Book Critic at Play #1

American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang
This graphic novel is outstanding in all ways: art, plot, story, dialogue, themes… It’s about assimilation, it’s about growing up, it’s about time and place. As I was reading it, I was unsure. Once I finished, I wasn’t sure if it all really worked. I’m still not sure it all merges perfectly, but I am sure that I am impressed--and I would recommend this work to those who are already interested in the form and to those who aren’t. As graphic novels continue to grow in depth and acceptance, I keep thinking about a course and how it might all hang together: historicity, time and place, coming of age…. Maus was probably the first to break out into the mainstream, to show those outside nerddom what comics can really do, but it clearly is not the last. But back to this work…. There are three alternating story sets: isolated tales of the Monkey King (a monkey chieftain who becomes a god almost by sheer dint of will); anecdotes from the life of Jin Wang, a San Francisco-born Chinese boy, who grows from probably 9 to high school age through the course of the story; and the cringe-inducing visits of Chin-Kee, the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, to his oddly WASPy looking cousin, Danny. These last tales have a laugh track, so the author is clearly up to something here. Somehow, these three sets of tales do in fact come together at the end (and you’ll be wondering the whole time not only if but why), and it is then that the themes are driven home. Jin is a wonderful character--troubled, compassionate, selfish, often lost, reacting in deeply human ways to his heart’s desires--and the dialogue is alternately heart-wrenching and funny. Yang knows what he’s doing, and we should look forward to more from this gifted writer-artist.