12. Extra Reading: American Born Chinese

Citation:

            Yang, Gene Lucn. American Born Chinese. New York: First Second, 2006. print.

Annotation:

Jin Wang is an Asian American student trying to fit in at school.  Unfortunately at school he encounters some racism and ignorance from other students.

Justification for Rejection:

The story in this graphic novel really does not make sense.  In the beginning of the graphic novel there are three different storylines.  The storyline about Jin Wang appears to be the main focus of the graphic novel, the monkey king story looks like an introduction into Chinese mythology, and the story about Chin-Kee seems like some bad racist joke that made no sense.  At the end of the graphic novel all three stories come together and that really seems to mess up the story about Jin Wang, because up until that point the main plot seemed to be realistic fiction.  So not only did all of the storylines not make sense, but at the end the main story line goes from making sense, to extreme bizarreness.

The text in the graphic novel does go with the illustrations.  The use of color seemed to add an interesting dimension to the graphic novel, because graphic novels are usually in black and white.  The characters are drawn the same throughout the novel.  The drawings and text do keep the reader traveling though the storyline.

The entire graphic novel did have teen appeal.  Jin Wang’s high school drama will speak to the teens about fitting in with their peers and the racism that minority groups sometimes have to deal with.  The story of the monkey king will interest teens with its colorful telling of Chinese mythology.  Chin-Kee’s story would speak to the teenage audience about being publicly humiliated, by an embarrassing relative. 

Although this graphic novel had some positive elements to it the main downer about this book is how the storyline did not make any sense.  If the author would have kept Jin Wang’s story serious and the monkey king tale as an interesting introduction to Chinese culture, then the graphic novel would have been way better.  The Chin-Kee story seemed completely unnecessary and distracts the reader from the rest of the story. 

Genre:      

Graphic Novel / Multicultural