American Born Chinese

First off:

Hurrah! for the 2007 Printz Award Winner
American Born Chinese
By Gene Luen Yang

This is the first graphic novel to win a Printz, and it's about a boy and a monkey and a bunch of other stuff, like becoming the person that you are, and giving up trying to be the person that other people are trying to make you into. I'm a sucker for well-drawn cartoon emotions and creative evocations of folkloric monsters and demons. I think there's some line in a DangerDoom track about how ' it seems to me cartoons are realer than reality TV,' which hits the nail on the head for me.

I don't know much about the author beyond the fact that he's roughly my age. The story is in part about trying to deny the part of yourself that makes you Chinese (and therefore separates you from the dominate white culture shared by your peers.) This is a big deal for some of us who are 1)overly sensitive, like me, and 2)a bit scarred from our childhood and adolescence, which both took place in a country that was more ignorant and less diverse than the America of today. This assessment is debatable, I guess., but anyhoo...I wonder if this graphic novel speaks to the teens of today in any of the same ways it speaks to us older folks who went through similar periods of rejection of our non-white selves.

I swing violently back and forth between forcing myself to deny the dominance of 'white' American culture and thinking bitterly that white folks are so awash in privelege that they just haven't a fucking clue. I do this in part because I work with a lot of Republicans who deny deny deny that race plays into anything these days. I'm weak, but I'm also trying to see the world through their eyes to some tiny extent, because I have to live and work with these people and their views, no matter how despicable I find them.

I did my first school visit to a senior high yesterday where another librarian and I spoke to classes of freshmen. The school is largely white, but there appear to be sizable populations of asians of many stripes, and black kids (both native- and foreign- born.) The school media specialist, a librarian from another branch and I took turns speaking. I did notice throughout that all the asian kids spent a lot of time eyeing me, attempting, I believe, to discern if I was some percentage asian.

We are led to believe that the teens of today are a lot more accepting of race, sexual identity, everything, than teens of 15 years ago, thanks to our 'globalized' society. If this is the case, can they identify with the boy protagonist of American Born Chinese? Do they empathize with where he (and I) come from? Or, would they just tell us to get over ourselves? My cousin who is 24 and half Chinese/half white claims that race is only a big deal for me because I make it a big deal. His family and customs are as Americanized as Wonder Bread, and he has always dwelt in Upper Middle Class land, where, if you believe Lawrence Otis Graham, embrace of unifying upper middle class values can smooth over many differences, including those created by race.

So I guess one of my questions is, does being Chinese get me an 'in' with asian library patrons? I often wonder this at large staff meetings, which are THE white-est gatherings I've encountered in MN, though we have stayed largely in the metro area during our time here. Is race really irrelevant anymore, like those rightie wackos claim, or is this generation of teens in denial, or what?