American Born Chinese

I finished the Critical Theory Today chapter as well as American Born Chinese and I thought that American Born Chinese was way better than Does My Head Look Big In This?. I was not sure if I would get into it at first because the first few pages did not seem especially intriguing. After I got to Jin Wang's story, I thought the book was really good and I thought the ending was really well thought out. The interesting part about reading that book for this week, is that I actually had to read a book written by a Chinese-American woman for a different class. The book is called The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. Her book actually falls into two genres: autobiography/non-fiction as well as creative fiction because of the way she writes about her life as well as adds in stories she heard from childhood about her culture. The Woman Warrior is not part of Young Adult literature, but I still thought it was interesting to compare an adult novel about a Chinese-American to the ideas presented in American Born Chinese. Both of the books pose the issue of culture and identity. Both Jin Wang and Maxine Hong Kingston are Americans who have never been to China and yet, they still are a part of their Chinese culture so there is the struggle of which culture the characters feel they belong. I am looking forward to our discussion of American Born Chinese. See you all tomorrow!