Multilingual and Multicultural Childhood: Robin Ha’s Almost American Girl

Abstract

Abstract Robin Ha’s Almost American Girl (2020) visualizes the narrator’s childhood in South Korea and the United States through a multilingual and multimodal lens. Taking advantage of comics’ unique formal properties, Ha’s work situates the narrator’s memories and experiences as a teen immigrant at the nexus of Korean, English, and visual languages. This article examines how Ha’s book addresses social discrimination, linguistic hybridization, and intertextual cross-cultural encounters, while telling a coming-of-age story. It discusses how Ha utilizes colors and symbols to map the young narrator’s struggles with language barriers; how her book dismantles linguistic walls and highlights the fluidity between languages and cultures; and how it blurs the boundaries among lived experiences, memories, and the fantasy world of comics. Overall, Ha’s “expansive visual vernacular” (Miller “Innovative Autobiography,” 6) helps the narrator navigate challenges as she learns English and guides the reader through a multilingual and multicultural landscape.