Blog Post #4: American Born Chinese Excerpt A
- In Gene Yang’s comic American Born Chinese, excerpt A, he shows how we can all be quite judgemental at first glance when we first meet someone. We see depicted that a new boy in school doesn’t have any friends and tries to make one but is rejected on first impressions. The boy he is attempting to make friends claims he has other friends just on what he initially thinks of Wei-Chen Sun. This all changes when he finds out that they have a common interest; the robot toy.
- We see evidence of this when the boy who was already in the school claims he already has friends (the football players) when Wei-Chen asks to be friends. It was clear that he didn’t have friends though as he was eating lunch alone when Wei-Chen made contact with him. The boy was obviously just not interested in making friends based on what he first saw. It wasn’t until they were both interested in the toy robot that they became friends.
- Being a comic, there aren’t many words to define, but in this case the concept of image can be defined. Us as humans tend to judge people based on first looks rather than the person as a whole. Just like the saying “don’t judge a book based on its cover”. This is especially true in general with racial stereotypes as society tends to judge people on their race as a whole not on the content and actions of each individual.
- The themes within this excerpt of the comic align with many of the themes we have been looking at throughout the course of this class. How Americans tend look at the face of other cultures and try to “Americanize” them as to find a way to relate or enjoy them conveniently for them. Also how as humans in general have some form of implicit bias when it comes to first reactions and we all tend to judge others unfairly upon initial contact.
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