Interviewed by Charles Zhong (CZ) and Leonard Chan (LC)

LC: Eddie, thank you for taking the time to do this interview with us. From reading your book “Advocate: A Graphic Memoir of Family, Community, and the Fight for Environmental Justice,” I imagine your schedule is quite busy. Please give us a little bit about who you are for our readers.  

Thanks for having me! In my day job, I work as the executive director at San Francisco-based environmental non-profit Brightline Defense and serve on three California environmental policy commissions. But in the early morning before work and late at night, I’m also a cartoonist and storyteller. After gaining a large audience on Instagram @ehacomics, my graphic memoir “Advocate” is now published by Penguin Random House in 2024, and I’ve been touring the country for my book.

LC: Did you always have it in your mind to do a graphic memoir of your life? Parts of your book are quite detailed. Do you keep a journal or diary? Did you ever consider just doing the memoir in prose without the graphics? How did you decide what you wanted to put into your book?

My original goal was to develop a series of short stories, based on moments in my life and nonprofit work. I really wanted to weave my family’s story into a broader one about community activism and environmental justice, and comics was an ideal visual language to help reach a broad audience. Honing the stories was always a challenge, but I built each chapter around themes – about building community, generosity, taking care of one’s family – among other things

Because I draw by hand, everything about the book is a labor of love. Each page of the book is about 20 to 30 hours of work, with a total of 5,000 hours poured into its creation over 7 years.

CZ: I notice how there are a few central color themes for different parts of the book – such as red, green, yellow, and blue. What is the significance of choosing these specific colors in your art?

Colors help to move the time and mood of the story, so that I did not have to exhaustively time-stamp every scene by text. For instance, I wanted to illustrate my childhood in tones of red, to signify the passions of youth, and tones of blue for a calmer, later period in my life. Each chapter then shifts between these colors so that the themes of each are more tightly intertwined.

LC: The following is provided for context for our readers who have not read your book. Let me know if I got any of it wrong.

You grew up in Texas. Your parents ran a store which primarily sold liquor. They were also involved in wholesale, fine gifts and collectibles, and exports. So you grew up in that store and occasionally helped out with the family business.

Your parents were highly educated. They emigrated from Korea to go to graduate school at the University of Texas, Austin. But your father found owning his own business to be more to his liking.

After graduating from college, you joined Americorps doing work for an after-school program in Oakland’s Chinatown. Partly to please your family, you went back to school to get a law degree and become a lawyer. But then you ended up doing nonprofit work again when you finished law school.

Yes, this is all right! My parents envisioned that I would become a very different kind of lawyer, but I ended up pursuing nonprofit work instead.

CZ: Tell us more about your parents' reactions to your choice of doing nonprofit work. Did you ever have to justify to them why you chose this instead of their ideas of a path towards economic success?

Much of the book grapples with career anxieties, the bumpy road to creating art, and growing up Korean American with industrious immigrant parents. As recounted in the book, they really did not want me to pursue nonprofit work as a career, and they weren’t wrong in their doubts about my work: it was extremely difficult to survive in a high cost-of-living city like San Francisco, especially weighed down by law school debt.

LC: Do you think they finally accepted your career choices?

With my mother, she enjoyed the book a lot and better understands my career. She said she cried on multiple readings of the book, and that’s as good of a reaction as I could have hoped for. My father, unfortunately, is very sick, and he’s been consistently getting worse over the last two years. So I’m not quite sure if he really appreciated it, but at least I showed him the pages and his eyes have tracked the pages.

LC: How did your work with children in Oakland’s Chinatown, your eye problem, and your poker playing help to shape who you are? Do your poker skills ever come in handy with your work?

My education work in Oakland’s Chinatown still influences my commitment to education and nonprofit work today. I think a lot about when I’m gone, and by donating a lot of my time for mentorship, I’m hoping the next generation of leaders will shape the world appropriately.

My poker skills have been decaying from lack of practice – but that prior life also made me much more reflective about money, and how it comes and goes. I’ve learned a lot about measuring risk and pursuing longer-term goals beyond a poker table.

LC: It seems you must get asked these questions a lot – “What do you do for a living? What does Brightline Defense do? What do you do as a commissioner on different city and regional environmental committees?” Perhaps the difficulty is because your work is so expansive. Your book mentioned a lot of the things you have done and are doing. Could you highlight some of these things for our readers?

Brightline does direct services – such as air quality monitoring, youth leadership and job training, and more – as well as policy work to create a clean energy economy that works for local communities. Lately for our policy work, we’ve been promoting larger-scale clean energy sources that Californians will need to power homes and lower electricity bills. To this end, much of our work involves engaging hyperlocal communities and local leaders to understand and serve their needs. Readers can learn via our website brightlinedefense.org or social media @brightlinedefense (Instagram, LinkedIn)!

My role as a commissioner is sometimes more time-consuming because government agencies need to incorporate everyone’s perspective as we pursue complex projects like reshaping policy or building transit infrastructure. It’s expansive work, and I appreciate being able to use my policy and legal knowledge in this way.

CZ: Your book mentions some incidents where you experienced both subtle and overt forms of racism, classism, and ageism, such as the times people mistook you for being an Asian restaurant worker or when you encountered abuse during the height of the Asian Hate period.

Have you experienced any other forms of subtle racism like the time at the restaurant? How do you deal with such incidents and what do you suggest we do when confronted with similar experiences?

To me, this always depends on context. I want to prioritize such incidents from happening again. I’ve found that a politely firm correction works better than shouting the person down. Over time, I’ve also learned that everyone listens and communicates differently, so it may be a longer process than just a one-time interaction.

CZ: I liked the section where you described how you find joy in the small things along the way, such as going back to eat dumplings at the restaurant that you used to go to when you did community work in Oakland Chinatown. But has this mindset of sameness ever made you doubt yourself, such as wondering if all those years of work have even made a difference?

All the time. It’s hard to measure impact in a fast-changing world, especially when we see so many terrible things happening in social media, the news, and more. I do think that makes each individual action more important and meaningful though – especially when you act more generously and differently against what people perceive to be the norm.

LC: What suggestions do you have for students like Charles about career choices, getting into public service, and nonprofit work?

It takes time and experience to find your own passion as well as a balance between your personal and professional life. Volunteering at a local nonprofit or government agency consistently is a good start to understand your own goals as you also learn how to build up communities!

CZ: What is the biggest message you hope readers take away after reading Advocate? What do you hope people will remember about your efforts?

It’s ok not to be perfect or the smartest person in the room – much of the book is about the challenges and shortcomings in nonprofit work, and how I stumbled along to find my way. At the very end, I hope people will remember me as generous and hard-working.

LC: One last question. Did you ever get a new car? Your car seemed to symbolically define who you are – a hard working average person. But it sounded like it was on its last legs. Did you find another car that fit your needs and your persona?

Yes! My 2009 Toyota Corolla has been recently replaced by a Toyota Prius Prime (plug-in hybrid electric vehicle). It serves my work’s needs for mobility and affordability well as I continue to travel across the state.

Thank you again for this interview, Eddie.

Thank you again for your own work! The Asian American Curriculum Project is really inspiring, and I’m looking forward to supporting your efforts more in the future.