American Born Chinese

I just finished this graphic novel American Born Chinese today. While it’s intended for a younger audience, and a pretty quick read, I just wanted to offer it out there as a recommendation. It’s a really well written graphic novel and one of the few that deals specifically with asian-american culture and integration. And, of course, it has toy robots and the Monkey King, so what more could you want really? ;-)

Amazon’s review:

Indie graphic novelist Gene Yang’s intelligent and emotionally challenging American Born Chinese is made up of three individual plotlines: the determined efforts of the Chinese folk hero Monkey King to shed his humble roots and be revered as a god; the struggles faced by Jin Wang, a lonely Asian American middle school student who would do anything to fit in with his white classmates; and the sitcom plight of Danny, an All-American teen so shamed by his Chinese cousin Chin-Kee (a purposefully painful ethnic stereotype) that he is forced to change schools. Each story works well on its own, but Yang engineers a clever convergence of these parallel tales into a powerful climax that destroys the hateful stereotype of Chin-Kee, while leaving both Jin Wang and the Monkey King satisfied and happy to be who they are.

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