extra credit one: american born chinese

Yang, Gene Luen. American Born Chinese. China: First Second, 2006. Print.

Annotation
All Jin wanted was to fit in, with the American kids.
Born to rule the monkeys, the Monkey King only wanted to be honored when he visited the heaven, but is given a second chance when Wong Lai-Tsao ask him to be his discipline.
Chin-Kee, who manages to act out all the stereotypes of a Chinese person, makes his yearly visit to see Danny, who only finds him annoying and embarrassing.


Justification for Rejection
Though it was a great book, I would have to reject this book for nomination.

It was three stories that collided into one, in the end. The first story is about the Monkey King. Created and born to rule the all the monkeys. He wanted nothing more than just to be acknowledge of his presence in the Heaven, but only got teased and laughed at, merely because he didn't have shoes. He then spends his days training and meditating, until he learns the discipline of bodily forms. He meets his creator and gets buried under a mountain of rocks. With the help of Wong Lai-Tsao, he finds a way out from underneath the rocks and becomes his discipline.

The second story is about Jin, who moves into a different neighborhood. He becomes one of the two Asians in school, and plans to not acknowledge her in anyway. He gets bullied and struggles to make friend, until one day, he met Peter. Then he meets Wei-Chen, who becomes his best friend. Jin later discovers a girl that he likes and wants to start dating her. After one date, Greg tells him not to ask her out.

The third story is about Danny's cousin Chin-Kee who portrays, what is assume to be, a typical Chinese person. He makes his yearly visit to see Danny and follows him to school. Danny feels frustrated and embarrassed by him.

I spend weeks contemplating over this books on whether I wanted to nominate or reject the book. Though it's a great book and I liked how it collided in the end, I really have nothing but good things to say about this book. But for some reason, it just isn't setting in. I really enjoyed two of the three stories. Though I usually don't mind story jumping, I just felt that it would have been better if it just flowed as one.

Overall, a good graphic novel, that gets your laughing.

Genre Graphic Novel | Humor | Coming of Age | Multi-cultural