American Born Chinese
"American Born Chinese" is a graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang that intertwines three seemingly unrelated narratives, exploring themes of identity, cultural alienation, and acceptance. The story features Jin Wang, a Chinese American boy grappling with prejudice and the desire to fit in, alongside the legendary Monkey King, who seeks to understand his place in the world. The narratives connect as Jin navigates the challenges of adolescence, including friendship and first love, while confronting the stereotypes associated with his heritage. The Monkey King represents a journey of self-discovery, ultimately teaching Jin the importance of embracing both his Chinese and American identities.
The work is notable for its unique artistic style, blending Asian influences with Western comic traditions, which enhances its exploration of multicultural themes. Yang's use of humor addresses serious issues like racism and cultural shame, making the narrative relatable to a young adult audience. Since its publication, "American Born Chinese" has gained critical acclaim, contributing significantly to the recognition of graphic novels as an important literary form, often included in educational curricula to facilitate discussions on race and identity.
American Born Chinese
AUTHOR: Yang, Gene Luen
ARTIST: Gene Luen Yang (illustrator); Lark Pien (colorist)
PUBLISHER: First Second Books
FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2006
Publication History
Gene Luen Yang began creating installments of American Born Chinese in 2000, disseminating photocopied pages to friends, family, and other independent comic writers and creators. However, some elements of American Born Chinese originated long before 2000; Yang first drew the stereotypical Asian character Chin-Kee, based on a mixture of negative stereotypes and clichés found in historical and contemporary political cartoons and popular culture, in his fifth-grade notebook. Yang’s friend and later collaborator on The Eternal Smile (2009), Derek Kirk Kim, sent pages from American Born Chinese to Mark Siegel of First Second Books. After reading the story, Siegel called Kim and asked him to arrange a meeting with the author, leading to the book’s publication. Yang collaborated on the book with colorist Lark Pien, with whom he also worked on The Rosary Comic Book (2003).
Plot
American Born Chinese is a trilogy of seemingly unconnected stories about a Chinese American childhood. It begins when the shoeless Monkey King is denied entrance to the heavenly gods’ dinner party. He uses his prowess in kung fu to pummel the gods, who then appeal to the creator god, Tze-Yo-Tzuh, for assistance. The Monkey King shuns his creator and pays for his impudence by being imprisoned under a mountain. After a few eons, a monk is chosen by Tze-Yo-Tzuh to journey to the west and deliver three packages, but first he must gather his disciples, including the Monkey King. The Monkey King retrieves his soul and escapes his prison by returning to his true form; he discovers that a monkey has no need for shoes.
The central story begins when Jin Wang arrives at his new home in suburbia. He misses Chinatown and recalls his mother’s weekly visits to the herbalist, whose sage wife tells him, “It’s easy to become anything you wish . . . so long as you’re willing to forfeit your soul.”
Jin’s first day at Mayflower Elementary is marked by a stunning array of prejudice, with students and even Jin’s teacher making assumptions based on Jin’s Chinese heritage. Even so, Jin just wants to fit in. When a new student, Wei-Chen Sun, arrives from Taiwan, Jin wants nothing to do with the “fresh off the boat” geek; he soon changes his mind, and they become best friends.
In junior high, Jin discovers girls, but he misses his opportunity to befriend his crush, Amelia Harris, by refusing to care for the class pets. When Wei-Chen and Amelia get locked in the pet-food closet, Jin rescues the pair, giving him the confidence to ask Amelia to the movies. Amelia agrees to go on the date; however, Jin is not allowed to date, so he asks Wei-Chen to lie to his parents regarding his whereabouts.
Greg, an all-American classmate, warns Jin to stay away from Amelia, since she is not “right” for him. Shortly afterward, Jin’s Japanese classmate, Suzy Nakamura, breaks down in tears after being called a “Chink.” Jin responds by kissing her, which angers Wei-Chen, her boyfriend. When Wei-Chen confronts Jin, Jin remarks that Suzy is not “right” for someone “fresh off the boat.” Wei-Chen punches Jin, ending their friendship. Jin dreams of the herbalist’s wife that night and awakes as Danny.
The final thread in the trilogy is presented as a television sitcom titled “Everyone Ruvs Chin-Kee,” costarring Danny, a typical American teenager. Danny has a problem: the arrival of his Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee, whose yearly visits always lead to trouble. During this visit, Chin-Kee embarrasses Danny by showing off in class, harassing female students, and holding a personal talent show in the school library. Angry, Danny hits his cousin, causing his head to pop off and reveal that Chin-Kee is truly the Monkey King. Danny returns to his true form, that of Jin Wang, thus merging the sitcom with the central story.
The retransformed Jin discovers that his onetime best friend, Wei-Chen, is the Monkey King’s son and was sent to Earth to test his virtue. However, after Jin asked his best friend to lie, Wei-Chen resigned as an emissary for the gods and instead decided to remain mortal and use the world for pleasure. The Monkey King resolves the action, leaving Jin with his advice: “I would have saved myself from five hundred years’ imprisonment . . . had I only realized how good it is to be a monkey.” Jin finds Wei-Chen and apologizes, a reconciliation that leads Jin to accept himself as a Chinese American.
Characters
•Jin Wang, the protagonist, is a second-generation American of Chinese descent. He has short, straight black hair—except when he gets a “perm” in an attempt to look Caucasian—and wears typical teenage clothing. After moving from San Francisco’s Chinatown to suburbia, he faces not only prejudice but also the challenges faced by every teen, such as new love and embarrassment. Eventually, he overcomes his own internalized prejudice and shame and accepts himself as both Chinese and American.
•Monkey King of Flower Fruit Mountain is an earthbound deity in the body of a monkey. After much study he transforms into the “Great Sage Equal of Heaven” and challenges the heavenly deities, causing his imprisonment under a mountain. On Earth, he is disguised as the Asian stereotype Chin-Kee but reveals himself to Danny.
•Tze-Yo-Tzuh is the creator god and the only deity who can put the Monkey King in his place. He wears a floor-length robe, carries a staff, and has a long white beard and hair reminiscent of a Chinese monk. His love of humanity closely resembles that of the Christian god.
•Wei-Chen Sun is a stereotypical geeky immigrant from Taiwan who arrives in the United States wearing large round glasses and secondhand clothes. He speaks with a heavy accent and often reverts to Mandarin. He is the disguised son of the Monkey King, but after Jin betrays him, he becomes a rebellious teenager who smokes cigarettes, drinks pearl tea, and drives a “rice rocket.”
•Suzy Nakamura is one of three Asian students at Mayflower Elementary. She has short black hair with bangs. Like Jin Wang, she is stuck between two worlds: she wants to escape her parents’ Japanese culture, but the other children and their teachers are prejudiced and unwelcoming. In middle school, she begins to date Wei-Chen.
•Danny is a typical blond-haired, blue-eyed American teenager who plays basketball and is popular with his classmates. He is forced to change schools every year after his Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee, visits and embarrasses him. After encountering the Monkey King, Danny transforms back into Jin.
•Chin-Kee is a grotesquely stereotypical Chinese teenager with yellow skin, buckteeth, and slits for eyes. He wears old-fashioned Chinese clothing and cannot pronounce l or r. His unbridled libido leaves him drooling over every female at Oliphant High, and he constantly embarrasses his cousin, Danny. Chin-Kee is revealed to be the Monkey King and helps Jin Wang reconcile his conscience.
•Amelia Harris is a blond-haired, blue-eyed teenager and Jin Wang’s love interest. She goes on a date with Jin, but when told Jin is not right for her, she decides she just wants to be friends.
•Greg is an all-American boy with wavy blond hair and many female admirers. He tells Jin to stop dating Amelia and hints that Jin would be better off dating an Asian girl, thus revealing his racism.
•Wong Lao-Tsu is a bald monk who helps the poor, wears the brown robe of service, and is recruited by Tze-Yo-Tzuh to go on a long journey. He is accompanied on his journey by his new disciple, the Monkey King. The monk helps the Monkey King finally realize that on his journey of self-discovery, he just needs to be himself.
Artistic Style
Yang’s sunshine-yellow cover art with its orange outline of the imprisoned Monkey King serves as a backdrop for the full-color image of young Jin Wang, who holds his Transformers toy. A stylized wood-block print announces the book’s title.
Between the covers, the panels are carefully laid out in tight squares within generous white space, tempting readers to linger and giving the book an uncluttered feel. A small, red wood-block print is centered above each gallery, while single wood-block prints representing the book’s characters mark the chapter breaks. Yang’s solid black outlines serve as a border for Pien’s strong yet muted colors that work across cultures and heavenly orbits, giving the whole work a clean feel. The scenes taking place in the Monkey King’s heaven have a distinctly Asian feel to them, with curlicues adorning clouds, mountains, clothing, and hairstyles. The gods, especially the nonhuman deities, are particularly detailed. The scenes in Yang’s mundane world, whether in Chinatown or suburbia, have a distinctly American feel, but the panels flow smoothly together regardless of the scenes depicted.
Chinese pictographs are sprinkled throughout the text, giving the work an Asian authenticity. Text boxes have frill work that resembles Chinese screens. Occasionally, Yang encloses Chinese pictographic language in speech bubbles, such as when the Monkey King argues with Tze-Yo-Tzuh. Speech in Mandarin is rendered as bracketed English text. Sound effects and laugh and applause tracks add to rather than detract or distract from the story line.
Themes
Yang’s autobiographical response to multicultural ignorance is shame and alienation. Like Yang, the novel’s Jin Wang does not fit in either the world of his first-generation immigrant parents or the world of the white suburban mainstream. Instead, Jin must make his own way, letting his conscience, as represented by Wei-Chen, be his guide. Yang’s art must similarly make its own way through the comic genre, and it does so by fusing a Disneyesque style with Asian overtones in an unexpected, yet familiar, way. Yang additionally reconciles Eastern and Western religion as the Monkey King recovers his identity. A devout Catholic, Yang depicts the Monkey King giving offerings to baby Jesus after completing his journey to the west, thus blending religious traditions.
Jin is a typical teenage boy, and Yang treats his young-adult readers as such, indulging in many lowbrow gags and relatable cultural references. While Jin’s Transformers toys serve as a recognizable symbol of childhood and pop culture for the book’s readers, there is also an obvious symbolic connection between such toys and Jin as he dreams of his own physical transformation. Yang’s slapstick delivers comic relief as he delves into the darker themes of alienation, shame, and prejudice while exploring cultural identity. American Born Chinese juxtaposes American teenage angst against a backdrop of anti-Asian prejudice, both by society at large and by Asian Americans trying to escape their roots. It is this humorous treatment of a serious subject that makes American Born Chinese accessible to its young-adult audience while making it stand apart from other graphic novels. The book offers a coming-of-age story that takes an honorable path, while not being overly moralistic.
Impact
With the publication of American Born Chinese, Yang became one of a number of rising stars in the Asian independent comics community of the San Francisco Bay Area, which also includes Kim and Pien. The work introduced Yang’s art style, an updated Asian fusion of sorts, to a wide audience. The popularity and positive critical reception of the work allowed Yang to publish a number of additional graphic novels. As an accessible yet meaningful examination of multicultural identity, American Born Chinese has been incorporated into the curriculum of various high schools and universities, contributing to the increasing perception of the graphic novel as a relevant and legitimate form of literature.
Further Reading
Love, Jeremy. Bayou (2009).
Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis (2003).
Yang, Gene Luen. Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks (2004).
Bibliography
Beeler, Monique. “A Born Storyteller. The ABCs of Graphic Novelist and National Book Award Finalist Gene Yang ’03.” Cal State East Bay Magazine, Spring/Summer, 2009, 11-17.
Boatwright, Michael D. “Graphic Journeys: Graphic Novels’ Representation of Immigrant Experiences.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 53, no. 6 (March, 2010): 468-476.
Song, Hyoung Song. “‘How Good It Is to Be a Monkey’: Comics, Racial Formation, and American Born Chinese.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 43, no. 1 (March, 2010): 73-92.
Yang, Gene Luen. “Printz Award Winner Speech.” Young Adult Library Services 6, no. 1 (Fall, 2007): 11-13.