american Blog and Journals

    I like to consider myself well-read... but I know I am not. I have read quite a few (in fact, many) classics, but to be well-read requires something more -- thought. Thinking is an art form. It has been called rhetoric, classical thought, genius, etc. Each of these words have other conotations -- they don't capture what thinking truly is. But to the point. I read _American Born Chinese_ by Gene Luen Yang with some trepidity. For nearly a week after my brief half-hour stint reading the entirety of it, I did nothing else with it. It did not inspire thought, or inspiration, in me. It wasn't until I finished _Lord of the Flies_ that a thought struck me: I don't think. Obviously, my brain works, but that's not the type of thinking I am referring to. I am talking about actually learning something about myself and society through the act of reading. So, I came back to _American Born Chinese_ with a determination -- to find why it is raved about and why I had dismissed it -- to not be a savage without real thought.
    _American Born Chinese_ at first appears relatively simple and silly: a graphic novel about a Chinese boy, a monkey, and an American boy. The Chinese boy is bullied at school; the monkey wants to be a god; the American boy wants to be popular. The art style and story-telling do not at all encourage it to be taken seriously. The children's heads are drawn far too large for their bodies. Their facial expressions are far too dramatic. The entire book looks as though it were made on an old computer program that could only handle simple shapes. Several instances of "potty humor" litter the pages as though to try to over-dose the reader on comedy. The over-lapping between the three characters' stories is a little too obvious for my taste as well.
    That said. The book's central theme, the aspect of all three stories that really ties them together is the characters' viewpoints. The characters are all mean to one another -- fueled by fear of weirdos, anger at not being accepted, and disappointment in their lives. [Side-note: this is very similar to the children in _Lord of the Flies_ which is probably why reading that reminded me of this book.] The American boy hates his Chinese cousin for embarrassing him. The Chinese boy hates himself for not being normal enough, in his opinion, for the girl he likes. The monkey hates the gods for making him a monkey. In fact, the book is held together by foolish hatred.
    The stories of the Chinese boy, the American boy, and the monkey, are about overcoming that hatred. Critics rave about this book, because it confronts racism with a laugh. All the characters eventually realize how foolish their hatred is. It's a book about acceptance of who we are as individuals. Though at times the caricatures in it may seem overbearing, that theme of hatred and acceptance is the purpose of the tale. [Side-note: I should stop reading Philosophy and comics at the same time, shouldn't I?]