Identity and Prejudice Theme Analysis

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 “ruined” every year when his Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee, comes to visit and attends school with him. The novel ultimately reveals that Danny and Chin-Kee aren’t real people at all—Danny is Jin’s alter ego (as Jin longs to be white rather than Chinese), while the Monkey King assumes Chin-Kee’s form to remind Danny of who he truly is: Jin. Through these three interconnected stories, American Born Chinese makes the case that it’s unfulfilling and silly to try to be someone other than oneself. It’s essential, and necessary for happiness, for people—or monkeys—to celebrate who and what they are.

In Jin’s case, most of his ongoing desire to appear more white comes from the racist attitudes and treatment he encounters when his family moves to the suburbs—prior to the move, Jin thought little about being Chinese American. Before the suburbs, Jin lived in San Francisco’s Chinatown, where he was one of many Chinese American boys, all of whom experienced a similar upbringing and cultural habits. In other words, the fact that Jin is Chinese didn’t matter in San Francisco, when he looked just like a majority of his peers. In the suburbs, however, Jin becomes self-conscious of his ethnicity because he suddenly sticks out and appears visibly different, such as when his packed lunch contains traditional foods that disgust his white classmates. Jin begins to gradually change his identity, which at first seems relatively innocuous and, in some cases, made out of perceived necessity. He soon begins taking sandwiches for lunch rather than dumplings, which means that his classmates can’t torment him about eating dogs, and he avoids the only other Asian student in his class, Suzy Nakamura, since their classmates believe that they’re either related or engaged to be married given that they’re both Asian. Both of these actions allow Jin to feel somewhat more at home in the suburbs, even if he still reads as obviously and undeniably Chinese.

Being one of only two Asian students in his class, however, has major consequences to how Jin thinks about being Chinese. Indeed, by the time that Wei-Chen arrives from Taiwan and joins Jin’s fifth-grade class, Jin has separated himself so far from his Chinese identity that he inexplicably wants to beat Wei-Chen up—a desire that mirrors some of the behavior Jin’s classmates exhibited toward him when Jin first moved to the suburbs. In this sense, Jin’s discomfort with his identity isn’t something that just affects him and the food he eats—it’s something that makes him devalue and dislike everyone who shares his identity, no matter how cool or interesting that person might be. Later on, Jin’s shame about his identity drives him to perm his hair and sabotage his genuine friendship with Wei-Chen so that Jin can magically transform into his alter ego of Danny, who’s tall, handsome, and most importantly, white.

The Monkey King’s parallel story functions as a mirror for Jin’s. Like Jin, the Monkey King loves being a monkey until the gods deny him entrance to a party—that is, force him to see for the first time that he’s a monkey, and that others believe monkeys are dirty and unworthy of consideration. He then embarks on a quest to turn himself into a human, much as Jin does everything in his power to turn himself into Danny. It takes a magical intervention on the part of Tze-Yo-Tzuh, a supreme deity, and a 500-year imprisonment in a mountain for the Monkey King to take to heart that being a monkey can and will allow him to do great things—like free himself from the mountain—and that his life as a monkey and the ruler of Flower-Fruit Mountain is something he should be extremely proud of. While Danny doesn’t have to endure 500 years in a mountain to make him recognize that he’s better off as Jin, he still experiences divine intervention as the Monkey King begins visiting him as Danny’s Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee. Chin-Kee embodies every negative stereotype about Chinese people, thereby forcing Jin/Danny to face up to the way that people see him and indeed, how he sees himself—and also to understand that while other people may look at Jin and see only negative stereotypes, Jin has the power to see himself as a valuable person just like anyone else.

This is one of the novel’s most important lessons: even in the face of prejudice and racism like the Monkey King and Jin experience, it’s still absolutely essential to recognize one’s inherent value and celebrate one’s true identity, as compromising on those things, the novel shows, inevitably leads to shame, anger, and even violence. While the novel never excuses the racism and prejudice expressed by Jin’s classmates or by the residents of Heaven, it suggests that more important than dwelling on the rude or negative things they might say or do is to instead focus on being the best person one can be—no matter one’s identity.