HOW TO DRAW A SECRET

A San Francisco sixth grader grapples with the burden of keeping a heavy family secret.

In this debut graphic novel inspired by the author’s own life, Taiwanese American Cindy lives with Ma and older sisters Jess, a Yale-bound senior, and Em, a student at Stanford. Bàba lived with them, too—until he moved back to Taiwan four years ago, ostensibly for work. Their father’s absence is a confusing situation the girls have been instructed to keep secret. When the teacher of avid, talented artist Cindy encourages her to enter a contest with the theme “What Family Means to Me,” she’s torn between revealing the uncomfortable, murky truth and wanting to depict a “perfect” family; she harbors secret hopes that winning with an idealized portrait might encourage Bàba to come home. During a sudden family trip to Taiwan to attend their paternal grandmother’s funeral, the sisters learn why Bàba really left. Will Cindy be able to express her feelings and portray her family’s complicated truth? The appealing cartoon-style illustrations have soft, saturated tones, emphasizing the characters’ facial expressions and making their complex, shifting, and overlapping emotions ring true. The panels and perspectives are creatively varied, and interspersed pages from Cindy’s journal highlight her inner thoughts. Chang makes the emotional strain that emerges from secrecy clear, and the book refreshingly and bracingly addresses the topic of non-nuclear Asian American family configurations.

A moving portrayal of a family processing fraught, messy changes.