Realization “Born” form Gene Luen Yang’s award-winning graphic novel

Third Place

Review

Division 1

Realization “Born” form Gene Luen Yang’s award-winning graphic novel

Amanda Kennedy

Grade 11

Intelligencer Journal-Freestyle

Adviser: Claudia Esbenshade

By writing a vibrantly illustrating his graphic novel “American Born Chinese,” Gene Luen Yang hoped to divert eyes from the stereotypical portrayals of Asian Americans. Not only did he succeed, but he vibrantly stupefied readers into contemplation with his brutally honest words.

Yang unraveled tightly knotted yarns of accuracy when he created the comic-style novel. Initially printed as a miniature comic serial and Web-comic, according to the author’s personal Web site www.jumblecomics.com, “American Born Chinese” boasts the separate ventures of three fascinating characters: the Monkey King, who must come to terms with his ape identity; Jin Wang, a Chinese American who must come to terms with his heritage, which is almost shameful in his own constricted view; and Danny, the all-American high school basketball player who must come to terms with his incredibly irksome, stereotypical-Chinese cousin Chee-Kee. Eventually, the storylines of the three main characters intersperse, setting up an astounding revelation to voice a potent and much-needed lesson to the American culture.

The Monkey King, however, is not Yang’s creation but actually a slightly ancient literary symbol of Asian society. According to a page of Yang’s Web site that is devoted to the fictitious creature, the Monkey King has the stature of Mickey Mouse “without the squeaky voice and corporate sponsorship.” During the 16^th century, the exceptional ape’s tale was first introduced to the world in the form of a Chinese folk novel. Penned by Wu Ch’eng-en, it was titled” Journey to the West.” Yang eagerly submitted himself to his mother’s telling of the Monkey King as a child and, in his graphic novel, paid tribute to the creature that overlooked his own strengths when he denied entrance to a Heavenly dinner party for “being a monkey.”

By following the second storyline, readers feel the emotional ache of third-grader Jin Wang manifested through the pages. After departing from San Francisco’s Chinatown with the intellectual parents, Jin finds himself at a suburban Mayflower Elementary School, where he is perpetually taunted by classmates because of his ethnicity. He eventually befriends two other Asian students as he ages, Wei-Chen, a Taiwanese male immigrant, and Suzy Nakamura, Wei-Chen’s seventh-grade girlfriend. When Jin develops sheltered ardor for peer Amelia Harris, he believes his Chinese heritage inferiorly factors into his chances with his crush.

Certainly the most unique selection on a book store’s shelf, “American Born Chinese” is a fresh sight for the eyes: one is bombarded by the colors and truths. Yang’s representation of cousin Chin-Kee is especially crucial to the novel’s overall effect. Every third chapter this character emerges, emphasizing his stereotypically Asian shortcomings with every action. His attempted English vernacular is riddled with mispronunciations: every letter “r” in his spoken words is replaced with the letter “l”.

At the lunch table beside his incredibly humiliated cousin Danny, he heats a Chinese food container overflowing with “clispy flied cat gizzards wiff noodle (crispy fried cat gizzards with noodles). Here, author Yang intended to emphasize the typecast that Chinese food contains mysteriously revolting and superfluous ingredients, but his quote s not entirely his own, either. After reading a political comic strip by an American cartoonist in 2001, according to a news entry on his Web site, Yang was outraged by the slandered depiction of an Asian waiter who served the comic strips main character the same feline dish. The construction and placement of Chin-Kee in “American Born Chinese” is Yang’s defiant rebuttal to all Asian stereotypes. He even states in the news entry, referring to cousin Chin-Kee, “I yanked him, every last detail of him, straight out of American pop culture.”

Yang impacts readers with a hard blow to the entire body, encouraging them to analyze the colossal effects that cultural stereotypes and ethnic isolation have on society and its people. His deft attention to his work was rewarded after “American Born Chinese” became a National Book Award Finalist and won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award in Young Adult Literature, issued by the American Library Association. The silver and gold seals imprinted on the latest editions of the graphic novel are sincere proof of the author’s brilliance.

This artfully depicted graphic novel is a swift yet enlightening read. A message is in store for those who absorb Yang’s mesmerizing words and pictures: A person must not succumb to a label of one’s self or heritage imposed by classmates, another culture, or even oneself.