American Born Chinese Identity Quotes

In Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel “American Born Chinese”, the Monkey King parallels Jin life by many common interests they share like conforming to society to gain the admiration of others. They both struggle throughout the novel with many conflicts such as fitting in, insecurities, and being withdrawn from others.

For the Monkey King and Jin it is critical for them to fit into society in order to gain approval from other who are important to them. They both very much so struggle with this throughout the novel. For the Monkey King there were many occasions of this happening, an example of this would be when he goes to a dinner party and is rejected due to who he was, a monkey. What happened was that he showed up at the party and the security

The Monkey King felt that he wasn't being respected due to his title. He was so shaken up from the dinner party incident that he completely gave himself a new look, a new name, a new title, practically a new identity. The quote “This “Monkey King” it speaks of no longer exists, for I have mastered twelve major disciples of Kung-Fu and transcended my former title! I shall now be called… The Great Sage King.”(60) The Monkey King felt that he was not respected so he then changed who he was so that he was respected. In the quote he says the he changed his title and he also changed his name to The Great Sage King, probably in hopes of earning respect that he desired very much. The Monkey King also changed his whole look to a more human-like appearance. He started wearing a full outfit of clothing, including a white pair of shoes. This is that Monkey King’s way of forming to society so that people will treat him with more

One day after school Jin was walking home thinking about Amelia, like he usually does. As he's walking home an idea pops into Jin's head, he starts thinking about Greg and Amelia’s relationship that they have. He soon thinks that Amelia might very possibly like Greg, not as a friend, but in a way that makes him more special than a friend. That encourages Jin into making himself look like Greg so that Amelia might like him like they way that she like Greg. This is when Jin decides he will do his hair just like Greg so there would be no difference between them. First of all Jin only had an interest in Amelia until his best friend got a girlfriend, that is what triggered him to have an interest in girls. That shows one way of him trying to be like other people to be “cool”, the other way is that he assumes that if he looks like Greg, Amelia will automatically like him for his looks. Doing this Jin then goes on a date with Amelia making him think that you do need to change how you look for them to like you, which is not the