American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
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What We're Reading:
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"American Born Chinese" by Gene Luen Yang (First Second Books, 1596431520, $16.95) The American Library Association recently announced its full slate of 2007 awards in youth literature: the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, the Coretta Scott King Award, and my favorite, the Michael L. Printz Award for teen literature, which is named for a former Topeka school librarian. The award has regularly found outstanding books from the world of teen reading, including recent stand-outs likes John Green's Looking for Alaska and Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now. This year, the ALA chose as its winner "American Born Chinese," a graphic novel by San Francisco school teacher Gene Luen Yang, and that is very exciting news indeed. It's the first graphic novel (a sort long-form stand-alone comic book) the selection committee has recognized, and it won out over pretty stiff competition--and deservedly so. The award nods some respect toward the burgeoning realm of graphic novels, and it also puts the spotlight on Yang's publisher, a graphic-novel division of Holtzbrinck called First Second Books. The imprint just released its inaugural titles last spring, including the super-charming pirate adventures Sardine in Outer Space and the arresting Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda. All of First Second's books have been top-quality productions with strong writing and art, and "American Born Chinese" raises that bar even higher. The book tells three linked stories: the first is that of the Monkey King, a legendary Chinese figure who unites all monkeys under his rule and seeks to take his rightful place in the heavens among his fellow gods and demons. Laughed at by the other deities, the Monkey King goes rock star and trashes a heavenly palace before returning to earth determined to whip himself into shape: he plans to study magic and kung-fu until he has stripped away all his inherent monkey-ness and is able to blend with the heavenly in-crowd. The second story is that of Jin Wang, a young boy whose parents left China for graduate study in the United States. Jin finds himself the lone Chinese-American kid in his class, and he wishes he were like his toy Transformer robot, able to change from one shape into another. When a new Chinese boy named Wei-Chen arrives "fresh off the boat" from Taiwan, Jin gains a friend but never loses his hunger to be a real all-American boy. The third story, "Everyone Ruves Chin-Kee," is like a demented sit-com, complete with a sound-effect laugh track. In it, popular whitebread high school basketball player Danny feels his life is ruined when his Chinese cousin, the walking stereotype Chin-Kee, comes to visit. His cousin embodies every popular negative image of Chinese people, and Danny frets and blushes over it more than Jin and the Monkey King put together. As the book builds, the three stories come together into a single narrative about identity and growing up: the Monkey King learns an important lesson in humility; Jin finds out that self-transform can be a dangerous game; and Danny reveals that Chin-Kee isn't the real cause of his shame. "American Born Chinese" has all the grip of a fable and the pen-perfect visual style of a kung-fu video game. Yang stocks his stories with enough surprise and delight to appeal to teenagers and adults alike, and it's hard not to love a book that takes on cultural taboos like racism and discrimination through the adventures of a short-tempered monkey god and a suburban kid with a disastrous home perm. Aside from being an innovative and achieved graphic novel, Yang's book has all the heart and complexity it needs to stand side by side with the best of young-adult fiction. Review by Mark David Bradshaw January 25, 2007 View sample pages of American Born Chinese here on the First Second Website: http://www.firstsecondbooks.net/abc.html You can find reviews of other books from First Second here: Sardine in Outer Space by Emmanuel Guibert & Joann Sfar: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review1006-007.html Deogratias by J. P. Stassen: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review0606-008.html
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