A review by sonicfan4ever
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

Gene Luen Yang tells the intertwining story of three protagonists in one graphic novel. The first storyline is a retelling of the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West, focusing on The Monkey King. The second storyline follows a child of Chinese immigrants named Jin Wang, who struggles with his Chinese identity in a middle school with only two other asian pre-teens. The third storyline is about an “all-American” high schooler named Danny, and his Chinese cousin who visits during the school year. All three storylines meet at the end, and are about struggling with identity and transformation. The graphic novel covers racial stereotypes while growing up in America. 

On booksource, the Lexile source for American Born Chinese is GN530L, and its grade level is 7-12. Which means, for language, it scores a bit below middle range, but the content lands it in a large area of understanding. The graphic novel covers racist Chinese stereotypes head-on. Including a character who combines a long list of stereotypes, including his name sounding like a slur. This topic is a big one in the classroom needing to be handled with care, and knowing background information, so that this character does not come off as “funny” or “cute”. I think the graphic novel is a wonderful read for student’s in the grade level marked on booksource, both for class and as an independent read. The novel explains itself really well, and for asian-american students they will see themselves in the pages, and other students will see their peers (and themselves in some characters). Teacher instruction would help this book for all grades, but I don’t believe it is 100% needed. I think older adults can also read this graphic novel, I don’t think people out age a good book, it just changes what they get out of it. 

As for what I got out of reading this novel, I enjoyed reading the graphic novel, and reading up on the historical context of some of the characters. I think this is a wonderful first graphic novel for anyone, as it shows why pairing text with images is important. This isn’t close to a novel I would pick on my own for a long read, but to sit down with pages for an afternoon, it is all I could ask of a graphic novel. I picked this book from the reading cart, because I knew a friend enjoyed it, and after reading it. I can understand why they didn’t stop talking about it for months.