American Born Chinese

by

Gene Luen Yang

Themes and Colors
Identity and Prejudice Theme Icon
Racism and Popular Culture Theme Icon
Pride, Stubbornness, and Humility Theme Icon
Storytelling and Universality Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in American Born Chinese, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Identity and Prejudice

American Born Chinese tells three interweaving stories: those of the Monkey King, Jin Wang, and Danny. The Monkey king is a Chinese deity who, after being denied entrance to a party in Heaven for not wearing shoes, goes to great lengths to make himself more human. Jin is a second-generation Chinese American junior high school student in a primarily white California suburb. Danny is a white high school student whose life is…

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Pride, Stubbornness, and Humility

One important result of the transformations that Jin and the Monkey King undergo is that both of them, after becoming who they think they want to be (white in Jin’s case, and more human in the Monkey King’s case) is that both of them double down on the persona they create for themselves, even when they encounter a great deal of resistance to their new personas. Practically, this means that the Monkey King and Jin…

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Storytelling and Universality

American Born Chinese’s unique format as a graphic novel that utilizes three unconventional narrative techniques—pairing visual illustrations with text, switching among three interconnected stories, and simulating the form of a sitcom TV show—shows that Gene Luen Yang is acutely aware of the importance of telling a variety of stories in a variety of ways. By using such a wide range of communication tools and modes, American Born Chinese suggests that one of the best…

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