American Born Chinese

Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2006

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Sections 1-3

Sections 4-6

Sections 7-9

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Sections 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Section 4 Summary

The first illustration of this section depicts a group of monkeys wearing shoes as they struggle to get their footing on the branches of a tree. The Monkey King, alone in his chambers, studies kung-fu and meditates in order to achieve four new disciplines that give him invulnerability. Forty days later, he is invulnerable to fire, the cold, drowning and bodily wounds. The Monkey King continues to train, and 40 days later, he is able to take on new bodily forms: that of a giant and of himself in miniature, and he can transform his individual hairs into clones of himself and shape shift.

After the Monkey King changes his appearance, he appears to his subjects, who give him a message from heaven: he has been sentenced to death for trespassing upon heaven and he must go to the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea in order to be executed. The Monkey King tells his subjects that the Monkey King is no more as he has transcended his former self; from now on, he must be addressed as “The Great Sage, Equal of Heaven” (60). He leaves his subjects on a cloud and visits Ao-Kuang the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea in his underwater chambers. The Dragon King insults the Monkey King when told about his new title, until the Monkey King changes into a giant. Fearful of the giant Monkey King, Au-Kuang decides not to execute him and sends him on his way with a magic cudgel. The Monkey King visits other deities with his news, and they also mock him and his claims to be equal to Heaven. The Monkey King abuses them all with his new cudgel. The next illustration shows emissaries from Tze-Yo-Tzuh speaking with a group of gods, goddesses, demons and spirits. The group complain to the emissaries about the Monkey King and his violence. The emissaries promise to talk to Tze-Yo-Tzuh.

Tze-Yo-Tzuh appears to the Monkey King as he is beating someone and asks him about his anger. He adds that he created the Monkey King, explaining that the rock in which the Monkey King was born is also his creation. The Monkey King resists Tze-Yo-Tzuh’s intervention and tries to flee, using all of his powers to do so. When he encounters five golden pillars, the Monkey King carves his name into a pillar and then urinates on it, only to learn that the five pillars are the fingers of Tze-Yo-Tzuh’s hand. The Monkey King finally accepts the “ever-present reach” (77) of his creator and walks with Tze-Yo-Tzuh. Though the Monkey King listens to his creator and hears his creator say that all creations are wonderful, he insists on challenging Tze-Yo-Tzuh. The Monkey King is punished when Tze-Yo-Tzuh buries him under a mountain of rocks for five hundred years.

Section 5 Summary

A series of panels shows Jin and a girl named Amelia. They are in the seventh grade, and Jin has a crush on Amelia, whom he has known since the third grade. Images of Jin lying in bed thinking about Amelia contrast with the images of Jin at school admiring Amelia from afar. Jin tells Wei-Chen about his feelings for Amelia. When Wei-Chen mocks Jin for liking a girl, he tells Jin that in Taiwan anyone who claims to have feelings for a girl before the age of 18 is ridiculed. Jin calls Wei-Chen an “F.O.B.”—a derogatory term meaning “Fresh Off the Boat”—and Wei-Chen does not appear insulted. A caption on an illustration of Wei-Chen and Suzy holding hands explains that two weeks after Jin’s confession to Wei-Chen, they become a couple.

In science class, Mr. Graham asks for volunteers to help take care of some animals that have been loaned to the class by a parent who works for Babelene Cosmetics. The drawings of the caged animals show that they are all wearing lipstick and mascara. Amelia, who is sitting next to Greg, volunteers, and when Wei-Chen tries to volunteer Jin, his plan backfires; Mr. Graham designates Wei-Chen and Amelia as the volunteers.

Later, Jin wonders if Amelia likes Greg as Wei-Chen and Suzy flirt with each other while sitting on a bench. Jin’s friends tell him not to be paranoid, and Wei-Chen calls Jin a “turtle” while encouraging him to be more brave around Amelia. Wei-Chen and Suzy laugh at Jin’s awkwardness when Amelia is nearby. Two boys from their class walk by, making anti-Asian racist jokes, and the three friends fall silent. Drawn stripes on their faces indicate unhappy blushing.

Jin walks home alone in the sunshine, wondering about Greg and Amelia. As he approaches his front door, he thinks about Greg’s blond curly hair. The next day at school, he appears at his locker, his hair permed and curled like Greg’s. As Jin walks away, Suzy tells Wei-Chen to be kind to Jin; Wei-Chen cannot understand why Jin’s hair is “a broccoli.”

Wei-Chen and Amelia look after the animals in the science classroom together after school. They accidentally lock themselves in a closet, and they talk while they wait to be rescued. Wei-Chen assures Amelia that Jin will come looking for them, and Amelia describes him as “the Asian boy with the afro” (101). Wei-Chen talks about Jin and compliments his personality and kindness. When Amelia asks if Jin likes her, Wei-Chen laughs.

Meanwhile, Jin is waiting for Wei-Chen outside. He grows worried when Wei-Chen does not arrive and asks a janitor to unlock the science classroom. As he opens the closet door, he sees Amelia smiling up at him. At Wei-Chen’s urging, Jin asks Amelia out on a date and she agrees. Jin goes to bed that night happy.

Section 6 Summary

As the school bell marks the start of the day at Oliphant High School, Danny and Chin-Kee arrive; they are tardy. In class, Chin-Kee embarrasses Danny when he knows all the answers to the teachers’ questions, and one teacher tells the students that they should be more like Chin-Kee. Many of the panels that illustrate Chin-Kee’s time in the classrooms are underscored by a series of “hahas” that denote laughter.

In the lunchroom, Chin-Kee eats “clispy flied cat gizzards wiff noodle” (114), and a drawing of a dead cat’s head emerging from a Chinese takeout box appears on the page. One of Danny’s friends, a large boy named Steve, banters with Danny about sports. Danny introduces Chin-Kee, and as Danny and Steve laugh and joke together, Chin-Kee takes Steve’s soft drink and urinates in the can. As the bell rings for class to begin, Steve wonders what happened to his drink.

In class, Chin-Kee continues to show off his knowledge. At the end of the day, Danny finds out he has to serve detention for being tardy. Two students mock the shape of Chin-Kee’s eyes as Danny walks alone to detention and Chin-Kee goes to the library to “find Amellican girl to bind feet and bear Chin-Kee’s children” (121).

On his way to detention, Danny sees Melanie and apologizes for Chin-Kee’s behavior the night before. Melanie apologizes for leaving so abruptly. When Danny tries to ask Melanie out on a date, she rebuffs him, saying that she values their friendship too much to risk going out together. Danny assumes she is rejecting him because of Chin-Kee and refuses to believe Melanie’s desire to protect their friendship. She tells Danny that his teeth “kind of buck out a little” (124) and gives him the card of her orthodontist uncle.

Danny misses basketball practice due to detention, but he sees Steve in the gym. Danny talks to Steve about Chin-Kee and his annual visits, explaining that Danny has had to switch schools every time Chin-Kee comes to visit. Steve tries to tell Danny it won’t be the same at Oliphant High School. He explains to Danny that he was picked on for his weight when he was a freshman and that he will defend Danny if anyone “gives [him] trouble” (128). Danny appears relieved and thanks Steve, but when Steve offers to buy Danny a soda, Danny is insulted and says, “What, so I can pee in it?” (128) Steve realizes that Chin-Kee urinated into his soda at lunch and throws up in a garbage can. Danny leaves the gym alone and angry.

Sections 4-6 Analysis

Another important theme of the novel concerns the idea of transformation and its impact on one’s identity. When the Monkey King transforms his appearance and insists that he and his monkey followers wear shoes, he attempts to change his true self and consequently puts himself and the other monkeys in danger. Their footing is compromised by shoes, and as the monkey slip around on the branches of the trees they inhabit, readers are able to appreciate the danger of trying to be something other than what they are.

Similarly dangerous and harmful is Danny’s paranoia when his two friends Melanie and Steve try to show him genuine friendship. Danny, who is Jin transformed, looks White, but in actuality he is still of Chinese heritage. His inability to accept his true identity leads him to take on a false external form that causes him internal distress and negatively impacts his relationships with others; ironically, by trying so hard to belong to the mainstream cultural group, Jin has set himself apart even more definitively. Danny’s paranoia parallels the Monkey King’s refusal to accept the words of Tze-Yo-Tzuh, the creator of the universe. The creator’s explanations and assurances that the Monkey King is truly wonderful are genuine, but the Monkey King lacks the ability to trust others, even the being that created him. His past experiences with discrimination, like those of Jin’s, have damaged his ability to form relationships and to understand gestures of authentic friendship and concern when they appear.

In the middle-school science classroom, irony is observable in the presence of the animals in cages, on loan from the cosmetics company. The creatures have puffy lips and exaggerated eyelashes, all of which represent the consequences of animal testing. These drawings lead the reader to wonder about how cultures mistreat animals; racist Asian stereotypes suggest that all Asians eat dogs, widely regarded as a domestic favorite with Westerners, but American culture often sanctions the mistreatment of animals like the ones owned by the cosmetics company. The humiliation of the animals, all of whom are trapped in cages for the students to gawk at their grotesque features, parallels the humiliation of Jin, who feels trapped by his Chinese appearance and identity.

As the character of Chin-Kee develops further, readers will be able to find irony in the fact that Chin-Kee is able to answer all the questions posed by teachers, but the American students cannot. Chin-Kee appears to know all the relevant details of Western culture that appear in traditional American classrooms, exemplifying the stereotype of Asians who are remarkably academically successful. For this reason, stereotyped Asian students are often considered a threat to White students in some academic circles, as the Asian students appear to outperform their White counterparts. Another example of Chin-Kee’s personification of yellow peril, or the sense that Asians are a danger to the Western world, is apparent in his decision to urinate in Steve’s soda. Though Chin-Kee explains to Danny that it was only a joke, the repulsive nature of this prank and the fact that Danny’s revelation of Chin-Kee’s joke makes Steve sick contain sinister undertones.