The prickly, poignant, slice-of-life YA graphic novel Second Generation Blues depicts the collision of immigrant parents' expectations with their U.S.-born son's big dreams.
It's summer in New York City and teen Luis Menendez would love nothing more than to spend it going to concerts, reviewing them, and working toward his goal of being a music journalist. Instead, he's stuck working at his family's Cuban restaurant, taking commands from his militant and borderline-cruel father, Manny. Luis cheers up when he meets Yara, a sympathetic customer from a wealthy family, and one of his reviews catches the attention of a local music blog. Manny, however, believes both Luis's music writing and Yara are distractions and excuses for Luis to not contribute to the restaurant: "I didn't dream of a life in America just so I could raise a lazy child who doesn't know the value of sacrifice," he says. Luis, with his own hopes and dreams on the line, must navigate his responsibilities to his parents and himself.
Eisner Award nominee Julio Anta (Frontera) effectively turns up the tension to an almost uncomfortable degree in this convention-defying family graphic novel. The combination of Anta's precise writing and debut illustrator Red Dryer's emotive art makes palpable the anxiety of the titular second-generation blues. Dryer builds pressure into stressful moments by thickening the panels' black outline and adding inky splashes of black dread to the white space surrounding the image. Fans of Rex Ogle's sensitive, catharsis-driven YA novels will find similar satisfaction in Anta's exploration of life as a child of immigrants. --Luis Rendon, freelance reviewer