American Born Chinese First read

The book American Born Chinese is a graphic novel containing three different, yet related stories. The three stories all relate to a sense of identity and what it means to embrace heritage while trying to blend into a new environment. The first story that the book open with is one of a Monkey king who is denied entrance to a party because he does not have shoes, yet monkey do not wear shoes. After being rejected he barricades himself inside “the inner bowels of his royal chamber”.  He spends this time mediating to emerge with a new name, the great sage of equal heaven, and some new shoes. The Monkey king then proceeds to convince all other gods of his power by fighting them all until they say his name. The gods then go to the Tze-yo-Tzuh to demand that he do something about the monkey king. The Monkey king questions Tze-yo-Tzuh’s power by going to the edge of the universe to find five pillars. In an act of deviance he carves his name into one of the pillars and also urinates on it. However, he returns only to find that the pillars were in fact Tze-yo-Tzuh’s hand. Tze-yo-Tzuh tells the Monkey king that he intended him to be a monkey so he should be who he really is. The Monkey king refuses to accept this and challenges Tze-yo-Tzuh to a fight to which Tze-yo-Tzuh replies by burring him under a mountain of rocks so he cannot practice Kung-Fu. This story is then followed by what I consider to be the main story, the story of Jin. Jin is of Chinese decent and has recently moved from San Francisco to a rural community with a very small Asian population. Jin is ashamed of his culture and spends most of his time trying to avoid who he is, by perming his hair and attempting to avoid all other Asian students. Jin and the other Asian kids are often subjected to racial slurs by their peers. The third story is of Danny, a white American who is visited by his Chinese cousin. This story is presented as a sit com with a laugh track running along the bottom of panels that warrant one. Danny’s Chinese cousin is an embodiment of every Chinese stereotype rolled into one. Danny struggles to live everyday life with his cousin and confides in his friend Steve that he has transferred schools three times since high school because of his cousin. Steve then tells him that he should embrace his cousin and to shake off any rude comments from others. I see this last section as almost a Subvertisment within the Novel, exaggerating the extreme stereotypes Asian Americans may face to bring them to light for a wider audience to understand.

What are your thoughts on American Born Chinese so far? How do you thing the Graphic Novel Medium aids in storytelling? How well do you think the three stories work with each other? Is it too much for one book? Also the term "fresh off the boat" was used a few times in this novel, and funny enough it is actually a the name of an ABC sitcom  http://abc.go.com/shows/fresh-off-the-boat