"The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam: An Illustrated Memoir" (Riverhead, 170 pp., paperback, $14) is a "graphicization" of a 2003 documentary film the talented Canadian Fleming made about her great-grandfather, a magician and acrobat who toured internationally in the first half of the 20th century. Told in drawings, photographs and words, it's quite unlike other graphic novels in its dynamism (fan the tiny figures at the bottom of each page fast; they're like contemporary flipbooks and the Fleer Funnies that used to wrap chunks of Dubble Bubble gum). In tracking Sam from his origins in China to his success in the United States and Europe, it links Fleming to her hybrid roots; she was born in Okinawa of Chinese and Australian parentage. Long Tack Sam's life, though it had its ups and downs, is convincingly magical; it also embodied issues of race, commerce, and creativity that still dog us.