Advocate: A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice

Eddie Ahn. Ten Speed, $24.99 (208p) ISBN 978-1-984-86249-5

Ahn debuts with a warmhearted homage to community work that also captures the complex pressures on children of immigrants. In 2005, Eddie is a young adult working with AmeriCorps for an after-school program in Oakland, Calif. There, he discovers the small joys of helping underserved communities. However, his Korean immigrant parents, who own a liquor store, expect upward financial mobility. He goes to law school and discovers a knack for high-stakes poker, but eschews both to pursue a career in environmental justice, which he calls “the gamble of my life.” His personal and professional lives are constantly underfunded, and he’s nagged by guilt that he’s disappointed his family. He becomes the executive director of the nonprofit Brightline Defense, and serves on San Francisco’s environmental commission. A strong running motif is the casual racism he experiences in the gentrifying city, where he’s regularly mistaken as a car service driver or waiter. The graphic memoir is drawn with realistic, detailed portraits of Eddie, his comrades, and his beloved Bay Area, painted in alternating pink, green, yellow, and purple watercolor panels. Each scene is given the same weight and tone, which can flatten the narrative, and there’s a tendency to overexplain. Still, readers who have heeded the call of people over profit will find resonance here. Agent: Chad Luibl, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Apr.)