Storytelling and Universality Theme Analysis

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 ways to tackle the many issues it tackles, from unnecessary pride and violence to overt racism, is to tell as many stories about those things as possible. Doing this, it proposes, can help humanize characters whom readers may never have otherwise thought worthy of consideration, and can thus drive home the universality of the issues that all people face.

One of the most important ways in which American Born Chinese speaks to the ubiquity of racism in general (and against Chinese individuals in particular) is by telling the parallel stories of Jin and the Monkey King, which differ slightly but are also the same in many ways. Both stories begin in places where Jin and the Monkey King’s identities are normal and unproblematic (San Francisco’s Chinatown and the mystical realm of Flower-Fruit Mountain, respectively), and both characters then travel somewhere where they stand out as different (the suburbs and a party in Heaven, respectively). In their new surroundings, both Jin and the Monkey King experience prejudice directed at that difference. As, a result they both attempt to change themselves to fit in. Though they’re successful at this in some regards, they sacrifice their true identities to make changes that, on the whole, aren’t accepted by those they want to impress. By telling the same story of overcoming prejudice through these two very different characters, American Born Chinese is able to speak not just to anti-Chinese racism as it does through Jin’s story. Rather, it’s able to make the case that the Monkey King could stand in for any group that has experienced prejudice, thereby broadening its message and eliciting greater empathy and understanding in the reader.

Similarly to the way in which Jin and the Monkey King’s stories very overtly mirror each other, it’s possible to draw a variety of connections between the racist remarks lobbed at Chin-Kee (and the negative stereotypes his character embodies), and the racism and prejudice that the Monkey King and Jin and his fellow Asian friends experience in their respective stories. For instance, one of the insults that recurs throughout Jin’s story is that he and his family eat dogs, a racist stereotype designed to cast Chinese people as barbarians who capture and kill people’s beloved pets for food—while Chin-Kee happily and publically digs into cat gizzards at lunch. Similarly, the suggestion that Chin-Kee carries the SARS virus, a dangerous respiratory virus that originated in China, is an insult in the same vein as the snide remark that Ao-Kuang (another deity) makes to the Monkey King that none of the other gods will go to Flower-Fruit Mountain on account of the fleas. Both of these instances portray the subject of the insult as dirty or barbaric, speaking to the universality of discrimination like this. And while Chin-Kee’s character is clearly exaggerated, and the Monkey King’s is obviously fantastical, having to consider all of these stories in tandem nevertheless makes clear the idea that this these struggles are ones that repeats over and over again, in a variety of different venues. Showing these insults’ effects on so many different characters, meanwhile, allows readers to consider the myriad negative effects of being the targeted by such racism and discrimination—and encourages them to humanize those targets.

Finally, the visual nature of American Born Chinese allows it to more easily draw from the visual language and structure of sitcom television shows in Danny and Chin-Kee’s chapters, a medium that the novel treats as something well-known to its readership. The laugh track in particular means that the novel has the ability to tell the reader when to laugh, rather than relying on the reader to make up his or her own mind about what’s funny—and by “playing” the laugh track at times when what’s happening is racist and decidedly not funny, the novel forces readers to consider what television shows—and indeed, a variety of other media, from conventional novels to comic books to films—portray as humorous, and why that is. Though the novel never fully answers the “why” of this question for the reader, it does draw connections between what’s portrayed on television and how racist characters like Greg and Timmy behave the way they do in Jin’s story. Why, the novel asks, would Greg or Timmy choose to associate with any of their Asian classmates when, in a show like Everyone Ruvs Chin-Kee, Danny (a white character who’s forced to interact and associate with Chin-Kee, his Chinese cousin) becomes the butt of every joke and suffers because of his relationship to Chin-Kee, and Chin-Kee is portrayed as a fundamentally unlikeable person? In this sense, American Born Chinese clearly intends to raise readers’ consciousness of the universal human struggles it presents. By putting readers, and especially white readers, in a situation in which they’re required to look at a story of prejudice from many angles and perspectives, the novel presents storytelling in every form as a tool capable of introducing audiences to the plight of others, eliciting sympathy, and hopefully encouraging those audience members to treat others with kindness and respect.