Dragon Hoops

In Dragon Hoops, graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang turns his attention to his own life, his family and the high school where he teaches, Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California. Gene knows comic book stories well, with their big action, bigger thrills and heroes who always win. Sports are another matter. As a kid he was nicknamed Stick, and every basketball game he played ended in pain, so he lost interest in the sport long ago. At his school, though, basketball is all anyone talks about. The men's varsity team, the Dragons, is having a remarkable season that has been decades in the making, and every win brings them closer to the California State Championships. As Gene gets to know these young players, he realizes their story is as thrilling as anything he has seen on a comic book page, and he sets out to follow it to the end. What he does not yet know is that the season will change his own life as well as the lives of the Dragons. The book is a work of nonfiction told in comics form. Yang is also the creator of American Born Chinese.