Childhood and Ethnic Visibility in Gene Yang's American Born Chinese

Abstract

Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese (2006) raises questions of Asian American visibility and invisibility through the juxtaposition of legend, Bildungsroman, and sitcom. Using the graphic form, a medium that foregrounds the image and, consequently, the visible more directly, Yang engages with the ways persons of Asian descent in the USA have been simultaneously rendered invisible by racism or made visible in stereotypically damaging forms (based on the model minority stereotype, for example, or through the commodification of particular images of Asians in films and other popular media). This essay explores the ways Yang approaches the history and forms of Chinese American visibility through multilayered storytelling and the graphic form.

Keywords:

• Gene Yang
• graphic narrative
• Asian American
• visibility
• invisibility