Dragon Hoops

The beginning of Dragon Hoops presents a bespectacled Asian cartoon character, Mr. Yang (for whom the prologue is titled), who addresses the audience directly. Mr. Yang stereotypes himself as a bookish comic artist who prefers to think of his life in black-and-white terms in which there are heroes and villains. Yang also introduces himself as a teacher at California’s Bishop O’Dowd High School, a Catholic school in Northern California. A schematic illustration shows a pie chart divided into four sections to demonstrate his life: He spends one half of his time with family, one quarter at his teaching job, and one quarter as a comic book writer. Now that Yang has finished a comic book that took him six years to complete, he has doubts about what he will write about next, wondering if he has simply run out of ideas. A casual glance at the coach of the varsity men’s basketball team, Lou Richie, inspires Mr. Yang to take a step across a narrow strip of road in the middle of the campus that divides the academic side from the athletic side. He finally musters the courage to introduce himself to