Response to American Born Chinese PDF

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For Professor Caparas. This is an assignment that responds to the book American Born Chinese. ...

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May 17, 2016 ELIT 24 Caparas American Born Chinese Response American Born Chinese by Gene L. Yang was a fun way to understand the different aspects of having an Asian background in the U.S. After exploring the lives of the Monkey King, Jin Wang, and Danny, I notice that the difference among these stories is that each main character had their own issues and their own backgrounds. The Monkey King had his problem with not being recognized for his many years of discipline. Jin Wang had a problem with making new friends because he is a Chinese American who doesn’t fit in with the white students. Danny has to deal with his embarrassing Chinese cousin who happens to fit all the negative stereotypes of society. Another difference between these stories is the way that these problems are handled. Some of these issues are handled with the help of others, the use of adaptation, and more. What I liked about these differences was the uniqueness in each personal situation and how it relates to the real world. The ways that these three storylines are similar is that they all have one goal. That goal is to be united within their societies no matter what ethnic background they come from. Each storyline calls for social equality due to the unfair position they had to deal with. These characters also face a society that is unaccepting of their kind and also experience oppression in a particular way. I found a similarity between the characters that I found interesting and thought it was a brilliant way to understand what defines a person. The revealing of Jin actually being Danny while his cousin actually being the Monkey King is something that really demonstrates the importance of your background.

The importance of having these three stories intersect is that it shows the wide variety of difficulty that Asian Americans have to face in a dominant white society. The three different stories were able to show different scenarios that relate to what happens in the real world. I thought that Yang had the perfect mix of characters and plots to demonstrate the stress that gets put onto Asian Americans and immigrants that want to settle in the states. Through the eyes of Danny and Jin we see the racial struggles and stereotypes that are experienced throughout daily life. While it might seem slightly exaggerated, what happens in these stories are actually true based on what I’ve witnessed throughout my childhood. What we also ultimately learn from these mix of stories is the ability to adapt and transform to use our experiences valuably. No matter how much hardship these characters had to go through, in the end what is important was that they learned something from the experience. The significance of the Monkey King being Chin-Kee was for Danny to understand on how he should respect his background and where he comes from which eventually is shown that he transforms back to Jin. What I really enjoyed from this book was its ability to relate to my life and I am very sure it relates to everyone around me as well. Growing up in Cupertino was pretty easy because there are a lot of Asians here already however, there was still some difficulty that we all had to face by just simply living in the U.S....