A review by daumari
The Good Asian, Vol. 1 by Dave Johnson, Pornsak Pichetshote, Lee Loughridge, Alexandre Tefenkgi

5.0

My friend Melissa recommended this to me a while ago, and I finally got around to it since the library has volume one. I'll definitely be picking up volume two!

The Good Asian is a noir set in 1930s San Francisco Chinatown, following Honolulu cop Edison Hark who's come to the mainland at the request of an old family friend. As the last decade before the Chinese Exclusion Act dropped, tensions run high, and an American-born generation struggles with xenophobia from the country of their birth. A lot of the historical background is in my wheel house, but I love setting this in the 1930s (as I feel like a lot of historical fiction about Chinese Americans skews towards late 1800s or post-1965). My own great-grandmother came in the 1920s, so it's startling to consider that Yeh-yeh would've been the age of one of the kids Edison talks to.

The creators definitely did their homework, and I'll be seeking out more of their work.