Via SFGATe, Gene Yang’s reaction to AMERICAN BORN CHINESE’s historic National Book Award nomination:

“I’m in shock,” said Yang, who missed the call from his agent about the news Tuesday night because he was too busy writing progress reports for his high school students. “I checked my messages this morning and couldn’t believe it. I wrote a graphic novel comic book and didn’t even think about how it would be received in the book world. I started it in 2001 when everyone was predicting the demise of comic books. This is really nice.”