American Born Chinese
by bene Luen Yang is reminiscent of Little
Women by Louisa May Alcott due to the little moral questions that are
central to each chapter. While American Born Chinese tackles probably a broader
and definitely more modern set of issues, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Little Women.
In the very first chapter, the Monkey
King is denied entry to a party because he has no shoes and is a monkey (14,15).
This book is not quite the directive moral tale, as the Monkey King reacts to
this news by attacking everyone at the party. Yet, this novel still recalls Little Women because the Monkey King
notices that his cave smells like monkey fur and then “stayed awake the rest of
the night thinking of ways to get rid of it[the monkey fur smell]” (20). While
the moral is not quite as well spelled out as it was in Little Women, like Marmee
just telling everyone what to do, the Monkey King is not accepted because of who
and what he is.
Another chapter with an aggressive moral
element is the one in which the Monkey King interacts with Tze-Yo-Tzuh, the
creator. In this chapter the Monkey King learns a lesson about pride. The Monkey
King full of hubris thinks he can escape the reach of the creator and flies “past
the boundaries of reality itself” (77), only to learn that even then he cannot
escape the reach of the creator. The Monkey King refuses to accept his
limitations and accept himself and thus is sentenced to 500 years under a mountain
of rocks. Again, this novel presents a pretty clear-cut moral lesson and exhibits
negative behaviors that need to be curbed, particularly with regards to accepting
oneself.
Being able to accept oneself
despite society rejecting you is a hard lesson to learn and this is but one of
the more complex issues that Yang tackles in this graphic novel. There are
elements of friendship, romance, treatment of immigrants, commentary on American
society, all woven in to a modern and relatable setting. Thus, this novel is
clearly a distinct and in certain ways more complex tale than Little Women, each chapter being centered
around a life lesson instantly reminded me of Alcott’s tale.
You have an interesting take on the novel! I can see the parallels you are making, but I do not quite agree. You make a good point that a few morals can be extracted from the story. However, the morals are almost entirely implicit, excluding the lesson of accepting one’s own identity. As Tze-Yo-Tzuh tells the monkey king, “I do not make mistakes, little monkey. A monkey I intended you to be. A monkey you are,” (81). It does not appear to me that the author’s sole purpose of writing the novel was to propagate a certain moral code.
ReplyDeleteI think it is a stretch to liken American Born Chinese to Little Women. As you demonstrated, morals can be found in the story. However, they are not nearly as explicit as those in Little Women. American Born Chinese is a mixture of cultural commentary and a lesson about self-acceptance. By telling the stories of Jin, the monkey king, and Danny, the author implicitly teaches readers a lesson. While the novels do share the goal of conveying certain values to readers, they go about doing so in such distinct ways that saying they resemble one another so closely is far-fetched. Their only shared feature is the desire to teach readers a lesson. If comparing novels based on that alone, many stories could be considered just as similar to Little Women as American Born Chinese.