Jin Jing American Born Chinese Analysis

In an age with a vast number of children born to immigrants, people have become increasingly willing to detach themselves from their cultural heritage and to merge with their ethnic surroundings.
Growing up, these individuals face the struggle of fitting into the society that surrounds them. Gene Luen
Yang’s fictional account of Jin Wang in American Born Chinese puts this issue into perspective by placing Jin in the spotlight. Jin’s position at center stage doesn’t just allow us to see him as who he truly is, but as who he thinks he is. His switch from San Francisco Chinatown to an American school ultimately changes his perspective of himself and his few other Asian friends due to the prejudice he receives. Although Jin is confronted by racial slurs and discrimination from his American
While Danny is beating Chin-kee into submission, Danny’s command for Chin-kee to “go back to where [he] came from,” is a derogatory way of telling him to go back to
China. Therefore, we can see that Jin’s struggle with handling his unhappiness with being Chinese results in the development of his enmity to act of violence against other Asians.
The stereotypical stigma Jin experiences and his search for identity despite his cultural dissimilarities perpetrates his shift from being a victim to an attributor of intolerance of Asians and their ethnic qualities. However, his altercations with his friends and his dislike of being Chinese boy promote a greater theme that permeates through each panel. Jin’s life revolves around his search for his identity amidst his ethnicity and the American setting to find out whom he truly is and what defines him as an
American born Chinese. Through Greg and the other Americans at Jin’s elementary school, Jin learns that he does not fit in with the Caucasian crowd in this coming of age story, yet his unwillingness to associate himself with Wei-Chen and Suzy has disconnected him from his identity as an Asian. Although