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“Iggy Samurai” - I thought of it being like “ Teenage Mutant Ninja Samurais” or “Samurai Rabbit.” I had to do a deep dive back into that era of comics. He’s going to toss away what he thinks of as being more juvenile. He thinks prose narrative is more “adult,” and he wants to be more sophisticated. I was thinking of somebody who was writing comic books as a kind of an escape, and now he wants to write prose as a way of really trying to confront these issues.

How do you think switching to prose unmoors him? ‘Fiona and Jane,’ Jean Chen Ho’s collection of stories, pays homage to friendships complicated by displacement, sexuality and the passage of time.īenson’s writer’s block kicks in when he’s asked to write a memoir, instead of the comic books that helped him process his past. If that’s the case, and that seems highly unlikely, here’s a reminder of my existence.”īooks Are you a Fiona or a Jane? Jean Chen Ho’s debut captures a bittersweet L.A. His letter reveals that he has been “following” Benson’s career. While the fictional sensei is benevolent, Constantine - C - was (and is) clearly not. The novel opens with a letter written to Benson by “C,” the real-life mentor who inspired Coyote Sensei. Iggy is guided by Coyote Sensei, who teaches and protects him. By blurring the lines between fact and fiction, creator and creation, Chong probes some of the tenderest spots in the process of writing fiction.īenson produces a series called “Iggy Samurai,” in which animal characters act out a hero’s journey. What begins as realist fiction pivots with a gigantic metaphysical twist, asking big questions about what obligations a writer has to their characters. All he knows of his father is that he’s some kind of “bad man.” Their inevitable face-to-face creates a scene that defies genre categories. Benson’s childhood was spent in an unspecified Chinatown in the 1980s, living with his grandmother after his mother died.

The eponymous main character in Kevin Chong’s “ The Double Life of Benson Yu” is a successful comic book creator who is asked to write a memoir. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.