Preview

Summary Of American Born Chinese By Gene Luen Yang

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
585 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Summary Of American Born Chinese By Gene Luen Yang
The graphic novel from American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang is set inside a Chinese Herbalist shop. The story begins with two characters one young boy and the other an old woman. Yang is an Asian American man, so this story was heavily influenced by his experiences. In this essay I analyze this graphic story by analyzing the characters the plot and the cultural context to get a better understanding of this story.
As the story begins I realized that the Boy character is very innocent. I get this from the way the first drawling is. Gene Yang does not give the Boy any eye brows or eye lashes which are what tells me the emotion of someone else. In the first picture the older woman also known as the Herbalist’s wife seems calm and tired as she

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The book starts out with three seemingly different tales, and then merges them all together.…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Neither Real Americans nor Real Asians? Multigeneration Asian Ethnics Navigating the Terrain of Authenticity, Mia Tuan discusses how Asian Americans today are not fully Asian nor fully American, and are characterized as not Asian enough due to the way they behave and/or live. Tuan discusses that when Asians interact with non-Asian people, they must “fight” to prove that they are not embracing their Asian roots more than their American roots due to wanting to feel accepted. On the other hand, they are seen as less Asian by “authentic” Asians, due to them not fully embracing their ethnic roots.…

    • 356 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Han China Dbq Essay

    • 858 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Given that China and Athens were located in two separate places, they both had very different forms of government, geography, and daily life.…

    • 858 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    This book focuses on the “clash” of cultures that occurs between the Lee family, immigrants to the US from Laos, and the doctors that treat their daughter, Lia, who has been diagnosed with epilepsy. Lia’s parents, Foua and Nao Kao believe that Lia has fallen ill because she has “lost her soul”.…

    • 6372 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The point of this essay, “The Chinese in All of us” by Richard Rodriguez, was to show that America is one giant melting pot. That there is no such thing as an “American” culture. An American culture cannot exist as one central thing because there are so many cultures that mixed together to form what we have now. It’s a never ending cycle of growth as a country. The immigrants come to America and with them, they bring their ideas and customs. While they learn the customs we already have we, in turn, adopt some of theirs that we observe along the way.…

    • 765 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In a world where our roots are often ignored, and who we are is shaped by outside pressures, our communities have become the place where we proudly embrace our true selves. Understanding identity strengthens community. In a world where people have to live with the fact that they are a minority, where their culture is denied and forgotten, covered up with a new image, flag, and name, what is left for people to unite as one? People lack persistence as it usually takes a lot of effort, but not for the narrator’s mother from “Borders” by Thomas King. While she’s on a trip to visit her daughter in Salt Lake City, she must cross the border, and to do so, she must admit she’s from the “Canadian side or American side”, but she is from the “Blackfoot…

    • 852 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Both places are seeped in tradition and culture. Tan shows China as an old ladn that is experiencing changes, but is unwilling to adapt. The difficulty of retrieving the Peking Man, the family doggedly selling ink despite its poor quality and sales, and the failure of the Japanese invasion all point to the way that…

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Han China Book Report

    • 1049 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Last year I had quite an adventure. I wanted to visit Han China but I couldn’t because the Han Dynasty was overthrown nearly 2000 years ago, in the year 220 CE. My solution was to build a time machine. I would tell you how I built it, but I won’t since you might use it to kill your grandfather and mess up reality. Anyways, I went back to the year 100 BCE during the reign of Han Wudi. I went back to this year because under Han Wudi the Han dynasty reached its peak, and I wanted to see the Han China when it was a glorious empire. When I arrived in China the first thing I noticed was a group of Chinese boys playing a sport that looked somewhat similar to a game of soccer. I asked one of them what they were playing…

    • 1049 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Although the speaker of the poem is not nessecarily supposed to be Lee; the story of immirgrating to the United States as a child does parallel that of his real life. In “For a New Citizen of These United States” the speaker talks about coming to America and fleeing a troubled past. Now, as an adult the speaker is reconnecting with an old friend who escaped along with them; however this friend does not want to speak about the past and the speaker does. Like the speaker Li-Young Lee also escaped from his home country, Indonesia, as a child and wound up in the United States. Even though there are similarites between both the speaker and Lee there is no certainty that Lee was also having a difficult time communicating with a friend from the past.…

    • 166 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Eric Liu’s essay, What Every American Should Know, he discusses how America needs to unite to create a common culture. This new culture will help the the current new generation of Americans become equal in a social atmosphere. Liu used Cultural Literacy, a critical piece by E.D. Hirsch, to explain a list of topics Hirsch and two of his colleagues believed every American show. The only concern that comes with the list is that it is outdated. The current generation needs a list with Internet memes, images, symbols, and pop culture references that can put Americans of all backgrounds on an equal playing field.…

    • 574 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The setting of the story takes place in China, which enacts an important role in assisting the reader’s perception of how Jing-mei find’s her legacy in her native land. The moment She arrives in Shenzhen, she starts feeling unusual,…

    • 641 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The graphic novel American Born Chinese, by Gene Yang, tells three stories, which revolve around a main character who has to overcome the pain of being a social outcast, while having a goal to maintain his or her identity. The characters in the novel are too caught up trying to be someone they are not, however in doing so they forget their true identities, which they should not forget. There is first the monkey king who would like to be in heaven. Throughout the novel, the Monkey King is shown just as strong as any other God, by mastering the twelve Kung Fu disciplines. One night, a guard forbids the Monkey King from entering a party, “Yes, yes. I apologize profusely sir, but I cannot let you in…you may be a king- you may even be a deity- but…

    • 1031 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Amy Tan allows us to deepen our understanding of her world by finding every day items and ideas that Americans can relate to such as a mother’s desire to do the best for their children, or using meals to represent a nurturing love, or a vase to represent a rocky foundation, or the pain that comes from hiding your true self. The use of figurative language in this novel removes the barriers from both the Chinese and the American cultures and customs therefore allowing us to examine each other not through the eyes of a specific race but through the eyes of one race, the human race.…

    • 107 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to the early 20th century, many Chinese families struggled to gain social, economic, and educational stature in both China and the United States. In the book, A Transnational History of a Chinese Family, by Haiming Liu, we learn about the Chang family rooted in Kaiping County, China, who unlike many typical Chinese families’ exemplified hard-work and strong cultural values allowing them to pursue an exceptional Chinese-American lifestyle. Even with immigration laws preventing Chinese laborers and citizens to enter unless maintaining merchant status, Yitang and Sam Chang managed to sponsor approximately 40 relatives to the states with their businesses in herbalist medicine and asparagus farming. Though the Chang’s encountered many of the hardships typical of Chinese families for the time, they relied on their outstanding work ethic so that their families would always be supported, receive the best possible education, and preserve family and kinship relationships to get them through the tough times and long periods of separation.…

    • 2293 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this story, Wang Lung’s life gives detailed examples of the hardships and struggles of living in a lower social class. Then, as the story progresses, the novel tells of the luxuries and customs of being wealthy. Many people can relate to this novel because it shows what life was a wealthy man and as a poor man. Nowadays, people in third world countries or are just common laborers…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics