American Born Chinese By: Gene Luen Yang Book Talk
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What does it mean to be Chinese? Does it mean having a name
your teacher cant pronounce? Does it mean youre smarter than
everyone else in class? Does it mean youre naturally skilled in
martial arts? Does it mean you have a personal connection to the
Chinese fable of the Monkey King? All of these things are
possibilities explored in American Born Chinese, a graphic novel
that tells three different stories about what it means to be
Chinese, what it means to be American, and learning to accept your
true identity.
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Award-Winning Graphic Novel It includes three different stories
that somehow intertwine: 1. The Monkey King 2. A boy named Jin
Wang, whose story starts out after his family moved. 3. A boy named
Danny who is introduced to a new and unknown side of his
family
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Deals with difficult topics such as: Racism Cultural
differences Other stereotypes Discovering identities Folklore (Folk
Tales) Different concepts of heroes And more!
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Just like there are different ways to tell stories in a novel
(different narrations, points of view, etc), American Born Chinese
is told in different ways, from different characters, and from
different perspectives. Not only do the words tell a story, but so
do the images and other visual features
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How do you read a Graphic Novel?
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Panels: the boxes or spaces where the scenes are Speech
bubbles: dialog Thought bubbles: character thoughts Captions: the
narration First, it may help to know some specific terms:
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There are methods for reading graphic novels. Both reading the
panels and the text in the panels follows the same path: Left to
Right Top to Bottom
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How does this method translate to other texts? Lets find out.
Go pick a text from the cart!
