After finishing reading “American Born Chinese”, I found myself wondering if I actually liked it. The art and the writing was clever and often powerful. But except for the Monkey King (who actually grew as a character throughout the book), I personally did not like anyone in the book–not Jin who is filled with utter self-loathing and inability to stand up for himself, not Greg who simply hides his prejudices than Timmy, definitely not the walking stereotype of Chin-Kee. I understand that these are all for the most part kids but the close-mindedness of the non-mythical Asians and everyone else to be extremely bothersome. I didn’t like them. I didn’t root for them. And as characters, there was very little growth shown by any of them–quite often they grew backwards.
And maybe that’s real. I don’t know.
But I went a high school that was recognized by National Geographic as the most diverse in the country. I’m not saying that racism didn’t exist there, but if it showed itself it was met head on. But we see so many examples of racist and prejudicial behavior that aren’t confronted by Jin, Suzy or Wei Chen (even though he was really a monkey). Timmy calls Suzy a chink and instead of her fighting back at his idiocy, we only see her crying over it. When Greg asks Jin to stop dating the woman of his dreams, the only time we see him resist is in his mind. The passiveness in the book in the face of racism was exasperating. And in the end of the book, Jin finally grows a bit as a character after changing his entire outward appearance but only in witness of a monkey disguised as a boy–about as unreal and inconsequential as you can get.
To the Respondents: did you actually like Jin as a character?
Thanks for the insightful — and personal — post. This is the kind of thing I was thinking of at the end of class on Tuesday, when I wondered whether there’s room to criticize a graphic novel that has important lessons to teach, but fails in perhaps some larger and essential ways. I think you honed in one the problem: the characters’ passivity. And in some ways, this is the book’s passivity as well. The book highlights stereotypes and even makes fun of their ridiculousness (with the character of Chin-Kee), but it never really calls the perpetrators out.