American Born Chinese by Gene Yang

I left the office a few hours early today to set up our table at the Northern California Independent Bookseller’s Association (NCIBA) regional trade show this weekend. I was going to leave at 4:00, but I was afraid of getting to Oakland at the precise moment the A’s game let out, so I went an hour early. Which is nice on a Friday.

Set-up was quick and easy, thanks to two burly men at the loading dock who carried my boxes in for me. I think we have a pretty good location this year—for the first time, we are sharing a “table island” with Scholastic. So maybe we’ll get lots of traffic from people interested in children’s books.

I picked up a show program and went right for the author autographing information. The first name that caught my eye was Gene Yang, who has a new book out this season called American Born Chinese. It’s a graphic novel, and it is in fact the first graphic novel I have chosen for the Shen’s Books catalog.

I haven’t read many graphic novels, so I can’t speak from a comparative point of view. But I did like American Born Chinese for a few reasons. First, it weaves three different story lines into one book. The main storyline involves Jin Wang, a Chinese-American boy who, despite being born in the U.S. and being completely American culturally, doesn’t fit in at his new school and reluctantly befriends the only kid there who is newer than him: Wei-chen, a boy who has just arrived from Taiwan.

This plot line does not exactly cover new ground. However, Yang’s graphic depiction of the experience is more poignant than the usual prose treatments, and the other two stories act as mirrors that reflect their own voices upon Jin’s story, giving it new meaning. Interspersed between episodes are segments from the Chinese Monkey King legend and a “TV sitcom” featuring Chin-Kee, a stereotyped caricature of a Chinaman. The three very different directions play off each other, highlighting and emphasizing what each cannot say on its own.

For example, Jin is always on some level embarrassed by the Chinese-ness of his new friend, but it is not until we see Chin-Kee behaving badly that we understand exactly what Jin is afraid of. At the same time, we can see that the brave and quick-witted Monkey King is also an image that the Chinese have of themselves. The two cannot be separated so easily.

There seems to be a lot of positive buzz about American Born Chinese this season. I’m glad that the publisher, First Second, is publishing graphic novels with a slightly new feel, with thought-provoking characters and issues. I am looking forward to meeting Gene Yang tomorrow, and to have him sign my copy of the book.

American Born Chinese by Gene Yang

Tags: book+review graphic+novel Chinese+American Gene+Yang