books and graphic novels for over 20 years, the minor in creative writing turned out to be much more useful to me in adulthood. I was waitlisted and finally got in after an interview with Professor Thaisa Frank. I was lucky, because it was hard to get into those classes at the time. But after taking a few art classes, I realized that wasn’t where I belonged and I switched to a minor in creative writing. Gene Yang: When I started at Berkeley, I went in wanting to double major in computer science and art. L&S: As a student at Berkeley, what was it like pursuing such seemingly dissimilar disciplines, computer science and creative writing? How do these different skill sets show up in your work? We spoke with Yang about his path to becoming a cartoonist, the “#AsiansAreHumanToo” comic he recently posted on Instagram, and how art and storytelling can help us unpack complex themes like identity, racism, and social justice. In 2016, he received a MacArthur genius grant, and the Library of Congress named him as its Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Yang, who is Chinese American, is a two-time National Book Award finalist with graphic novels that deftly weave topics spanning from religion and culture in Boxers & Saints, to identity and stereotypes in American Born Chinese.

Early in his career, he leveraged both skill sets as an educator and has since become a prolific storyteller, successfully partnering with iconic comic book publishers DC Comics and Marvel Comics. Yang is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he majored in computer science while minoring in L&S’s creative writing program. Gene Luen Yang, a renowned cartoonist, turned to his pen and paper and used the medium of comics to channel his own thoughts and emotions. In response to those tragic shootings, “#StopAsianHate” and “#AsiansAreHumansToo” became all too familiar refrains as thousands across the country protested the rising tide of anti-Asian bias and violence.

On the evening of March 16, 2021, a man opened fire in three Atlanta-area businesses and killed eight people, six of whom were of Asian descent.

Gene yuen lang