Yang, Gene Luen: American Born Chinese
American Born Chinese
Author: Gene Luen Yang
Illustrator: Gene Luen Yang
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Fantasty/Mythology-Folklore, Young Adult
Pages: 240 (paperback)
A tour-de-force by rising indy comics star Gene Yang, American Born Chinese tells the story of three apparently unrelated characters: Jin Wang, who moves to a new neighborhood with his family only to discover that he’s the only Chinese-American student at his new school; the powerful Monkey King, subject of one of the oldest and greatest Chinese fables; and Chin-Kee, a personification of the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, who is ruining his cousin Danny’s life with his yearly visits. Their lives and stories come together with an unexpected twist in this action-packed modern fable. American Born Chinese is an amazing ride, all the way up to the astonishing climax.
American Born Chinese is a 2006 National Book Award Finalist for Young People's Literature, the winner of the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album: New, an Eisner Award nominee for Best Coloring and a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Why I Read It: Mainly because it won the Printz Award (and I believe it was the first -- and still only -- graphic novel to ever do so.) I'm on a quest to read all the winners and nominees for the award.
I'm having trouble coming up with a clever and enticing way to start this review, so I'm just going to be straight-up: everyone should read this. It's really solid, and I'm glad it won the Printz because I don't think I would have picked this up otherwise, and that would have been a shame.
Lang has somehow brought three seemingly unrelated stories together as a whole: one of the Monkey King, Chinkee the walking Asian stereotype, and Jin Wang, an American born to Chinese immigrant parents. While I'm still not 100% sure how I felt about the stories all converging together at the very end of the book (which I won't explain due to spoilers, but suffice it to say that it was kind of strange and was kind of jarring for me) the stories worked wonderfully on their own. They all had a common theme that wasn't preachy or in your face.
I was actually pleasantly surprised at the inclusion of the Monkey King's story. If you watch anime, people might immediately recognize some traits of the monkey king as familiar. A lot of manga writers draw inspiration from this story and it can be seen in characters such as Goku from Dragon Ball (who flies around on a cloud and has a staff that can extend indefinitely) and Goku from the manga/anime series Saiyuki (which draws even more heavily on the Monkey King's story, from him being trapped in a mountain to embarking on a quest to journey out west with a monk.) Anyway, it was great seeing the ORIGINAL story that inspired these characters, and it made me also mildly acquainted with the story from the get-go which resulted in me just having a lot of fun reading it.
The story of Chinkee was in equal parts horrifying and funny. Chinkee embodied every Asian stereotype I can think of (and a bunch that never even crossed my mind) and while it was funny in its satirical approach, it was horrifying because I'm sure people did and possible do still think that way.
I have to admit though that I found the art a little hard to get used to. There's nothing WRONG with it, but it's not a style I'm normally drawn to. It's very traditional in that it largely follows a four-panel layout, and that's fine, but the style itself is kind of -- I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like a jerk, but -- juvenile. And this really isn't just a story for younger readers. BUT, that's all just my personal tastes. There really is nothing wrong with the art, but I wanted to share my thoughts regardless.
Final Verdict: I really enjoyed this graphic novel. I found the ending, which merged the three separate stories together to be a little jarring, but regardless of that I would recommend this to anyone wholeheartedly. The art also wasn't entirely to my personal tastes, BUT STILL!! Read this. The three separate stories are really great, and relay a story about liking who you are and accepting your heritage without being preachy and in-your-face.
Cover Commentary: It took me forever to notice that the yellow background has an outline of the Monkey King buried under the mountain. I like how it looks though because it puts more of the story on the cover without crowding it and making it too busy. It's too bad they couldn't find a way to incorporate Chinkee in there as well so that all three stories could have a place on the cover.