Dragon Hoops by Gene Luen Yang

Summary from Goodreads:

In his latest graphic novel, New York Times bestselling author Gene Luen Yang turns the spotlight on his life, his family, and the high school where he teaches.

Gene understands stories—comic book stories, in particular. Big action. Bigger thrills. And the hero always wins.

But Gene doesn’t get sports. As a kid, his friends called him “Stick” and every basketball game he played ended in pain. He lost interest in basketball long ago, but at the high school where he now teaches, it's all anyone can talk about. The men’s varsity team, the Dragons, is having a phenomenal season that’s been decades in the making. Each victory brings them closer to their ultimate goal: the California State Championships.

Once Gene gets to know these young all-stars, he realizes that their story is just as thrilling as anything he’s seen on a comic book page. He knows he has to follow this epic to its end. What he doesn’t know yet is that this season is not only going to change the Dragons’s lives, but his own life as well.

Review:

I was not expecting to love this book! I am not a sports person at all. The crazy, cool, fancy book cover and the author’s name grabbed me and pulled me out of my regular reading order. I was just planning on reading a few pages to see what was up. And I read half of the book before realizing it. Excellent graphic novels have this magic to them. They can just suck me in and envelope me in a story without any real effort. I just wasn’t expecting that to happen with a book all about basketball.

I watch zero sports. My husband and I actively dislike them. We go on dinner/movie dates during the super bowl, even when it’s our state’s team playing. We are book and movie people. Nick likes playing video games. And I like crafts. But, neither of us enjoys watching or playing sports. I really thought there was zero chance I’d get sucked into this. I do really enjoy this author. I know he can tell a good story. I guess I was curious. Also, the book literally feels like a basketball. I can’t stop touching it. It has these deep grooves to it. If you can get a physical copy of it, go for it! It’s so much fun to touch. I guess the combo of the author’s name and the feel of the book drew me in.

I’m so glad it did. The book is kind of made up of three stories. It’s the story of Gene, the teacher, who also typically doesn’t like sports. It’s the story of the kids (aka: characters), who come from all over the world to play high school basketball at Gene’s school in the hopes of getting on to a college team. And these kids of various backgrounds and cultures are fascinating. The third story is of basketball itself. It’s the history of the sport, which I apparently knew nothing about. Yang goes into the sports creation and delves deep into its associations with poorer incomes, urban settings, and Catholic schools.

I weirdly found the history of the sport to be the most interesting. Not only am I not a sports person, but I’m not a nonfiction person either! However, learning about the socio-economic past and the racism behind the sport was so interesting –especially right now. Of course it makes sense that a sport that requires little to no equipment or space would be a sport that could easily be picked up by those with little to no funds.

And then there’s the kids who came from other countries to play basketball here! One came all the way from China. Other kids came from rougher local neighborhoods. The team is a mixed bag of cultures, religions, and races. It also takes place during a critical moment with the Black Lives Matter movement, and between reading that and the discussion about racism in the sport, I couldn’t help but find this book to be so critical in current topics for discussion today. There’s also a young basketball player who discuses the persecution of the people of his faith (the Sikh). I can see this book being used in classrooms to discuss many important topics.

At its core though, this is a book about the sport. It’s about the ups and downs of winning and loosing –how you can’t always predict the outcome. Good guys always beat the bad guys in comic books, Gene notes at one point in the story, but the sports team you want to win, might not defeat their foes. I love that Gene gets sucked into basketball in the book, and I, the reader, do too. The sport is its own comic book, its own superhero. I give this a 10/10.