“Boat Racism” Part III: Reflections on American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
I just finished reading the wonderful American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. The graphic novel opens with Monkey King attending a dinner party in heaven with the gods. Monkey King is a fictional character from the Chinese Classic novel Journey to the West written in the 1590s. The wildly imaginative fantasy story chronicles a monk’s journey to India to bring Buddhist scriptures back to China. The monk has recruited three disciples before his treacherous odyssey: a flamboyant monkey, a deferential fish, and a lascivious pig. These creatures, appearing in human form, all know their Kong Fu and have magic powers, for their task is to protect the monk from all sorts of monsters along the way, who want to eat the monk in order to gain eternal life. In Yang’s book, the story of how the handsome Monkey King, who once defied all the gods, succumbs to the Monk and becomes his faithful apostle is beautifully captured and succinctly adapted into the first of three interweaving tales.
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