Blog Post #4 – Excerpts from graphic novel American Born Chinese
- In “American Born Chinese“, Gene Luen Yang uses comic book style to depict the difference between Asian-Americans and American Asians. A new student from Taiwan, named Wei-Chen Sun, moves to America and is enrolled in an American school. The first part of the excerpt depicts how not all Asians are alike because there is another Chinese student, but he is Americanized and doesn’t accept Wei-Chen at first. Throughout the excerpt, several Asian stereotypes were depicted including mispronouncing his name (suggesting Asian names are complex) and the use of martial art moves with silly names. This is probably to illustrate the social interactions Asian-Americans have to deal with because they are “different”.
- On page 36, the teacher mispronounces Wei-Chen Sun’s name wrong and this is to suggest that Asian names are complex. Also, the teacher assumes that the student is just from China when in fact the student is from Taiwan. On page 37, the Americanized Asian boy tells Wei-Chen to speak English since he is in America. I feel as if these first 2 pages depict what foreigners have to deal with when interacting with Americans. In the second excerpt, there is a great fight scene between Danny and the Monkey King disguised as a human. During the fight, the Monkey King uses martial art moves with names like “Mooshu Fist” and “Twice Cook Palm”. This is probably to use the stereotype that Asians know martial arts. Lastly, the Monkey King was depicted as having broken English. Again, this was probably to show that Asians are that much more different than Americans because they can’t speak English properly.
- One concept that was very important to me was the contrast between Asian-Americans and American Asians. Wei-Chen Sun was the Asian-American and Danny was the American Asian. During recess, Wei-Chen approached Danny first because he saw that he was also Chinese but Danny refused to accept Wei-Chen as a friend at first because Danny himself believes that he isn’t a traditional Chinese person – he thinks he’s just American. Although Asians could be the same on the outside, not every Asian is the same on the inside.
- This excerpt greatly reminded me of the episode of “Fresh of the Boat” called “So Chineez” where the mom believed that the family wasn’t in touch with their traditional roots. The family are just some Asians who’ve assimilated into American culture, which remind me of Danny. This goes to show that not all Asians are traditional and that you are defined by the environment you grew up in.
- If you were to move to a different country with your family and you enrolled into a school that didn’t have many students of your ethnicity, what would be your thoughts on the first day of school?
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