9 of 1: A Window to the World

Half comic, half textbook, and wholly readable, Chin's 9 of 1 presents a kaleidoscopic vision of the United States post September 11th, a nation made up of countless immigrants encountering each other every day in the most ordinary ways. In this nicely layered tale, nine eleventh-grade classmates of diverse backgrounds are instructed to go out and interview members of their community about their own history and world views. They happen to live in Fremont, California, a town whose proximity to Silicon Valley makes it a magnet for immigrants. Thus, we meet Maylene Abellar, a Filipino-American, who, in turn, interviews Richard Denton, an Italian-American who believes that the U.S. must act as the world's police force. British Celeste Quincy writes about Usha Pashdar, an Afghani woman fighting from her base in California for women's rights in her homeland. Hector Gonzalez talks to elderly Caleb Lipman, a former Israeli soldier, and Valerie Silverberg talks to Ahmed Mustafa, an Egyptian emitter. Chin's formula is simple, but the juxtapositions and personal histories he presents make for a complex work. Graphically, the pages are reminiscent of a classic textbook turned on its ear: strong black-and-white portraiture is tossed in with full-page landscapes, diagrams, maps, and headlines. While an appendix of reading questions makes it clear that the book is partly intended for classroom use, the casual reader will enjoy it as an unintimidating primer on world cultures and politics today.