Blame This on the Boogie

Starred review from June 25, 2018
Ayuyang (Whirlwind Wonderland) graduates from the micro-press comics scene with this delightfully quirky, cheekily funny memoir built around her love of musicals, rendered in wonderfully kinetic, colored-pencil drawings, perfectly expressing her sentiment that, when she hears music, “It’s like my body can’t contain this energy built up inside me.” Ayuyang splits her narrative into two main sections: the first details her childhood growing up Filipina-American in Pittsburgh, Penn. Though blessed with a supportive, tight-knit family, she frequently experiences cultural dislocation and outright rejection amongst her largely Caucasian schoolmates, which only gets worse as she gets older: “I dreaded high school so much that I can’t even devote ONE panel about it!” The glitz of musicals provides her escape. The second section is devoted to Ayuyang’s present-day life with her husband and young son in Oakland, Calif. While trying to balance her artistic career with her responsibilities as a wife and mother, she continues to get sidetracked by pop culture, including a hilarious obsession with Dancing with the Stars. Throughout, Ayuyang’s visuals are wonderfully musical, lilting across the pages with energy and movement. The epilogue, “The Ballet that Always Comes at the End of the Musical,” provides exactly that, with all Ayuyang’s loved ones joining her for a joyous fantasy made manifest. Readers will be swept off their feet by this irresistible bildungsroman.

January 1, 2019
Beyond this door, Ayuyang warns as she guides readers to her suburban Pittsburgh childhood home, lies a story of dread and woe, despair and sadness. But no, turn the page, and amid technicolor walls, carpets, and toys strewn everywhere, she admits, I'm kidding. It's just a mess. Mostly mine. Agilely bouncing between raw vulnerability and guffaw-inducing humor, Ayuyang introduces her earliest memories as the youngest of four kids of Filipino immigrant parents and exuberantly draws herself through the decades into adulthood as wife, mother, and artist. Energetic, kaleidoscopic scenes showcase growing up, enduring school, moving cross-country, becoming a mother, and struggling with that elusive work-life balance. Presciently appointed great disco dancers as godparents, Ayuyang irrepressibly accompanies her life with a soundtrack every step of the way. Fred Astaire, Olivia Newton-John, and Dancing with the Stars prove to be the best antidotes in tough times, because reality is always better with a dose of fantasy. A raucous tribute to family, multiculti identity, and the saving power of great (but sometimes awful) musicals.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)