Book: American Born Chinese

Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese is a light bite of Asian American identity lit, with a few solid ideas, an engaging illustration style, and a nice interweaving of three stories. I enjoyed it, and it certainly doesn't take long to read or process, but I'm not sure it quite lives up to all the hype. While it's awesome to see the graphic novel expand into new domains, and while I could easily see putting this on a middle or high school reading list, I didn't find it as rich as something like Persepolis, which gives a much more nuanced look at cultural identity and cultural conflict. Granted, that novel is dealing with a "modern" identity in an increasing backwards-looking Iran, while ABC is interested in how Asian and white American identities go together (as well as a stop-the-self-hatred/be-yourself sort of theme that's so common in YA lit), so it's not exactly parallel, but given the two I think Perspolis just has more to say and says it more interestingly.

I'd like to see Yang pursue a longer work, and I'd like to see a little more complexity in how he approaches the issues he's interested in, but that's not to say I didn't like the book. I did, it just didn't stick with me as much as I'd hoped it would. I'd rather go back to something like No-No Boy or Bone for a richer exploration of how second generation Asian Americans deal with the question of identity, but either way I'd still recommend this, especially to younger readers (note: I saw another reviewer commented on the racy themes in the book, and I might just be desensitized and/or have forgotten in the week since I finished, but I don't remember that at all. There's a couple of mentions of breasts, but I think that's about it. I could be wrong though. So, I guess maybe review it before you give it to a middle-schooler. Totally high school appropriate though).

Grade: C+