{"id":785,"date":"2017-03-06T13:27:18","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T13:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoinreads\/?p=785"},"modified":"2017-03-06T13:27:18","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T13:27:18","slug":"professor-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bcl.bowdoin.edu\/bowdoin-reads\/2017\/03\/06\/professor-kong\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over winter break, I was asked by a family friend to recommend some literary readings for her four Chinese American children, ages 5, 7, 9, and 14.\u00a0 For the teenage daughter, I immediately thought of one of my favorite books, Maxine Hong Kingston\u2019s classic memoir The Woman Warrior<\/em>.\u00a0 But what of the younger kids?\u00a0 It was in this context that I recently revisited Gene Luen Yang\u2019s 2006 award-winning graphic novel, American Born Chinese<\/em>.\u00a0 The cover blurb helpfully summarizes the basic plotline for us: \u201cJin Wang starts at a new school where he\u2019s the only Chinese-American student.\u00a0 When a boy from Taiwan joins his class, Jin doesn\u2019t want to be associated with an FOB [fresh off the boat] like him.\u00a0 Jin just wants to be an all-American boy, because he\u2019s in love with an all-American girl.\u201d\u00a0 Other key figures appear along the way, including a cousin visiting from China and the legendary Monkey King or Sun Wukong.\u00a0 What strikes me about this text is its potential appeal to a range of audiences.\u00a0 Never a big reader of comics myself, I can nonetheless see layers of genre here: this is at once diasporic folklore and ethnic bildungsroman, fictionalized memoir and psychic allegory, gothic camp and racial critique, Kung Fu Panda<\/em> and Better Luck Tomorrow<\/em>.\u00a0 In addressing the theme of Asian versus white masculinities, the damaging effects of model minority and perpetual foreigner stereotypes, the persistence of Yellow Peril discourse and the construction of the immigrant as alien, the novel tackles some of the central issues in Asian American studies as well as our current U.S. race and immigration policies.\u00a0 Without giving the final plot twist away, I\u2019d add that readers interested more generally in theories of psychoanalysis and trauma, tricksterism and colonial mimicry, power and the assemblage will also find much material of note here.\u00a0 Hence, not only have I recommended American Born Chinese<\/em> to my family friend for her children, but my upper-level seminar on \u201cImagined Asias\u201d will be reading it this week, a fortuitously timely work for our time.<\/p>\n

Library Note:\u00a0 A copy is on order!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over winter break, I was asked by a family friend to recommend some literary readings for her four Chinese American children, ages 5, 7, 9, and 14.\u00a0 For the teenage daughter, I immediately thought of one of my favorite books, Maxine Hong Kingston\u2019s classic memoir The Woman Warrior.\u00a0 But what of the younger kids?\u00a0 It … <\/p>\n

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