Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story

On a farm in White Hall, Maryland, a Korean-American kid grows up surrounded by cornfields and curiosity—the only Asian face in a sea of sameness. Strangers stare at the grocery store. Classmates whisper. Adults mean well but say the wrong thing every time. The pressure builds and builds until it feels like something inside might tear loose—something monstrous. This is the world of Monstrous: A Transracial Adoption Story, the award-winning young adult graphic memoir by Sarah Myer (they/them), published by First Second Books in 2023.

Born in South Korea and adopted at birth by a white couple, Sarah grows up navigating a landscape where they’re never quite seen for who they really are. The whispers, the taunts, the well-meaning but fumbling comments—it’s a pressure cooker of rage and isolation. But Sarah has a secret weapon: their art. A compulsive drawer from childhood, they discover anime and manga, and suddenly the worlds of Sailor Moon, Naruto, and spirited away heroes become more than escape—they become a lifeline. Cosplay offers a second skin, a way to become someone else, someone powerful, someone seen.

But high school sharpens the cruelty. Bullies grow louder, the taunts cut deeper, and the rage Sarah has been bottling since childhood threatens to detonate. Monstrous takes its title from two directions at once—the monster others see when they look at difference, and the furious, roaring thing that builds inside when you’re constantly made to feel you don’t belong. The art itself becomes the story’s emotional nervous system: dynamic panels pulse with anime energy, colors saturate and bleed across pages, and expressive characters shift fluidly between reality and fantasy. When words fail young Sarah, the artwork takes over—depicting interiors of rage, grief, and longing through vivid visual metaphors that hit like a thunderbolt.

The book landed like a detonation in the graphic memoir world, earning starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal—the latter calling it “an empathic gift, presented in full technicolor with never-static panels, showcasing raw energy.” Kirkus described it as “immersive and engrossing: a beautifully depicted emotional journey.” As Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese) wrote: “A beautiful, courageous book.” The accolades include being named a 2024 International Literacy Association Young Adult Nonfiction Award Winner, an Eisner Award nominee for Best Publication for Teens (2024), a L.A. Times Book Prize nominee for Young Adult Literature (2024), and a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection. It also landed on best-of lists from Kirkus, School Library Journal, the New York Public Library, Booklist, the Boston Globe, and The Beat—cementing its place as one of the defining YA graphic memoirs of its era.

Perfect for fans of American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, Almost American Girl by Robin Ha, Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett Krosoczka, and anyone who has ever used art, fandom, or sheer imagination to carve out a place in a world that didn’t seem to have room for them.

Buy a signed copy from Sarah’s website or order from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.