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The author of this article conveys how teaching Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese from a critical visual literacy approach enables students to gain a deeper understanding of Yang's commentary on historic and modern stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans.
The call for a recent themed issue on "Teaching English in a Democratic Society" begged the question: What does American literature say about our nation and its people? I also ask, what do youth responses to American literature say about our nation and its people? And, importantly, what do these responses mean for English teachers? In this article, I address these questions with a focus on Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese-a work of American literature that has much to say about race and identity politics and contributes essential perspectives for teaching in a democracy.
Yang brought my attention to these questions in a speech he delivered to an audience of educators and librarians for winning the Michael Printz award for his graphic novel in 2007. (The Printz award is presented annually for the best work of young adult fiction.) Interweaving three storylines that include the Chinese fable of the Monkey King, a middle school boy named Jin, and the outrageous and stereotypical Cousin Chin-Kee, Yang visually confronts issues of identity, culture, and racism that confront Asians and Asian Americans in US society. In the speech, Yang described troubling online responses from youth when Myspace encouraged readers to post their thoughts about the novel. Yang realized that his purposefully constructed character, Cousin Chin-Kee (see Figure 1), whom he created to draw readers' attention to historical and modern-day stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans, was being looked over by youth as nothing more than a good laugh. Yang notes, "It's okay for you to find him funny, but I want you to laugh at him with a knot in your stomach. Without at least a passing knowledge of Chin-Kee's historical roots, a young reader might not develop that knot" (12).
Cousin Chin-Kee is a merging of stereotypes directed at Asians and Asian Americans over centuries. To the detriment of his American (and white) cousin Danny, Chin-Kee visits the family once a year, goes to Danny's school, and embarrasses him by behaving...