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Monday, November 27, 2006
American Born Chinese
Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese is at its core a story about the importance of coming to peace with one's self and not trying to be something you are not. It's a well worn territory, but Yang finds vitality in it. He tells his story, actually stories, within the context of race relations amongst young Americans. Jin is a Chinese-American trying to be cool in a world where cool is all relative to certain Anglo-Saxon traits. Transformation is a major theme of the book and Jin finds it comes at a cost.
Jin doesn't feel comfortable being ostracized from the rest of the kids on the playground, all white. He doesn't want to be friends with Wei-Chen, the new student whose family has emigrated from Taiwan. I am reminded of a bit in Johnathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude where that book's white protagonist finds another geeky white guy in their otherwise all African-American Brooklyn high school. Dylan doesn't want anything to do with this kid but as Lethem writes "they were doomed to friendship." Jin faces that same doom with Wei-Chen, who is called an F.O.B. (Fresh Off the Boat) not by any racial tormentors but by Jin himself out of anger and embarrassment. As the kids enter junior high Jin is more comfortable with his friend but never truly comfortable with himself.
He certainly isn't when he is courting Amelia, a white girl. This leads to one of Jin's forays into inauthenticity. He gets a perm as to look like the guy with curly blond hair that Amelia is always hanging out with. I must say on a personal level I found this very funny. When I was younger I wished to not have dark curly hair like almost all the other people on the Jewish side of my family. I wanted straight hair of my gentile classmates who had cool spiky hair-do's. But that's just it. When you're young you'll pick up on whatever separates you from the rest of the crowd and obsess over it. For many young people that difference is their own ethnicity. Whatever you're not that's what you want to be. You can imagine how much success Jin doesn't achieve in his quest to be a perfectly "normal" suitor for Amelia. It leads to the most devastating scene in the book. Jin is told by Greg, the guy with curly blond hair who is friends with Amelia, that he shouldn't see Amelia anymore. Greg never mentions race, not even in a panel where we see him talking privately to his white friends. In fact earlier in the story Greg talks down to kids who are harassing Jin based on their ignorant presumptions about Asians. Still, when Greg delivers his message it is clear that there are boundaries in these kid's worlds and misguided ideas on race are some of the materials that build those boundaries. Jin finds he can go no further in his school's social structure. He wishes to wake up white the next morning. The wish is granted.
I should mention at this time that Jin's story is complimented by two other stories that at first seem unrelated except thematically. The first tells of the Monkey King who after getting rejected from a party where all other deities are swinging decides to change himself out of the spite he feels. He reinvents himself as The Great Sage Equal to Heaven and walks as tall as a man and with shoes, the opposite of the monkey he once was. This story of mythical figures acting irrationally and immaturely compares favorably to some of Neil Gaiman's work like Anansi Boys. The other features a white kid named Danny who's cousin, for some reason, is the embodiment of all Asian stereotypes. His l's and r's are switched around in speech and at one point literally pee-pee's in Coke. I saw this story as what was going on in Jin's subconscious while hanging out with Wei-Chen. Near the end of the book we find that Jin is what Danny has become when he wished to turn white. It's a turning point in the book where all the storylines begin to meet.
The conclusion of American Born Chinese that features a unification of all three stories is the most satisfying part of the book. It is the twin triumphs of Yang's art and storytelling that makes it all work. The stories are all told in different styles but with certain similarities. Jin's story has a faux-autobiographical narration to it while The Monkey King is told like a fable and Danny and his cousin's story is a parody of a sitcom complete with laugh track. Yang's visuals are simple and direct so that it's easy to discern each story yet switching between them is never jarring. Yang prefers a few big panels on a page to tell the story. This technique creates the overall feel of a comfortably told tale for both the The Monkey King and Jin's stories, either as a fable or as an adolescent anecdote. Danny's story has this ugly representation of every hurtful stereotype of a people so those sections are hardly as easy to read but the sitcom parody aspect and Yang's much more sparring use of that story has it fit nicely in the book.
There's an interesting parallel between the stories syncing up and Jin's realization that he must put his life back together. As Jin misses the point of his problems in school and takes a wrong turn the reader is taken out of the story and put in another one. Danny/Jin soon finds his problems can't be escaped from by denying who he is and that's when the book comes together. The surface and the thematically levels of the book meets. It's a great trick and Yang pulls it off beautifully. That's the joy of American Born Chinese. From the stylistic gambles to the handling of the delicate subject of race all the chances the book could go wrong instead turns into storytelling excellency.
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