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I just finished this graphic novel American Born Chinese today. While it’s intended for a younger audience, and a pretty quick read, I just wanted to offer it out there as a recommendation. It’s a really well written graphic novel and one of the few that deals specifically with asian-american culture and integration. And, of course, it has toy robots and the Monkey King, so what more could you want really? ;-)
Amazon’s review:
Indie graphic novelist Gene Yang’s intelligent and emotionally challenging American Born Chinese is made up of three individual plotlines: the determined efforts of the Chinese folk hero Monkey King to shed his humble roots and be revered as a god; the struggles faced by Jin Wang, a lonely Asian American middle school student who would do anything to fit in with his white classmates; and the sitcom plight of Danny, an All-American teen so shamed by his Chinese cousin Chin-Kee (a purposefully painful ethnic stereotype) that he is forced to change schools. Each story works well on its own, but Yang engineers a clever convergence of these parallel tales into a powerful climax that destroys the hateful stereotype of Chin-Kee, while leaving both Jin Wang and the Monkey King satisfied and happy to be who they are.
I read this book 10 years or so ago, called “Turning Japanese” by David Maura http://www.amazon.com/Turning-Japanese-Memoirs-David-Mura/dp/0385423446
At the time, I found it eerily familiar. I am 3rd gen Asian. My mom’s family were in Hawaii when men came around and invited Gramps and his boys to come stay with the Govt for a while and as a residual effect my mom became the uber American. (a symptom which the author of the book relates in his own way and more eloquently).
Anyhoo, surely not for everyone, not likely the definitive Asian/American portrait, but definitely something to include in the mosaic of “the Asian American Story”.
gigs.