A review by roctothorpe
Advocate: A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice by Eddie Ahn

informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

I've been following this artist on Instagram for years and was super excited to see that his comics would be collected into a book. Overall, there was a lot that I loved about this. Many aspects of Eddie's story - the Asian American immigrant experience, living in the Bay Area, working in underserved communities - resonated strongly with me. I especially valued getting to see the tension between being raised with a strong sense of filial piety/need to repay his parents' sacrifices and ultimately pursuing a not particularly lucrative or prestigious nonprofit career. The art is fantastic and uses color in such a creative way to denote different eras of Eddie's life, most strikingly when it's used to depict returning to the same place at different times. You can clearly tell how much labor and love was poured into each page over years of work. The book did at times feel like a collection of scattered vignettes/disparate stories without a strong narrative throughline, though I do wonder if this impression comes from the fact that I was familiar with a lot of the previously published pieces. I also think that I was expecting the lasting message to be more ..inspiring I guess? But upon reflection, I do appreciate the more quiet, understated tone and the thoughtful commentary on building community.