American Born Chinese, written by Gene
Luen Yang. Is a humorous graphic novel that I believe appeals to kids at the
secondary level. I love how the three separate stories all come together in the
end. This book can be an effective teaching tool in the classroom. In the story
we run into the problems teenagers face as they go through puberty, the need to
be accepted, attractions to the opposite sex, identity crises, bullying and
rebellion. We also gain insight on Asian culture and are taught valuable lessons
from an Asian parable. Not only is this
story a great resource for teaching valuable morals and ideas, but also makes
fun of Asian stereotypes. Much of the humor is drawn from thick accents,
smarts, and what they eat.
The main
characters in two of the stories are teenage boys. This makes the character
more relatable to students at the secondary level. In one of the stories, an
Asian boy struggles to be accepted.
Acceptance is a theme that is dominant throughout the graphic novel.
Once the boy finds a friend, he perms his hair in order to be more like a
popular boy that his crush is good friends with. It is also prominent in the parable with the
Monkey King. The Monkey, after being rejected by the Gods, changes himself to
fit in. In the classroom, this would be a good subject to elaborate on.
Students can take textual evidence from the book and discuss possible reasons
for why the characters made the decision to change. After further exploration,
we see that the characters go back to being themselves and life is great! Moral
of the story: be yourself!
Another
idea for a lesson, can be to pick out quotes that stereotype Asians. After
finding textual evidence, we can have a class discussion on what the word
stereotype means and why the characters are portrayed in this way. This is an
important concept to teach. It helps students to not judge somebody by their
race, religion, gender, etc. Just because somebody belongs to a particular
group, does not mean they are the same as others of that group.
I enjoyed
reading this graphic novel. The pictures contribute more than the
dialogue. Quick read and yet so much can
be learned from it!
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