Magic Fish

by Trung Le Nguyen

[nannah]

Wow. Where I’ve been struggling finding a book I’ve liked lately, I’ve been stumbling upon the most amazing graphic novels. And this is my favorite by far.

Content warnings:
- in-book homophobia (including faith counseling)
- cannibalism
- gore

Representation:
- the protagonist is a Vietnamese-American gay boy
- his friends are a black girl and a latino boy (I assume?)

This graphic novel is essentially about Tiến, a Vietnamese-American boy, and his mother, an immigrant to the United States. It’s about their relationship as people who almost speak different languages, who sometimes feel like they have two separate cultures, and who want to bridge these gaps but don’t know how. It’s even more difficult for Tiến, who’s gay but doesn’t know the words for it in Vietnamese and so doesn’t know how to begin to come out to his family. But by using fairy tales, The Magic Fish shows us how we’re all connected.

First off I’m going to say the obvious: the art style in this is beyond stunning. I can’t stop looking at it. Every page feels both like something out of an old storybook and like something you could frame. There’s so much movement and detail and character in every single line. It also helps to show what story is being told at the moment. There are sometimes several stories going on at one time: Tiến’s reading a fairytale, his mom is thinking back to how it relates to a memory, and then the next page we're back into Tiến’s current life during school. One could be drawn only in tones of purple, the other orange, and the last in red, for example.

There’s also an incredible amount of attention to detail that makes the story and reading experience all the more satisfying. The author himself talks about this in his notes at the end, but he changes the visuals of the fairytales depending on who’s telling them. Tiến’s storytelling tends to have a more Eurocentric look because of where he was brought up, while his mother’s interpretations usually take place in Vietnam. I’d strongly advise you to read (and look at) these notes and concept illustrations at the back. They’re so insightful and beautiful and really add to what you just read.

The Magic Fish is definitely not a graphic novel to zoom through, and it’s definitely not a super light-hearted read either (the homophobia during Tiến’s faith counseling was Very Painful), but it does have an incredibly touching and hopeful ending too. I really don’t have much to say here other than it’s probably one of my new favorite graphic novels. Visually stunning with a beautiful storyline.