‘What Do You Need This Face to Do for You?’

In her new graphic memoir Names and Faces, comic artist Leise Hook illustrates a story of identity, exploring “the in-betweenness of being mixed-race.” Hook relates memories from her childhood, growing up in Michigan, Virginia, and for one year in Japan, with a Chinese mother and a white father, and then on her own as an adult in Beijing and New York. She weaves together her artistic journey with her search for self-understanding. And she interrogates the assumptions people make about her identity, and those she has made herself.

Notes from ChinaFile

05.07.26

‘Mapping Myself onto a Vine or a Fish’

Leise Hook & Jeremy Goldkorn

Leise Hook is a cartoonist and illustrator who lives in Stockholm, Sweden. She grew up in Virginia and Michigan, and previously worked in art museums in New York and Beijing. Her cartoons appear in The New Yorker and elsewhere, and she has just...

“When I look at my face, I see a collection of people,” Hook writes. “‘What are you?’ actually means “Tell me a story that will solve the riddle of your face.’” “But I’m game,” she writes. “I want to be helpful, I have the key to the riddle—though every answer I’ve tried is insufficient.”

Below is an excerpt from the book.

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