Review: American Born Chinese
The modern Asian-American experience is, perhaps not surprisingly, ill-documented. Outside of a few indie films of varying quality and the occasional article in Giant Robot, I know I've never made much contact with it, despite my enthusiasm for Chinese cinema and a keen interest in Asian culture, even defending an incident or two of Engrish when it caused my friends to guffaw a little too hard. That's why I think the surprisingly complex, beautifully illustratrated American Born Chinese is one of the most important graphic novels that'll come out this year; it manages to entertainingly elucidate the Chinese-American experience in terms that people of a certain generation (i.e. mine) can relate to easily.
Yang's very ambitious in American Born Chinese. He uses three intertwined stories: the legend of The Monkey King, the young Jin Wang's experience as the new "Chinese kid" in school, and all-American teenager Danny's experience with his hyper-stereotypical cousin Chin-Kee to explore subjects like casual racism, parental and cultural expectations, and general teenage angst effectively and with a great deal of sympathy that never becomes mawkish. The immediate attraction, Yang's cartooning, is gorgeous - all thick outlines and minimal, a textbook example of perfect distillation of the human form, and even better, his writing is up to the task. Dialogue is natural and the structure is handled with an ease that I find both appealing and utterly despicable - it's too damned good and it makes the writer in me fairly angry.
American Born Chinese was an oddity when originally published. The single issue I have from the serialized form is a thick, square not-quite-mini featuring production values that were far too high for its price point and a quantum leap in writing and art quality by Gene Yang, whose earlier Gordon Yamamoto was enthusiastic if not quite as good as the creator (And me) wanted it to be. I'm glad that American Born Chinese is now available in a proper collection and give it an enthusiastic recommendation.
A review copy of American Born Chinese was provided by First Second Books. More information about the title and sample pages can be found at the publisher's website.
Yang's very ambitious in American Born Chinese. He uses three intertwined stories: the legend of The Monkey King, the young Jin Wang's experience as the new "Chinese kid" in school, and all-American teenager Danny's experience with his hyper-stereotypical cousin Chin-Kee to explore subjects like casual racism, parental and cultural expectations, and general teenage angst effectively and with a great deal of sympathy that never becomes mawkish. The immediate attraction, Yang's cartooning, is gorgeous - all thick outlines and minimal, a textbook example of perfect distillation of the human form, and even better, his writing is up to the task. Dialogue is natural and the structure is handled with an ease that I find both appealing and utterly despicable - it's too damned good and it makes the writer in me fairly angry. American Born Chinese was an oddity when originally published. The single issue I have from the serialized form is a thick, square not-quite-mini featuring production values that were far too high for its price point and a quantum leap in writing and art quality by Gene Yang, whose earlier Gordon Yamamoto was enthusiastic if not quite as good as the creator (And me) wanted it to be. I'm glad that American Born Chinese is now available in a proper collection and give it an enthusiastic recommendation.
A review copy of American Born Chinese was provided by First Second Books. More information about the title and sample pages can be found at the publisher's website.
