“Lunar New Year Love Story” (First Second 2024) by superstars, Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham is a gorgeous graphic novel. The art is magnificent, and
the love story shows authentic teenage angst.
Valentina’s mom died when she was very young and her father has raised her. As a little girl she gets a mysterious Valentine’s card every year on her favorite holiday. She imagines St. Valentine as Cupid who is present as she makes Valentines for everyone in her elementary school class.
She still makes these cards her freshman year, but kids think it’s weird. One guy even tears his up. When Grandma comes to visit and they go to mass together, Valentina becomes haunted by a spooky medieval St. Valentine, once a bishop, who replaces her imagined Cupid. She thinks she is under a family curse to never love.
Her first boyfriend, Carson, takes her to a food court where he works and proposes to her, junior year. That is too weird.
Grandma, tired and sorry for keeping her son’s lie, tells her granddaughter that her mother has not died, but deserted the family. Valentina is furious at her father for lying.
She finds lion dancing and becomes part of the team that performs on Tet, Vietnamese New Year, which is also Chinese New Year. She’s immediately good at it, having studied and loved ballet as a little girl. Handsome Les becomes her boyfriend, but Les seems a little fickle. That guy, Jae, who tore up her Valentine freshman year, is part of the team. The dancing is hard work but so fun and she’s friends with the whole team.
Valentina shifts her affection from Les to Jae, as kids throughout high school do. The team and their magnificent multi-person lion costume are booked for a wedding out of town. The bride looks like an older version of her. It turns out it’s her mother, who had tried to see her daughter for years, but her father had blocked her. Valentina is even more furious at him. Will she ever learn to love him again?
Valentina and Jae part ways. Will Valentina find true love or is she truly cursed? The emotion on the characters’ faces, the subtle ageing, and imagination are all remarkable. And the reader learns a lot about Asian culture.
Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Josephine; Lift As You Climb; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore. Her forthcoming books are about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as waterfowl. talesforallages.com
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