Character Analysis: American Born Chinese By Gene Luen Yang

Could you take a guess and tell from what culture a person is from by just listening to their voice? Could you also tell by looking to their appearance; The way they dress, the color of their skin, facial features? What about the way they carry their selves? Just like “The Chinese in All of Us” by Richard Rodriguez where he explains that he feels connected to all the cultures around America, with its “culture, a sound, an accent, a walk.” (Rodriguez 730). It does not mean and require that you must look a certain way to belong to a certain culture.

Jin Wang was born in America but is also Chinese. He faces some difficulties with racism and stereotypes as he grows up. He just moved to a new school from San Francisco. The teacher introduces him to the class and says,” Class, I'd like us all to give a warm Mayflower Elementary welcome to your new friend and Classmate Jin Wang...He and his family recently moved to our neighborhood all the way from China!”(30). Jin has this look on his face of annoyance. Like, did she actually say this. She is too ignorant to ask so she just assumed that since he is Chinese, that he must be from China. He was born in America. This just shows how ignorant people are about other cultures. It makes it even harder to fit in if people don't even care where you're from and just make assumptions. Jin now experiences this first hand. He tries so hard to fit in and be normal. He goes as far as changing his hair to match the guys hair that Amelia likes. When he isn't noticed as much he wants to become someone else, someone who will fit in. He wakes up in the morning a new person, as he has transformed into someone he is not, he thinks to himself,”A new face deserved a new name. I decided to call myself...Danny”(198). He changed his race he didn't like his heritage and cultures so much

Through the personal stories of his hair, love life, and behavior, Liu is able to show the effects of his assimilation. The second section deals with Liu’s struggles to conform to white stereotypes as an Asian American. With his personal anecdotes, he establishes himself as a more credible source to speak on the subject of assimilation. The second section uses narration to provide evidence about Liu’s definition of assimilation.

Liu, like any other kid wanted to be cool. He shares that one major part of being cool, was to have the cool hairstyle. For most of his childhood, Liu sported a bowl cut. The new style in his school however was hair parted down the middle and tapered on the ends. With Liu’s Asian genes it was nearly impossible to accomplish this style. After a couple years of trying various different hair styles that did not suffice as cool, he finally became content with having a crew-cut. Liu also thought that because he was Asian, he had less of a chance to get girls. Liu insists that it was the “sole obstacle” to his “advancement” (Liu 20). His response to this was to do more school activities such as write for the school newspaper and join the school newspaper. Although he wanted to disconcert stereotypes, Liu states that this made him seem like a typical “Asian overachiever” (Liu 21). Another concern Liu had from his Chinese heritage was that he had never been taught American manners. When he went to a friend’s house to sleep over, he never said “thank you” for it. When he had dinner at a friend’s house he ate differently than the others. As he began to change the way he acted and talked at friend’s houses he began to realize that he was getting further and further away from his Asian heritage.

Stories and stereotypes make many people want to change themselves negatively and assimilate just to fit in with society. As time passes, society’s stereotypes for how people of each race should be, which race is more dominant than others, and which race you should be, all play a role in impacting someone’s self-esteem and their insecurities. This is portrayed through Jin Wang, a main character in Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born Chinese” when Jin Wang thinks his crush, Amelia, he instantly becomes happy. But then he thinks about Greg and Amelia together and gets mad. He finally zooms into Greg’s blond hair. The next day he goes to school with the same hairstyle. The hair symbolizes Greg’s all American identity because the stereotypical American is portrayed with blond hair and blue eyes. To Jin Wang, this hair symbolizes what he wants to be, so he changed his hair to an “American” hairstyle to get Amelia to like him. Due to stereotypes about how Americans are suppose to look like, Jin Wang feels insecure about himself and wants to change his identity and himself as well to assimilate into American culture and stereotypes. These stereotypes and the Anti-Asian stereotypes impact Jin Wang greatly and make him hate himself as well as his background and where he came from because he believes that in order to be AMerica, you have to be white. Another way that this is portrayed is from a personal experience I had as a kid. Growing up as an Asian kid in America, I didn’t really know

Many new arrivals still struggle to survive and often Chinese Americans still encounter suspicion and hostility. Chinese Americans have achieved great success and now, like so many others, they are stitching together a new American identity. As Michelle Ling, a young Chinese American, tells Bill Moyers in Program 3, “I get to compose my life one piece at a time, however I feel like it. Not to say that it’s not difficult and that there isn’t challenge all the time, but more than material wealth, you get to choose what you are, who you are.” (www.pbs.org)

In the beginning of the novel, the development of the Monkey King and Jin is similar because they both experienced the prejudice. The Monkey King went to the heaven’s dinner but he got rejected for not wearing shoes and being a monkey. The guard said “Look. You may be a King - you may even be a deity - but you are still a monkey.” (15) Also, Jin attended new school and had a bad welcoming because he is Chinese. One of his classmates said “My momma says Chinese people eat dogs.” (31) This

One of the scenes in particular, introduces the main antagonist of the movie, Mr. Chow, played by Ken Jeong. The movie set up of the scene is a part of the hostage exchange where the main characters looking for their missing friend, Doug. Mr. Chow however gives the main characters the wrong guy and left the scene. What is wrong with this scene is ultimately come down to the movie representation of the character, Mr. Chow and the many problems with different stereotypes this character trying to represent. The movies industry also play around with the Asian Stereotypes in movies of having really thick Asian accents if you look Asian, even if the actor is American. That principle also applied in this movie. One of the many problems of the character is his questionable appearance and his character movements. Within a few second into the scene, the camera shows a wide shot of him standing next his bodyguard. What makes Mr. Chow standing out from his bodyguard is his flashy appearance, which is consist of gold jacket, white pants, oversized women sunglasses and the excessive amount of jewelry and accessories on his body. And also with his body languages such as the popping of the hip, the easy flowing of the hand gesture and hand placements in various place in his bodies. The problems of this portrayal escalated even more when Mr. Chow reveal his full

For instance, Jin is alienated due to the sole fact of his appearance, which happens to be different from the rest of the class. Moreover, Jin’s roots create assumptions, or stereotypes, rather. As stated earlier, his classmates thought he ate digs because he was Asian, resulting because of his appearance. When acting as Danny, he was not suspected for being Asian, because he looked like the typical American kid, but when Chin-Knee came he detailed Chinese stereotypes so humorously that Danny was made fun of because of his cousin, another form of racism. For example, Danny had to switch schools because he was made fun of so much, and he stated, “By the time he leaves, no one thinks of me as Danny anymore. I’m Chin-Knee’s cousin”(127). This statement shows how bad Chin-Knee has an effect on Danny and his social life. He is constantly degraded with guffaws about China and his cousin, and despite Danny’s American roots, he is faced with racism because of his cousin. Therefore, race really is the problem, for Danny is ostracized about Chinese culture, and Jin is ostracized because of his

Fae Myenne Ng is a contemporary Chinese-American author who is known for her first written novel, Bone. Her debut novel was published in 1993 and the story is told through the eyes of the main character, Leila Leong. Leila tells the story of her family’s history and the events that unfold following the suicide of her sister. As Leila’s story progresses, themes of identity and family life are revealed. Leila and her two sisters border the line between American and Chinese, two distinct cultures that belong to very different worlds. The sisters deal with the struggles of assimilation as they grow up in the seclusive community of Chinatown only to live in an American world. The family life of the Leong

A world once filled with Asian friends and neighbors crashes harshly as Jin is left stranded in a white dominated school. Stereotypes and teasing are quickly placed on him from his racial background. Still new to the area, Jin presumes, “The only other Asian in my class was Suzy Nakamura. When the class finally figured out that we weren’t related, rumors began to circulate that Suzy and I were arranged to be married on her thirteenth birthday. We avoided each other as much as possible” (Yang 31). Embarrassment clouds Jin as he realizes that he’s not like the other kids in his class. With distinct features and his native tongue, Jin felt like a reject surrounded by his Caucasian classmates. He was entirely alone amongst his peers, and he didn’t like that one single bit. In this way, it’s clear how both Junior and Jin felt like outcasts in these two oceans of white students and teachers.

The stereotype “Chinese people are really smart” is also bought into light as the well-crafted character Chin-Kee answers all the questions correctly while people just stare vacantly in the background:

Its just how Wei-Chen acts, he isn't the kind of person to bundle up all the anger and hold a grudge, especially if he sees someone doing good. Like Jin when he makes his apology. Which with all that being said is why Wei-Chen is the coolest character in the book, or better yet the hero. He may seem weird and awkward at first but he doesn't care what anyone thinks and he just goes on with his life.

The movie the Karate Kid is about 12-year-old Dre Parker moves to China with his single mother, and he faces to many difficulties by being a stranger. However, he will be able to fight with those difficulties by embracing his karate skills with his master, Mr. Han. On the way to go to China, Dre wants to practice Chinese and talks to the man sitting next to him by believing that the man would speak Chinese. The man is actually an American. This scene is involving American and Chinese cultures, and it also shows a cultural stereotyping because Dre makes a false assumption by the way the man looks.

In American Born Chinese there is a constant struggle between two cultures, the Chinese American and the white culture. Their interaction yields constructive and destructive results in terms of their cultural integration. The characters can be separated into two distinct categories, empathizers and antagonists. Empathizers are the individuals that allow other cultures to exist freely within their city in the United States. They make no attempts to suppress other’s cultural identity, instead, they make decisions that promote the coexistence of multiple cultures. For example, when Jin Wang went out on a date with a white girl this would represent two cultures actively working to coexist (Yang 164). In this case, the girl would be considered an empathizer. On the other side of the spectrum, antagonists actively attempt to suppress cultures dissimilar to their own. They go out of their way to force conformity through the use of bullying and exclusion. Peter Garbinsky is an example of an antagonist. His abuse of Jin Wang catalyzed Jin’s transition to conformity rather than identifying with his own culture. Yang represents both of these groups through their appearance in the graphic novel, more specifically their eyebrows. Empathizers are given two distinct eyebrows while the antagonists possess a unibrow. The unibrows represent our progress, or lack of progress, as a society towards cultural acceptance. Referring to the examples above, Jin’s date was given two eyebrows while