The Englewood Review of Books
Best Books of 2020
Advent / Christmas Calendar
December 30
The Englewood Review of Books
Dragon Hoops: A Graphic Memoir
Gene Luen Yang
Hardback: First Second, 2020.
Buy Now: [ IndieBound ] [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]
Engaging, entertaining and full of insight about race and ethnicity, “Dragon Hoops” follows the real-life Bishop O’Dowd Dragons, an Oakland high school basketball team, in its quest to win the California state championship.
On one level, Yang’s latest graphic novel is like a fast-paced documentary, intercutting the Dragons’ thrilling wins and crushing losses with basketball’s own turbulent history, from the invention of the game in 1891 by James Naismith, to the 1948 face-off between the Harlem Globetrotters and the all-white Minneapolis Lakers, to the often controversial, politically charged careers of today’s N.B.A. stars.
On another level, it’s autobiography. Yang was a computer science teacher at Bishop O’Dowd High School for nearly two decades. And it was a 2014 conversation he had with the Dragons’ head coach, Lou Richie — himself a player on the team 25 years earlier — that sparked the idea for the book. Richie, with only seconds remaining in the 1988 championship game, made a shot everyone thought had given the school the state championship, only to have a referee overturn the basket. That reversal of fortune transformed a mild-mannered backup point guard into a high-school-hoops version of Captain Ahab, eternally obsessed with capturing his own elusive white whale.
- from the NY Times Review
by renowned graphic novelist Jerry Craft
[ READ the full review ]
WATCH a video talk about this book with Gene Luen Yang…
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