The plot of American
Born Chinese could not exist without the presence (or lack thereof) of the
obscure and oblivious parent. When first introduced to a parental figure, the
artwork cleverly masks the faces of Jin’s parents, starting on page 23 and continuing
throughout the comic. On page 25, the reader gets so close as to see the bottom
rim of the Jin’s mother’s glasses, but her eyes and the eyes of her husband are
not shown. The same occurs with Danny’s parents, though at the end, the reader
discovers Jin and Danny are actually the same person. On page 46, Danny’s
mother yells at him from the kitchen, but never shows her face. As his father
carries in Chin-Kee’s luggage, the packages hide the face of the man, though
his balding black hair can be seen. As far as the plot of the story goes, it would
make sense that Danny’s parents are never shown, so as not to ruin the surprise
that he is really Jin, but this does not explain the necessity to hide the
faces of Jin’s parents.
In addition to keeping their faces concealed, the parents in
the comic are also incredibly ignorant to what is happening. On pages 126 and 127,
Danny confides in his friend about his true feelings towards Chin-Kee. He
explains, “It gets so bad by the end of the school year that I have to switch
schools,” (127). When it is finally revealed that Danny is a façade of Jin, he
says to himself in the mirror, “A new face deserved a new name. I decided to
call myself Danny,” (198). Jin’s parents were so oblivious that they did not
even realize he had changed ethnicities, let alone his own name and where he
went to school.
All of the effort to conceal the faces of the parents and to
portray them as so unaware they didn’t notice a drastic change in their son, indicates
that American parents are not involved enough in their children’s lives. The
purpose of the comic is to show what life is like for an American-Chinese
child, and the absence of parental control propels the plot, while making a
massive claim about America’s parents. When the parents are finally revealed on
page 225, they are still shown as ignorant, unsure of how Chin-Kee is related
to them. While the parents’ identity is
not a major plot point, it is a significant underlying theme.
It is interesting that you would point out the obliviousness of the parents because it goes against stereotypes that I heard while growing up. I had heard that Chinese parents tended to be overbearing, not oblivious, especially involving school and social matters. I wonder why Gene Luen Yang decided to make the parents oblivious. Was it just comedic relief? Did it have something to do with his own personal experiences? Was it a plot tool? Is he making a statement about American parents? Keep in mind the parents are from China, not the United States. That leads me to think it is not a statement about American parents.
ReplyDeleteTo address your point about Jin becoming Danny, I pictured it more as him believing he was white rather than being white. It’s not unheard of for people with “non-American” names to change their name, and we know that he wants to not be seen as different. Once the story revealed that Danny was Jin, I imagined it was, as with the monkey king, you are still who you always are and there is no reason to be ashamed of where you come from. Tze-Yo-Tzuh says to the monkey king, “A monkey I intended you to be. A monkey you are” (81). Then, the monkey king teaches Jin a similar lesson. The monkey king never stopped being a monkey though he thought he was something different, and Jin never stopped being a Chinese-American boy though he wished otherwise.
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ReplyDeleteI interpreted the absence of the parents as representative of how Jin/Danny is on his own figuring out how to grow up Chinese-American. It is stated that his parents did not immigrate to the United States until “they were both graduate students,” meaning they did not have any of the childhood experiences unique to America that Jin/Danny is struggling with (25). They therefore do not know how to guide and advise him, so from Jin/Danny’s perspective it is almost like they are barely there for him at all, and he sees them as ignorant of his problems. For instance, because she does not realize that Danny has tried to distance himself from his heritage, his mother doesn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to see his cousin, which is why she obliviously remarks, “Oh, you two are going to have so much fun together!” (51). The idea of her son not wanting to be Chinese would not have occurred to her because she does not understand how his childhood of being one of only a few Asian-American students at his school has affected him. Because Jin/Danny is the first in his family to have these experiences he must teach himself how to handle them, often with disastrous results. At the end when the Monkey King says to him, “You know, Jin, I would have saved myself from five hundred years imprisonment...had I only realized how good it is to be a monkey,” it is the closest thing to parental advise on his identity crisis that Jin has received, and it causes him to repair his relationship with Wei-Chen (223).
ReplyDeleteI think the role of the parents' in the novel is intentionally meant to be more indirect. Like Julie said, this allows Jin to find his identity on his own. However, the parable Jin's mother told him reflects his parents' influence in his life. In the story, the mother and son move several times until they find a place near a university which leads to the son "[spending] all his free-time reading books about mathematics, science, and history" (Yang 24). It seems that this is what Jin's parents did for him. They worked their way towards good jobs and eventually moved because they believed it would give Jin better opportunities. Their decisions here allow Jin to enter into school and struggle through his identity, a more personal struggle. Jin is clearly resistant to his Chinese identity, as evidenced by when he tells Wei-Chen, "You're in America. Speak Chinese" (Yang 37). Because of this resistance, I feel that the lack of involvement by his parents in Jin's school struggles may have resulted more from him not informing them, rather than them being absent.
ReplyDeleteWhether intentional or not, I think that the lack of adult figures in Jin’s life highlights the appearance of the old herbalist’s wife who speaks to Jin when he is a child. The older woman implies what is to come for Jin in her first appearance when she says to him, “It’s easy to become anything you wish…so long as you’re willing to forfeit your soul.” (29). While this seems insignificant to both the reader and Jin at the time, this quote foreshadows his transformation into Danny later in the story. It is also important to note that her character reappears immediately before Jin’s transformation in a dream and asks him, “Now what would you like to become?” (194). Her reappearance creates a sense of perplexity around the character of the herbalist’s wife as it appears that she is responsible for Jin’s transformation. Through her foresight of what is to come for Jin and apparent role in Jin’s transformation, this could explain why she is the only active adult figure present in the story. The reader would initially be oblivious to this, however, considering that all other parental and adult figures are passive during the story, this would make her character’s role even more significant.
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