Q&A with Ryan Estrada
Talking with the writers of Banned Book Club
Hello, everyone! Back in March, the Comics Book Club read Banned Book Club by Ryan Estrada, Kim Hyun Sook, and Ko Hyung-Ju. Ryan Estrada kindly reached out to me via social media to ask if I would like him to visit with us virtually or answer any questions we had. While I wasn’t able to make a virtual visit work, I was happy to provide questions for him from our members and myself.
We exchanged emails and he got back to me within a day. I thought I would share his responses with all of you while the Comics Book Club discusses Flamer by Mike Curato, another favorite target of book banners.
Minor edits have been made for clarity.
What made you choose this art style/artist?
I am an artist myself, but we decided that for Banned Book Club, since it was a story about Korean history, it was important for a Korean artist to draw it. When we found Ko Hyung-Ju, his style matched perfectly because he himself was a Korean college student, and making it feel real was second nature. When he was unavailable, I did end up drawing the two sequels. Hyun Sook and I decided that since those were more personal stories, it made sense for me to draw it with her in the room so it felt more accurate to her experiences. My more goofy, colorful style fit better with the more lighthearted tone of No Rules Tonight and Good Old Fashioned Korean Spirit, while Ko’s more serious, mangaesque style gave Banned Book Club a more tense feel.
Are/Were there any journalistic or autobiographical comics that inspired you or that you’d recommend? What are some of your favorite comics?
Persepolis [by Marjane Satrapi] and Maus [by art spiegelman] are of course classics, and Keum Seuk Gendry Kim has many amazing journalistic comics about Korea!
We know some of the characters are hybrids or based on real people, and that other people had identifying details changed for varying reasons. Also, the reunion at the end was very sweet and it was nice to see how everyone turned out. Can you tell us anything about what happened to either of the major antagonists, Agent Ok or the literature professor?
We changed not only everyone’s names, but the school and city as well. Even though everyone was giving us their stories, and permission to use them, we didn’t want them to regret it later and didn’t want Hyun Sook’s alma mater mad at her. (Anjeon University is actually a pun. . . it means “safety school.”) But it turned out we didn’t need to worry. The real Yuni was so thrilled by her portrayal that she did her own press tour to let everyone know she’s the real Yuni. She’s a politician now, and used it to rally votes! The real Hoon I was extra nervous to ask since I was writing about his college romance with my wife.
When I asked him about the accuracy, he was only concerned with anachronistic military gear. Finally, the dean of her school and mayor of the city invited us out for a giant press conference and presented us with a certificate for writing the book. I asked Hyun Sook, “Do they know that the school and government are not the heroes of the story?” The mayor said, “I used to be in a banned book club, and now I run the city, so we won!”
As far as other updates. . .
In the book we include the moment where Agent Ok says, “If the world changes, I hope you forgive me.” That was a real moment, but he said it to the real Hoon. Hoon actually did see him decades later, when the world had changed. They were both walking down the street, looked up, and saw one another. They both made eye contact, then looked away and kept walking.
The literature professor’s exact course of study was also changed. He’s very famous now, and his work can be seen all over Korea. I changed his class to Shakespeare just so I can avoid trouble and also include some of my research in his introduction scene. But that made it very awkward when I met Hyun Sook’s real Shakespeare teacher!
This question is for Hyun Sook. Was your family aware of your activism and did they read Banned Book Club? If so, what was their response to the book and how they were depicted?
RYAN: There’s only one lie in Banned Book Club, and that’s the scene where Hyun Sook’s mom finds out what she’s been up to and gives her a hug. This addition was because I’d included a lot of mom-and-daughter arguments and I didn’t want to make a book where my mother in law was the villain. In reality, she learned about it when she read Banned Book Club!
But when she did, she crashed a livestream Hyun Sook was on and told her she was proud of her!
HYUN SOOK: My father died before Banned Book Club came out, so he never got to see it. But we did interview him to get details for the book. He was surprised that Ryan kept asking about his steak restaurant. It was one of his biggest disappointments, so he didn’t understand why we wanted to make a book about it. But we were able to explain to him that his bravery in working hard for something new even when the world tried to punish him for it inspired me to stand up for what I believed in.
To end on a positive note, what gives you hope in this time of increased book bans and assaults on free speech in the United States? Do you have any advice for those struggling with how to respond to these threats?
Our book has been banned in four U.S. states, and every time I’ve become pen pals with the person who banned it. Every single time, they responded, “Oh, I haven’t read it.” When I flew out to speak in support of librarians at those local board meetings, I learned that the book banners don’t even read the whole title! I learned that in Kentucky, book banners had confused the kids book Are You My Mother? with the adult graphic novel Are You My Mother: A Comic Drama [by Alison Bechdel] and Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex with Let’s Talk About It: The Sesame Street Guide to Conflict Resolution.
I went up in front of the city council and explained how little the book banners knew about the books and how little they represented the community. How they pretend to be concerned parents but are actually political group leaders who drive in from another state and have no kids in the district. As I spoke, I saw the stone faces of the entire local government, police force, and local business leaders and was terrified that I was going to be beaten up in the parking lot. But afterward, every single person in the room came up to me one by one and said, “Actually, I can’t really talk about it in front of everyone else here, but secretly I’m on your side.”
The more we talk about this, the more we will realize that this giant movement to ban books is nothing but theater. It’s a handful of people pretending to be a movement and denigrating books, authors, librarians, and teachers they know nothing about solely because the people who fund them profit financially from weakening public schools and creating distrust in communities.
They know that our stories are meaningful and important, and make the world a better place. Even if they try to hide behind a magic word, like all book banners have throughout history. . . degenerate, communist, satanic, pornographic. . . they’re really just removing books about the types of people they don’t want to have a voice. But the more we speak, the more we write, and the more we read, the more we all realize that those people don’t represent what society thinks. Don’t let anyone tell you what to say, write, or read!
Thanks again to Ryan Estrada and Hyun Sook Kim for answering our questions and providing such insight and wisdom about their comic, the world we live in, and how we may effect change! You can read more about our discussion of Banned Book Club here and check out more of Ryan’s work here.
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What an excellent conversation! I was especially touched by Hyun Sook talking about her father: "...his bravery in working hard for something new even when the world tried to punish him for it inspired me to stand up for what I believed in."