American Born Chinese CR#3

In the “American Born Chinese” written by Gene Luen Yang the writing styles between the first story of the Monkey King differs from the second story of Jin Wang. In the story of the Monkey King there were some words that were written in Chinese characters instead of English. The characters written in Chinese were single characters like in page 18. In page 18 the translations would be electric, storm, and fire. Instead of writing the words out in English, Yang wrote it in Chinese characters to emphasize the culture. Since the story of the Monkey King is a ancient, the Chinese characters is the beginning of the evolution of the language in the graphic novel. Also in page 58, it shows the Chinese characters again. Whenever it is the story of the Monkey King, the Chinese characters will be used to show the beginning of the Chinese language.

In the story about Jin Wang, the story was told in Chinese, but in order for the reader to understand Yang translated it to English. Yang used signs to indicate that it was said in Chinese. An example would be when Jin was talking to the new student, Wei-Chen, on page 38. Yang put the two stories together showing the evolution of the writing styles, but it also juxtapose each other because instead of writing in Chinese in the second story, Yang decided to translate into English. This showed how the language slowly transformed from writing in Chinese to speaking in Chinese, but translated into English. The order of these stories are next to each other to show the evolution of the Chinese language from the past to present.

When Wei-Chen first spoke to Jin, it was initially in Chinese and Jin told him to speak in English because he is in America now, but later on both Jin and Wei-Chen were speaking in Chinese, which is ironic and what most ABCs struggle with. The cultures of both Chinese and American are in Jin and it is shown that it is difficult to follow both cultures. Not only in culture, but also in language. The clash between English and Chinese are shown in this graphic novel, but the language is also evolving throughout the novel.