American Born Chinese

My initial impression of Gene Luen Yang's novel, American Born Chinese, is that the author knows that poking fun at asian-American culture is entertaining to many. In America, we are stereotyped as being ignorant and not caring about any other cultures but our own; this stereotype definitely has a basis, and foreign authors can profit from it. We as Americans find it funny when others have a hard time adapting, since our culture is so second-nature to us. It's hard for us to fathom this lack of knowledge of our culture. Also, we're interested in learning about other cultures if, in doing so, we don't stray too far from what we know. America's egocentricity allows Wang a platform that's both entertaining and enlightening, especially to the American reader.

Page 97 is especially interesting to me, as there isn't any dialogue at all. Despite this, the page says just as much, if not more, than the pages that are full of words. Jin is upset because he believes that Amelia likes Greg. Then he comes up with an amazing idea: if he was more like Greg--or, more specifically, if he had hair like Greg's--then Amelia would like him! Jin's conclusion is slightly pathetic, but it's the first pro-active step he takes in pursuing Amelia. I love how pictures can say so much without literally saying anything at all. This page is a great example of multimodality. The reader must use the pictures and apply them to what they already know in order to interpret the page. It's a different means of interpretation than reading words, which is what we're used to. Despite this means of interpretation being anomalous, it's not difficult to decipher what the page is saying.