Comics journalist Erik Thurman returns in the follow-up to his journey in the Philippines, this time as a high school English teacher within Seoul’s labyrinth-esque suburbia. As the classrooms fill with the rings of a new semester, Erik struggles to teach a generation of young students brought to the brink with an overbearing testing culture — one that contributes to the highest suicide rate among children in the OECD countries. But straddled with $25,000 in student loan debt of his own, the young teacher hopes to find peace and belonging in this Asian metropolis while enduring homelessness and heartbreak.

 

Can Erik survive while scrambling enough money for an elusive ticket back to California? Will he find refuge from his student loans that are chasing him to the ends of the Earth?

 

The second installment of this award-nominated graphic memoir trilogy, The American Immigrant follows Erik's decade-long journey of self-discovery as he experiences how public education has grown unaffordable and inaccessible — not just in his country, but around the world."