“What Is China but a People and Their (Visual) Stories?” The Synthetic in Narratives of Contest in Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers & Saints
“What Is China but a People and Their (Visual) Stories?” The Synthetic in Narratives of Contest in Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers & Saints
This chapter presents a reading of Gene Luen Yang's two-part epic Boxers & Saints. In the novel, the fierce yet compassionate female warrior Mei-wen asks Boxer Rebellion leader Little Bao, “What is China but a people and their stories? ” (Boxers 312). Within the plurality of Mei-wen's rhetorical question is the implication of a multitude of stories, leading the words to be a self-referential gesture to the dual narratives of Boxers & Saints itself. The chapter first explores James Phelan's concept of narratives of contest before looking into examples of how Yang structures the narrative to highlight the synthetic component in aid of his authorial purpose. It then reflects on the complication of Yang's choice to conclude the narrative in epilogue. The chapter closes by returning to Yang's rhetorical purpose and situating it, as well as Phelan's contest of narratives, in connection to dialectics.
Keywords: Boxers & Saints, Gene Luen Yang, female warrior, Boxer Rebellion, children's literature, young adult novels, James Phelan, narratives, dialectics
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