By Kai Curry
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
Many creatives have to work another job to support their art. A famous example in the U.S. is sculptor Richard Serra, who moved furniture as his “day job.” Few have managed to juggle both worlds as passionately and successfully as Eddie Ahn. A full-time artist and attorney, Ahn was in Seattle on June 7 to talk about his autobiographical graphic novel, “Advocate.”
Writer, artist, and attorney Eddie Ahn with fellow attorney and interviewer, Angelie Chong, at Mam’s Books in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District on June 7, 2025. Photo by Kai Curry.
We’re not sure when he sleeps. And we’re not even going to say, “He makes it look easy.” Nope. It looks hard. Ahn talked about his process to an enthusiastic crowd at Mam’s Books in the Chinatown-International District. Fellow attorney and Seattleite, Angelie Chong, sat with Ahn at the front of the room as the interviewer, surrounded by Mam’s exclusively Asian American inventory. On the table by their knees has Eddie’s “tools of the trade”—his sketchbook, pens, and pencils—as well as the book, “Advocate,” and several samples of Ahn’s earlier works. While Ahn answered questions, guests enjoyed pizza, carbonated drinks, and free merch, all provided by Ahn.
Copies of “Advocate” and Brightline Defense merch were made available. Photo by Kai Curry.
The Northwest Asian Weekly stole a few moments with Ahn before the start of the formal presentation when Ahn told us he has been drawing since he was a child. In college, he did a newspaper [comic] strip, and even while in law school, he worked on his art as well. While it might have been nice to have gained some notice as an artist earlier, Ahn acknowledged that his experiences as a lawyer have helped him as a storyteller. This would not have been possible in his 20s. Ahn’s specialty is climate law. He is the executive director of the San Francisco-based nonprofit, Brightline Defense. Yes, we said “executive director.” We meant it when we told you that Ahn is firing on all cylinders. As an artist, it takes him up to 5,000 hours to complete a work like “Advocate,” which combines art and story as a graphic novel. Meanwhile, he works tirelessly at the head of Brightline to combat the enemies of clean energy and sustainability.
“Advocate” is selling so well—sold out of the first printing—that the event coordinators had to scrounge for donated copies around town. Mam’s and Ahn offered these for a reduced price that evening. Ahn also raffled off some of his artwork: a depiction of a “tiger mom” with an actual tiger alongside the parent and the child; and a depiction of a moody Yamizaki whiskey-drinking writer monkey. It’s hard to believe that Ahn is self-taught. His art is masterful. Ahn credited movies and television in part for giving him insight and ideas for his art. Influential directors include David Fincher, Greta Gerwig, and the inimitable Orson Wells, with his iconic “Citizen Kane.” Ahn chooses different colors for each page of his graphic novel. His pages about activist Espinola Jackson, for instance, are purple, Jackson’s favorite color.
The friendship of Ahn and Jackson (which Ahn allowed was mostly him listening and Jackson talking; now deceased, she was, after all, the experienced older legend schooling the new kid) is a perfect example of how Ahn’s two worlds collide and inform each other. Jackson was a resident of Bayview-Hunters Point, a neighborhood in San Francisco that is situated on or near the decommissioned Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. The shipyard, in its day, rather casually dumped toxins into the environment. Ahn graciously excused them (just a tad) by saying that they just didn’t know better at the time. Ahn gives the impression he is always this gracious.
Encounters with racism? He describes that at times, he probably did not respond strongly enough. In “Advocate,” Ahn made the decision not to go too far into the topic, although he for sure has been the recipient of racism during the course of his lifetime. Growing up in Texas “was no picnic for an Asian American,” he said, and there wasn’t a big network at the time his family moved there from South Korea. Koreatown consisted of just one city block. Ahn’s parents naturally wanted their son to pursue a lucrative career. The question he got the most from them upon entering the nonprofit sphere? How much are you making?
Ahn wrote “Advocate” in the hopes that a visual interpretation might help his parents better understand what he does for a living. He chose a nonprofit like Brightline because environmental justice is “at the intersection of so many different issues: economy, race, identity, social issues.” Yet it’s not exactly the type of “glamorous” lawyer job his parents expected. Sadly, Ahn’s father is suffering from dementia and is unable to fully take in the book. Ahn’s mother, though, seems to have digested “Advocate” thoroughly, to the point that she tells others about it, and even cries over it. Ahn assumed that his mom was crying over the parts in the book about her relationship with her father, Ahn’s grandfather. In reality, she was crying over the parts about the nonprofit.
“I fulfilled, in that way, the original intent of this book to create this shared visual language that my parents could understand, because I would tell them repeatedly, this is what my nonprofit work is about, this is what I do for a living, and it never quite fits.”
This same problem applies to nonprofit work as a whole, Ahn believes. You’ve got to be able to tell a good story to get people on your side. Ahn started “Advocate” during the COVID-19 pandemic. Racism, as we know, skyrocketed during that time, with the president calling COVID-19 “the Chinese flu.” Ahn wanted readers of “Advocate” to understand that there are levels to racism, there are microaggressions that one can hardly be sure happened, and then there are more obvious instances. A microaggression? Ahn has been more than once mistaken for a worker at a restaurant because, as a lawyer, he is usually wearing a suit. “It’s casual racism,” he said. “But it’s a mistake.” For Ahn, these types of encounters can be teachable moments. The next graphic novel, which Ahn is working on, will delve further into these unpleasant topics, in line with the country’s current political climate and Ahn’s own mood.
Chong, a labor lawyer and director of Make Us Visible Washington, was a charming and flexible host, allowing Ahn to lead the narrative and showcase his work. Throughout the audience were many who are as passionate as Ahn about Asian American advocacy, including the person who made “Advocate” possible. Ahn started sharing “Advocate” via Instagram. It was becoming popular, yet Ahn couldn’t be sure, given the ills of social media, if the viewers were real or bots. Enter Maggie [last name redacted on purpose], who saw Ahn’s art + story and referred it to an editor of a big publishing house. Next thing he knew, Ahn received an email from this same editor, asking Ahn if he had considered putting the story into print.
And now, here we are. “To be part of this process, to drive through a new artistic vision,” Ahn said in closing, an Asian vision. “I’m glad that’s happening. It’s very exciting.”
Kai can be reached at newstips@nwasianweekly.com.
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