Pretty good graphic novel of a Eurasian girl trying to find out about magician ancestor who was forgotten by most people. ( )

Unique look at the life of one of the world's greatest performers/magicians whose story was almost lost to history due to subtle racial and cultural barriers. Long Tack Sam, born in Chinese, traveled the world performing a vaudeville-type act. Gracious, fun-loving, handsome, and devoted to his family, he nevertheless faced discrimination (subtly, at times, openly) and boundaries at a pivotal in history (world wars, borders, passports, work visas, etc.) The story is delightfully related by his granddaughter, Ann Marie Fleming ("stick girl" animator). This upbeat tale is a triumph of research (yay for archives), conversations, family stories and seeing, as the author puts it "how we all are connected!" Bonus: history and geography lessons :-) ( )

George Burns called Long Tack Sam the greatest Vaudeville Act he’d ever seen. This cosmopolitan Chinese magician and acrobat could have made the move to Hollywood films—if he had been willing to play the part of a criminal or laundry worker. Researched by his great-granddaughter, this fascinating story follows Sam, his Austrian national wife and his talented children during their rise to fame and subsequent scattering to far ends of the globe while trying to find safe haven during WWII. ( )

This is an illustrated memoir of a filmmaker who travels the world to unearth the story about her great-grandfather, a Chinese acrobat and magician named Long Tack Sam, who was one of the best-known vaudeville acts in the early 20th century. Told in a mixture of cartoons, photos, old ads and newspaper clippings, and comic book stories (which each describe conflicting versions of his early life), the book reads like a wildly annotated family scrapbook. The author discovers the fascinating story of Long Tack Sam's life, who survived wars and racism, whose interracial marriage to an Austrian woman made newspaper headlines in 1908, and who was a worldwide legend in his field, and wonders why her own family and the modern world know little about him. Luckily for us and thanks to this book (which is an adaptation of her film on the same topic), we now know a bit more. ( )