Weike Wang Lets Readers in with Humor

February 14, 2022

At Kirkus, Weike Wang discusses her second novel, Joan Is Okay, which follows an ICU doctor who uses her love of sytems and her deadpan humor to navigate grief and loss. “Humor is a coping mechanism,” Wang says. “Humor keeps the door open for readers to come in. I was in science for most of my 20s, and the stereotype of people like us was that we are robotic or we have no feelings, which is wholly not true. I thought, what if I took that idea and made something a little bit comic to point at the absurdity of that idea?”

is a writer and illustrator. She is the author of two illustrated books, Last Night's Reading (Penguin Books, 2015) and Sanpaku (Archaia 2018).