The Legend of Auntie Po by Shing Yin Khor (review)

Chinese immigrant Ah Hao is head cook at the Sierra Nevada logging camp, where he feeds both the white workers who receive board as part of their compensation and also the Chinese workers who do not; his daughter, Mei, assists him, baking pies so delicious they function in the camp as tokens of goodwill. When she’s off kitchen duty, Mei passes time with Bee Andersen, the manager’s daughter, planning how they’ll spend their adult lives together—Mei dreaming of a life as a couple, and Bee picturing Mei (single) joining her and a vaguely imagined husband who would generally be out of town on lucrative business trips. In the meantime, life in the 1885 American West presents more immediate challenges: a surge of anti-Chinese aggression forces Mr. Andersen to lay off Hao, and an accident on a log drive leaves the Andersen family grieving the loss of a brother and son. To cope with societal and occupational threats, Mei spins original tales of Auntie Po, a Paul Bunyan-esque Chinese giantess who (assisted by a blue water buffalo) runs a logging camp. At times of maximum stress, Auntie Po actually appears as a guardian to Mei and children of color within their camp, but never to Bee—an unwelcome reminder that despite their friendship and plans, their futures are bound to diverge. Oversized frames, often backgrounded by single and double spread camp scenes, make this particularly accessible to readers unaccustomed to graphic novels and allow Khor to balance content of the logging industry with interpersonal drama. A bibliography is included, and an author’s note provides welcome acknowledgement of the Indigenous peoples—loggers among them—on whose traditional lands this work of historical fiction takes place.