American Born Chinese

by

Gene Luen Yang

American Born Chinese Symbols

Shoes and Hair

Both shoes and hair represent the folly of trying to be something other than one’s true identity. The Monkey King’s edict that all monkeys on Flower-Fruit Mountain must wear shoes represents his own desire…

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Transformers

Broadly speaking, Transformer toys symbolize identity, and particularly how fluid one’s identity can be. This can be both a positive and negative thing. When young Jin first tells the herbalist’s wife that he’d like to…

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The Laugh Track

The laugh track—the “HA HA HA” and “CLAP CLAP CLAP” that run along the bottom of panels in the chapters telling Danny’s story—symbolizes American pop culture and sitcoms, and specifically, the racist attitudes expressed…

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