It follows tenth-grader Jin Wang (Ben Wang), who is struggling to fit in with his peers. When he is tasked with showing new exchange student Wei-Chen (Jimmy Liu) around, he is unexpectedly thrust into a battle between mythical Chinese gods, including Sun Wukong (Daniel Wu) and Guanyin (Michelle Yeoh).

The fun conceit and superb acting make American Born Chinese a great family watch. Everything Everywhere All at Once stars Yeoh and Quan shine alongside star Ben Wang. The high school and family "real life" scenes are fairly subtle, without the eye-roll-inducing cliches of many tween-oriented shows.

Based on the genre-hopping graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang, “American Born Chinese” tells the story of Jin Wang, an average teenager juggling his high school social life with his home life.

American Born Chinese is a product of many individuals' experiences - Yu based Jin's parents on his own and the character of Freddy Wong on one of his first acting roles; the set designers took inspiration from their families' homes for the Wangs' house.

American Born Chinese explores themes around identity, stereotypes, friendship, and self-acceptance through these three intertwined stories.

LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in American Born Chinese, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

• Identity and Prejudice.
• Racism and Popular Culture.
• Pride, Stubbornness, and Humility.
• Storytelling and Universality.

It's what much of the show's audience and the readers who found solace in Yang's graphic novel have likely done throughout their lives: absorb both American and Chinese lifestyles at once, mixing and remixing them in perpetuity. The show's best quality is this constant, purposeful immersion.

China Boy is a 1991 work of autobiographical fiction by Gus Lee. Lee has confirmed that the book is a thinly veiled memoir of his early years, growing up as the child of Chinese immigrants in San Francisco's Panhandle neighborhood.

Princess Iron Fan is the wife of Muwong, and she clearly has a vendetta against Jin and his godly allies, though her true motivations weren't revealed in American Born Chinese episode 8.

This book switches from three perspectives: an Asian boy named Jin Wang, a white boy named Danny, and a monkey from a Chinese myth. They are all very different, but have one thing in common: they all want to fit in.

In the third story, Danny (who is really Jin in disguise) learns to overcome his racial identity through interactions with Chin-Kee, the Monkey King in human form and a Chinese stereotype, or an oversimplified perception of a cultural, ethnic, national, or racial identity.

Lesson Summary. American Born Chinese by Gene Yang is a graphic novel that converges three stories together through the theme of personal transformation: a fable and two seemingly separate stories that turn out to be about the same character. This graphic novel's themes center around identity and transformation.