Extra Credit #2: American Born Chinese

Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese. New York: First Second, 2006. Print.

Annotation:

A Monkey King that can't go to a dinner party?! Jin Yang who likes a girl in his class but doesn't like himself?! And Danny who is so embarassed by his cousinChin Kee, that he often switches school?! Follow the story of three main characters in three separate but parallel stories. Jin Yang, Monkey King, and Danny as they all struggle with race, identity, and self-acceptance.

Justification of Non-nomination:

An exceptionally written graphic novel where Yang builds three stories separately, but they all seemingly twist together in response to the struggles the characters face with their own identity and race. 

American Born Chinese is multidimensional in several ways. One is that it creates a hard look into outward racism through the strong stereotyping of the character of Chin-Kee. Yang does hit home in this strong stereotypical Chinese character to show how the stereotyping of the race is portrayed and thought about.

Yang also builds dimension with the characters of Monkey King and Jin Wang in that they struggle with their internal feelings of self-identity related to their own race. Though the characters have no control of how they were born, each struggle with society’s acceptance of themselves and even others, as we see with the character of Danny in his response to Chin-Kee.

This is a very well written book that shows the dynamics of trying to live in a world where you are considered outside of the norm in relation to culture and race. The struggle of the characters allows the reader to sympathize with the very realistic dilemma of trying to find self-acceptance within two different cultural identities.

Genre Catalog: Graphic Novel, Coming of Age, Realistic/Edgy Novel, Printz Award

The graphic novel itself is easy to follow with strong images for each of the stories. I found it very easy to read and the drawings added depth to the story and the characters themselves.