The Stories of Route 66
by Tracy Floreani
This is Tracy Floreani, coming to you from central Oklahoma, just blocks away from historic Route 66, with commentary on the next book in the High Plains Public Radio Readers Club: Shing Yin Khor’s graphic memoir The American Dream? A Journey on Route 66.
The book, intended for younger readers, captures the experience of Shing and her little dog Bug making the three-week journey from LA to Chicago in the spring of 2016, in a tiny Honda hatchback. Like lots of folks in our region, I’ve traveled portions of that road myself. Many of the old sites are gone, but, happily, a few are still well maintained, like the round barn in Arcadia and that smiley Blue Whale in Catoosa. A lot of what’s popular along Route 66 nowadays, though seems like a newer, not quite accurate simulacrum, intended for family fun or selfies. Route 66 has changed a lot over the years.
But Shing Yin Khor, who came to the US from Malaysia as a teenager, doesn’t know what she’s missing, and she doesn’t mind, as she lights out on the road with an open mind and adventurous spirit, looking to experience the “great American road trip.” She ignores the newer spectacle and focuses on the goofy folk art, camping, and conversations with people outside of LA, the only US city in which she’s ever lived.
What lies beneath the neon signs and the white dotted center line is the land and the meaning that one can still find through movement across that land and under the huge southwestern sky. She reminds us of the value of travel: outside of our familiar routines and in the liminal spaces of transit, we often have an opportunity to come to know ourselves better. That’s certainly the case for the young artist.
Her memoir reads like a well-illustrated travel journal. It’s episodic, fairly light in tone, and organized around the major impressions from each state along the route. While there’s nothing really gripping about the story, there’s a lot about her that’s charming: her openness to the unexpected, being alone and roughing it for long stretches of time, and seeing the inherent value in places and objects without needing a lot of spectacle to feel like the trip was worthwhile, and her delight when she discovers a whole army of muffler men. She captures with equal value in her drawings not only the beautiful and charming things she saw, but also the abandoned buildings, dilapidated signs, and unglamorous campground toilets that dot the way.
As in any good travel narrative, the journey teaches the narrator something about herself, as well as about the country she lives in. The book is best in its quiet and reflective moments. This is due in no small part to the way the artwork shifts when Shing and her dog are alone outside— on a mesa, or an old truss bridge, or a stretch of the old highway with grass growing through the cracks. In these scenes the style shifts away from her typical sketchy, cartoonish mode into moody and luminous watercolor landscapes.
Whenever I used to teach graphic narratives, there was always a student who would question this hybrid genre, arguing that the authors seem more interested in visual art than in the craft of storytelling. Shing’s story does contain moments of revelation and self-discovery, but they’re not really connected to much beyond the road as a thread that ties episodes together. This is all to say, it’s not a very deep read in comparison to some of the books in this series, but it also highlights something important about the Mother Road and about this country: there’s plenty of space for all of our stories.
