American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese by Gene Yang was the Printz Award winner for 2007. It's been sitting in my pile for a few months now, even though I was told it would take me no more than an hour to read. All the reviews I read about this graphic novel have been very positive, and I must agree it is a masterpiece. But, as usual, I have a different viewpoint to bring to this discussion. We all have filters we view the world through, and this is also true of the way we approach media, whether it be books, movies, poetry, etc. My Christian faith is a large filter for me, and it impacts the way I view books. American Born Chinese is a story told in three separate stories that eventually converge. Remember Holes? Louis Sachar did the same thing. The three plotlines came together in surprising ways that add to the enjoyment of the story. It is part of the mystery of the book. In plotline one, Jin Wang has started a new life in a new home and a new school. He struggles to fit in with his new classmates who only see his differences. His classmates focus only on the negative stereotypes they have heard about the Chinese people. He is mocked and picked on, and the only friend he can find is a bully who threatens to make Jin eat his boogers if he won't share his food. I found myself cringing a little as I remembered a classmate that was in my elementary school. His name was Nguyen Ly, but later on he changed his name to an American name. Now I understand why he wanted to do that. It is hard to be different. One more important aspect to this story is that Jin loves his transformer robot. One day, he wants to be a transformer himself. In plot two, the King of the Monkeys is angered when he is turned away at a party for being a monkey. No matter how much skill he acquires, he is belittled for being a monkey. In his anger, he beats the tar out of multiple people using his kung fu skills. Finally, he receives a visit from the great Tze-Yo-Tzuh, a god, who encourages the Monkey King to accept his role in life and to take enjoyment in that role. Be proud you are a monkey, he seems to be saying. The Monkey King won't listen and is "punished" for his refusal. In plot three, a teenage boy named Danny feels humiliated everytime his cousin Chin-Kee comes to visit him. Chin-Kee goes around at Danny's school seemingly encouraging all the negative stereotypes people have towards Asians. He has buck teeth, can't correctly pronounce his l's and r's, and just makes a fool of himself. First, the technical elements: The artwork is amazing. Each drawing contains amazing colors and good use of frames to create motion and time. Also, the author uses a creative device that shows us when a person is speaking in a language other than English. The text is written in English but the quotation is surrounded by angular parentheses. This way, the reader knows the speaker is not speaking English, but we can still read the conversation. One thing no one has pointed out is that many of the sp

This book is a truly stellar contribution to the graphic novel genre. Jin Wang's coming-of-age story is pitch-perfect in its attention to visual detail as well as its "feel" for adolescent dialogue. Not content to tell this story "straight," Gene Yang introduces two other narratives -- those of the legendary Monkey King and of the sitcom characters Danny and Chin-Kee -- to add multiple layers of meaning to Jin's struggles to fit in. It shoud be noted that, even though Yang balances three stories (which ultimately converge) in this book, Jin's story serves as the emotional core of the novel. The Monkey King's and Chin-Kee's stories represent different poles of Jin's identity as a Chinese American -- extreme, identity-negating self-reliance, on the one hand, and extreme, caricatured self-hatred, on the other. The novel does a brilliant job of drawing us into the world of a teenager who engages these extremes as a matter of "growing up Asian American" -- a paradoxical subject of repulsion and desire, exclusion and belonging. Don't get me wrong, though: while Yang's themes are undeniably powerful, his writing is just really, really funny. The Monkey King is raucously self-involved; Chin-Kee is both sad and strangely self-aware of his own caricaturedness (i.e., his "kung fu" moves are all named after "Chinese" dishes, like "Mooshu Fist"), and one scene involving Jin, bathroom soap, and his love interest Amelia had me in stitches. Which is to say it's nice to see that important themes of identity and cultural belonging can be explored in such a playful manner. Credit to Yang, then, for not taking himself so seriously, and for giving us a profound meditation on "growing up ethnic" that looks, sounds, and *feels* right.

I love it. This finely illustrated book deals with identity crisis, rebellions against limitations and finally coming to terms with who you are. The story lines are clever. The analogy of the monkey king is surprising (deviation from traditional interpretations) but interesting. I found the words of the "wicked" herbalist's wife to be profound: "It is easy to become anything you wish...so long as you're willing to forfeit your soul." And I don't view it as a discouragement because you may have to relinquish a few cherished things and go through some transformations before you find yourself.

A surprising interweaving of Chinese myth and legend, prejudice and self-acceptance, and the coming of age of a first generation American-born boy of Chinese descent, make AMERICAN BORN CHINESE an exceptionally entertaining and thought-provoking graphic novel. More than halfway though reading the vividly illustrated story, I still had no idea how the three distinct and alternating tales that make up the book were going to eventually come together as promised on the flap copy. One of the three threads involves the Monkey King, who wants to be a god and literally gets himself buried in trouble. Another is the story of Jin Wang, whose previously blissful childhood, spent in San Francisco's Chinatown, is transformed when his family moves to a very different community and Jin starts attending Mayflower Elementary School. The third thread is about Danny, a popular (and non-Asian) basketball player whose school life is annually disrupted by the arrival of his cousin Chin-Kee, who physical characteristics, dress, and mannerisms epitomize the extremes of Chinese stereotyping. I cannot imagine a reader not being sucked into this one after the scene in which Jin gets his first hit of Mayflower Elementary. The teacher introduces him as Jing Jang (instead of Jin Wang), tells her students that he moved from China (instead of Chinatown), and then when one of the kids immediately raises his hand to tell the class that 'Momma says Chinese people eat dogs," the teacher responds, "Now be nice, Timmy! I'm sure Jin doesn't do that! In fact, Jin's family probably stopped that sort of thing as soon as they came to the United States." I've never gotten to do a graphic novel read aloud. Now I can't wait to figure out how to make it happen. I can easily imagine assigning parts to students each day and doing AMERICAN BORN CHINESE as readers theater. (All I need now is a way to scam a class set.) In any case, this is a graphic novel that belongs in every middle school collection.