American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese is a graphic novel written by Gene Luen Yang. Jin Wang is a tween boy who is not only dealing with the difficulty of growing up and school he also has to deal with the insecurities he has about being a Chinese-American. Jin finds that his body is changing and along with it he begins to notice a white-girl named Amelia. Along the way Jin makes friends with a picked on foreign student from Taiwan name Wei-Chen. Wei-Chen quickly becomes good friends with Jin and helps him to appeal to Amelia. All this time there are two parallel stories signifying the shame that Jin has for his chinese-ness and how he is embarrassed by his culture. He ends up trying to be someone who he is not and alienates his friend Wei-Chen along the way.

Yang really captures many of the emotions that teenagers go through as they begin to mature. The insane self-awareness, the insecurity, the wild emotion... all of these elements are at play as Jin tries to find out who he is and to fit in. The two other side stories illustrating several moral principles are fun and informative. Yang also does a great job at wrapping the book up and teaching what who we are is more a product of how we treat others.