Almost American Girl

Nonfiction | Graphic Memoir | YA | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-11

Chapter 12-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Background

Authorial Context: Robin Ha

Robin Ha is an illustrator, writer, and graphic novelist. She was born in Seoul, South Korea and lived there until she was 14. That summer, her mother brought her to Huntsville, Alabama under the pretense of a family vacation, when in fact it was a permanent relocation. Her memoir depicts her lifelong love of comics, beginning with Korean manhwa comic books, and stretching into Japanese manga and American comic books. Her mother introduced her to comics in Korea and took her to her first comic-drawing class in Alabama, which is detailed in Robin’s graphic memoir.

This passion eventually transformed into a profession. After high school, she attended the Rhode Island School of Design. She worked in the fashion industry in New York while she figured out if she could work on comics as a full-time profession. Though she had wanted to be a cartoonist since childhood, she struggled with self-doubt and financial stressors. When she finally broke into the comic industry, she was an illustrator for other people’s scripts.

While she was doing this, she was approached about making an illustrated cookbook. Robin had never developed her own recipes or learned much about Korean cooking. She contacted her mother and began cooking with her so that the pair could develop recipes that Robin could include in Cook Korean! (2016). In the acknowledgments to this graphic cookbook, Robin illustrated one of these cooking sessions with her mother. This became the seed for Almost American Girl, which is largely about the relationship between Robin and her mother as they struggle to find their place in America.

Cultural Context: Traditional Korean Culture in the Late-20th Century

One of the main conflicts in Robin’s memoir is the tension between her mother and traditional Korean culture. Robin’s mother is disowned and mocked for being a single mother who was unmarried when she had Robin. She leaves Korea to get away from these constraints, but finds that her new husband’s family practices many of the same traditional cultural practices that she disliked in Korea.

Korean society places an emphasis on family and community. Large families are prized, multiple generations often live together, and one’s family name comes before one’s personal name. For instance, Robin’s Korean name is “Ha Chuna.” Within this family structure, a patriarchal structure is maintained, with particular emphasis placed on respect for elders and the importance of obedience in children. In traditional contexts, sons are preferred over daughters. In a flashback, Robin’s maternal grandfather tells her mother that they do not have money to let a daughter pursue extracurriculars. Women typically marry into a husband’s household and integrate into his family, just as Robin’s mother briefly becomes integrated with the Kim family.

Traditionally, men work while women tend to domestic matters. Women who work might still be expected to keep the household and make meals, like Robin’s step-aunt. Within the context of household authority, older women have authority over the younger female family members. Robin’s step-grandmother ignores Robin and berates Robin’s mother for not supporting her husband; this sets the tone for how they are treated by the entire family.

Genre Context: Graphic Memoirs and the Immigrant Experience

A graphic novel relates a narrative through a combination of illustration, comic panels, dialogue, and exposition. A memoir is a genre of nonfiction narrative writing that relates the author’s own memories and experiences. Graphic memoirs are a combination of the graphic novel and memoir format.

The unique combination of writing and illustrating in a graphic memoir makes it a suitable genre for telling stories about fraught or emotional topics that are difficult to convey via words alone. Memoirs are important because they allow readers to see, understand, and sympathize with someone’s life and struggles in their own words. This is particularly useful when it comes to either understanding communities and identities different from one’s own or seeing one’s own identity and experiences recognized and validated by media.

Graphic memoirs are a particularly valuable genre for relating the experiences of immigrants due to the language barrier that is sometimes present when they come from their home country to the United States. For instance, when Robin first arrives in Alabama, she calls English “gibberish.” Whenever anyone speaks to her in English, she portrays their dialogue as a series of squiggly lines that vaguely resemble letters in the Latin alphabet. This shows readers that someone is speaking but Robin does not understand them. As she slowly learns more English, fewer words are portrayed like this, showing the reader which types of words Robin is learning and at what rate.

Though the entire graphic memoir is written in English, Robin uses blue text to indicate that something is being spoken in Korean and black text to indicate that something is being spoken in English. This allows the reader to see what languages are being spoken in Robin’s home and when and which languages she tends to think in. These types of visual cues tell the reader a lot about Robin as she acclimates to the United States and are only possible due to the graphic memoir format.