The Comic-Book Storyteller
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MONTAGE went to her professor’s office a day early, “some new breed of millennialized authentic significance. Their concert crowds, which completed the test, walked to the T, got to alternative rock.” often include both teenagers and baby South Station, took a bus to Albany, and Either way, it’s unique. Their newest al- boomers, give a pretty good indication of got on the road. bum, The Fun and the Fight, is their most co- their musical range. On the music-streaming Their time in college has matured their hesive yet. You might even guess they’re site Spotify, the group reaches just short of songwriting. Chris, who concentrated in siblings just by listening. Chris’ rhythm 50,000 listeners a month. On February 28, computer science, deals more heavily with guitar playing is almost voice-like, weav- they performed on NBC’s Today Show, their the harmony and mixing side and Jocelyn ing through and echoing Jocelyn’s emotional highest profile performance to date. It’s hard deals more with lyrics and melody. Their vocal lines, which can be upbeat one minute for them to imagine that just a few years sound has developed into something that and sorrowful the next. On stage, Jocelyn of- ago, they were pulling all-nighters to fin- Jocelyn—a former English concentrator— ten seems in a near-trance. Chris, also lost in ish homework assignments between sets. “I can’t quite describe. Chris suggested “Indie the music, is a more serene presence. know either one would’ve been a big deal for blues rock” or “Alternative blues rock” as Today, Chris said, they feel like everything us, and for our parents, too,” Jocelyn said. “I rough approximations. Bourgeois called it they’re doing has a little more weight and can’t believe it when we look back.” life. Born in Boston, she went to high school The Comic-Book in Iowa, an experience she now describes as “fairly traumatic.” Chu was nerdy and shy and one of the only Asian kids in town, Storyteller and her dream was to play soccer. Only one problem: her school didn’t have a girls’ team. Graphic novelist Amy Chu When the school district forbade her from by s.i. rosenbaum trying out for the boys’ team, Chu’s parents sued and won under Title IX. She joined the boys’ team. But the first time she stepped atching amy chu, M.B.A. In fact, before 2010, the closest she’d onto the field to play, the opposing team ’99, stride through Mid- come to writing a comic book was cre- walked off en masse—forfeiting the game town Comics in Manhat- ating a Microsoft PowerPoint presenta- as a political statement, rather than face a W tan’s Times Square is like tion in her old life as a busi- female opponent. watching a queen visit the heart of her ness consultant. “It’s not She remembers the experience as morti- realm. The staff know her, of course. She the same,” she says now. fying. But it stood her in good stead when looks up a few graphic novels by writers “No one says, ‘I was so she eventually made it to Wellesley Col- she knows, then heads upstairs to search moved by your Power- lege, where she completed a double degree for some of her own back issues, breezing Point presentation.’” in East Asian studies and architecture, in past posters of characters she’s written for But perhaps there a joint program with MIT. “You sue under DC and Marvel: Wonder Woman, Dead- were clues to Chu’s Title IX,” she jokes. “That’s a really great pool, Red Sonja, Poison Ivy, Green Hornet. destiny in her early thing to get you into a women’s college.” At 51, Chu is an established com- At Wellesley and ics writer, working for the biggest MIT, Chu was more publishers on some of the biggest in her element than titles in the business. She’s living in the mostly white any comics nerd’s Iowa town she’d left fondest child- behind. “I’d never hood dream. seen so many Asians,” It just was nev- she says. “Suddenly er her dream. As I’m actually popular. a kid, Chu hadn’t I can actually be in- wanted to be comic-book vited to parties.” At writer—or any kind of writ- one party, she met er. She certainly never planned the future writer and on telling stories about antiheroes business consultant in spandex or metal-bikini-clad Jeff Yang ’89, then a warrior babes for a living. Harvard undergradu- ate. Chu had founded Accidental comics writer Amy Chu, whose graphic novel, Sea a literary journal for Sirens, comes out this spring Asian-American stu- 68 May - June 2019 Images courtesy of Amy Chu Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE dents at Wellesley, and Yang was editing a (As it was, the glossy publication lasted for a School, “just to get it out of my system.” student publication at Harvard. “His whole dozen years and had several hundred thou- She enjoyed her time there (“It was awe- thing was, ‘Let’s start a real magazine, an sand readers at its height.) some, actually,” she says. “I was pleasantly Asian-American magazine for the Asian- After graduation, Chu tried several dif- surprised.”) and became a management con- American population,’” Chu recalls. ferent jobs, including running an arts non- sultant, specializing in biotech firms. That The result was A. Magazine, a periodical profit and—through a chance encounter at might have taken her to retirement, if she Yang and Chu co-founded with two other a fundraiser—running the Macau tourism hadn’t run into an old friend at Harvard’s friends. They bootstrapped the publication office in Hong Kong (despite not speaking first-ever Asian-American alumni summit by throwing parties for Asian Americans in Cantonese). By 1999, she says, “I thought in 2010. New York. “If we’d stuck to the parties, we for whatever reason I should get a business Filmmaker and television writer Geor- would have made a ton of money,” she says. degree” and applied to Harvard Business gia Lee ‘98, M.B.A. ‘09, wanted Chu’s help How Finance Works, by Mihir H. gates the nexus among the Koch brothers’ Desai, Mizuho Financial Group pro- political network, deregulatory business Off the Shelf fessor of finance and professor of interests, and entities like the American Recent books with Harvard connections law (Harvard Business Review Press, Legislative Exchange Council, all bent to- $35 paper). A teacher (and contrib- ward shaping state and local policymak- utor to these pages) succeeds at his ing—in one ideological direction. The three latest installments in the Cass sternest educational challenge: mak- R. Sunstein-book-of-the-month-club, as ing financial statements, and the underlying This Is How We Pray, by Adam Dressler, three academic presses publish current flows of cash and capital, clear and useful M.T.S. ’05 (FaithWords/Hachette, $20). A work by the wildly prolific Walmsley Uni- to the quantitatively shy. down-to-earth, personal—as opposed to versity Professor (see “The Legal Olym- theological or doctrinal—approach to pian,” January-February 2015, page 43): The 8 Brokens, by Nancy Berliner ’79, prayer. The author has made a personal On Freedom (Princeton, $12.95), a suc- Ph.D. ’04 (Museum of Fine Arts, $55). The journey from Oral Roberts University to cinct essay on democracy and navigating museum’s Wu Tu senior curator of Chinese Harvard Divinity School to Grace Com- toward life’s better choices. How art has crafted the first book on bapo (“eight munity Church in Clarksville, Tennessee, Change Happens (MIT, $29.95), an ex- brokens”) painting, which originated in nine- where he is now lead pastor. ploration of social norms and challenges teenth-century China. The works, depicting to them—making sexual harassment sud- antique texts, art, and ephemera, seem The Code of Capital: How the Law denly visible and unacceptable, for in- strikingly modern. Perhaps reflecting the Creates Wealth and Inequality, by stance, while white nationalism simultane- turmoil of their era, they can evoke strong Katharina Pistor, M.P.A. ’94 (Princeton, ously amplifies its voice and apparent nostalgia for declining cultural norms. $29.95). A Columbia law professor ex- following. Conformity: The Power of plains the status in law of capital in all Social Influences (NYU, $19.95), a com- State Capture, by Alexander Hertel- forms, and how financial assets, intellec- plementary dive into the phenomenon of Fernandez, Ph.D. ’16 (Oxford, $29.95). The tual property, and their brethren affect the the title, and dissent. author, at Columbia, searchingly investi- ownership and distribution of wealth. Good Charts Workbook, by Scott Berinato (HBR Press, $35 paper). A Har- vard Business Review senior editor pro- vides vivid guidance on how to make “bet- ter data visualization” (a description inferior to the graphical contents within)— a good proxy for vivid thinking. The Role of the Scroll, by Thomas For- rest Kelly, Knafel Research Professor of mu- sic (W.W. Norton, $29.95). A gorgeously illustrated exploration—both scholarship and a passion project—of “fascinating ob- jects that have always been shrouded by an intriguing kind of aura, and a quality of some- An untitled 1900 ink and color work by an unidentified artist, exhibiting the strikingly © MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON modern “eight-brokens” style 70 May - June 2019 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 MONTAGE with a startup idea she had: a comics im- soccer scene in Iowa in the 1980s, “Lo and print for books aimed at girls.