Jin's Disguises In American Born Chinese

A person walks up to a boy named Jin and says they will give him $1,000 if he gives up himself and becomes what they want him to be. Is it worth it? Jin thinks so, only in the book, American Born Chinese, he doesn’t need a bribe to convince him that. In this book, three characters, the Monkey King, Jin, and Danny all struggle to fit in. They do this the same way people do today. People transform a fraction of themselves every day in hopes to please others and be accepted, but in order to do this it is necessary for one to forfeit their soul because they sacrifice their vulnerability when they become someone else and choose to disguise who they whole-heartedly are.
People hope to please others because we yearn to be accepted, but in order to

In the story, American Born Chinese, Danny idolizes people who don’t have Chin-Kee as their cousin. This is obvious in the book when Chin-Kee is answering all the questions right in class, the look on Danny’s face is genuine embarrassment and shame. Danny’s face shows clear lines on his check due to intense blushing and in one frame he covers his entire face with his hands because he cannot bear to be looked at like Chin-Kee’s cousin (113). As a result, Danny disguises himself to be like everyone else by not being proud of his cousin for knowing the answers. Rather, Danny is appalled by Chin-Kee and his foreign customs. To add to that, when Danny disguises himself, he forfeits a part his soul by wanting to be, as well as react like the rest of society, and by not being susceptible to the possibility that they are related. In this book, Jin also disguises himself to look American because he doesn’t like the treatment he gets as a Chinese person. The first transformation Jin makes more or less subtle and it is when Jin changes his hair. However, after Jin kisses Wei-Chen’s girlfriend and Jin starts a fight, Danny forfeits his soul and all he used to be to disguise himself to look like a popular American boy. The herbalist’s wife does this for him after he sacrifices everything in hopes to please others, she says, “So little friend, you’ve done it. Now what would you like to become” (193-194). This is significant because Jin had always viewed Greg as superior to him mainly because he was white, popular, and girls enjoyed talking with him. Nevertheless, Jin was forced to relinquish his vulnerability to become a white boy, but Jin doesn’t realize that in this form he would not be able to blame his unpopularity on his race. The longer Jin is Danny the more he becomes like Danny and less like Jin, by virtue of the fact