The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen is a magical graphic novel about a boy named Tien. Tien’s parents are refugees struggling to learn English and when Tien finds out that he’s gay, he doesn’t know how to come out to his parents in Vietnamese and worries that his parents won’t love him anymore if he tells them about it. However, there may be something they share, one language, the language of fairy tales.

The book is mostly fairy tales with my favorite being a Vietnamese version of “Cinderella” and also a little bit about Tien’s life, such as how his parents are doing, his friends, and overall character development. The fairy tales aren’t just there for no reason either, they are almost like stories from Tien’s life, how he would want it to be, or what people would think is “normal”. 

The illustrations are also amazing, with different categories having a different color theme:

• Real Life: Red, one of the common feelings associated with red is courage, which in this case, could symbolize Tien feeling or doing something no one in his family has done before.
• Fairy Tales: Blue, fairy tales are made of humans’ imagination, wonder, and inspiration, all things that are associated with the color blue.
• Memories: Yellow, means danger. The memories are mostly stories of his parents running away from Vietnam, which was most likely extremely dangerous.

My interpretation of the symbolism could be completely wrong, but I just love trying to figure out if every little detail really has actual meaning and if it does, does it really matter? The storytelling and illustrations are both beautiful and I really enjoyed this novel.