When Gene Yang's American Born Chinese came out in 2006, critics and readers received pretty it favorably; since then, I've seen it on many a 'must read' list of graphic novels, contemporary biography, graphic novel biography, and so on with the composite subgenres/ media. When I found myself wandering my local comic shop after pay day, I finally picked up a copy. On the back cover, Derek Kirk Kim, a friend and colleague of the author, was quoted "As an Asian American, American Born Chinese is the book I've been waiting for all my life." Now I'm not Asian, but with a statement like that, I felt quite secure that I had picked a winner.
I read the book a couple nights ago and it breaks down about like this: Yang tells three stories, alternating between them with each new chapter. In the first, he relays a folk tale of a monkey king who strives to be human, and he includes lots of other archetypal myth/ legend type themes and figures. And kung fu (whoooa.) In the second, the reader follows an Asian-American boy, Jin (a.k.a. probably the author), through his adventures and mishaps in third and fourth grade with his best friend Wei-Chen. The third story recalls a TV sitcom (laugh track and all) in which an all-American high-schooler, Danny, is visited and inadvertently terrorized by his inexplicably Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee, himself a grab bag of Asian stereotypes.
When I finished the book, I can't lie, I was a little disappointed. Not that it wasn't a diverting read, I did blow through the whole thing in one sitting. And there were parts that made me laugh, others that made me cringe with that wonderful mix of sympathy for the marginalized characters and guilt for being a white devil myself. But that's a whole blog in itself. My point is I definitely engaged with the book, just not as much I thought I would. I'd had all these expectations, not just from the anonymous background murmur of criticism, but from Derek Kirk Kim. Derek! This book was not as life-altering as you led me to believe. I noticed on the ever-provident facebook that I wasn't alone in my disillusionment. But as I scanned the reviews on the living social visual bookshelf app, I found that I had qualms with the comments people left. Could be I'm just antagonistic. Or maybe what I (and others) failed to realize is that the real brilliance of the book doesn't come across without some thought and analysis after closing the back cover. English major to the rescue!
One example of Yang's story-telling innovation lies in the fact that he doesn't weave his three narratives together, as one might expect from a multiple narrative text. Rather, at the last minute, he pulls the proverbial curtain aside so the reader finds that the Monkey King, Jin, Wei-Chen, Danny, and Chin-Kee are sort of all the same character or at least related in unexpected ways. And not in a metaphorical, character foil sense; literally, Yang draws one character morphing into another. Or pulling off his head to reveal his true identity. And, good heavens, that's what this whole yarn is supposed to address in the first place. Identity I mean, not self-decapitation.
The moment all three stories come together marks another pretty awesome element of American Born Chinese that didn't dawn on me until after I'd set it down: the mythical folk tale, the personal history, and the caricature collide, and any sense of realism/ continuity within each story goes right out the window. When one of the mythic characters shows himself to be one of the main characters from the present, who was an analog for ANOTHER character all along, the divisions the reader had developed between those parts of the book are just obliterated. There's this serious rupture, but the story goes on, accepting everything that's happened as it ends. As I've studied biography (just a bit), especially of the graphic variety, I've found that writers and artists do some really amazing things with blurring and/ or exposing the lines between the factual things that happened to them over the course of their lives and the internal feelings and memories that accompany those experiences. In these terms, just wow- Yang has integrated not just personal history and memory/ internal experience, but CULTURAL history and experience into one biography. Now I'm no expert on the biographical genre (if genre is the right word), but I've never seen this particular mish-mash narrative technique pulled off quite the way Yang does it. It's brilliant. Ok Derek Kirk Kim, you've got me there.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Phonies at the Symphony
Last Friday night, by the graces of the god of free tickets, I got the opportunity to go see the Dallas Symphony Orchestra with a friend of mine. This was a fairly classy event, so the following review will be about as high brow as I get. Unless we're talking about Stephen Colbert.
Anyway, we took the DART train downtown to the Meyerson Symphony Center, which I recommend doing if you're into irony of the class-based variety. The other symphony attendees were about as ostentatiously middle to upper-middle class as you get for a Friday evening, but I was surprised by the number of younger people there. Not only those of junior high, high school age- I imagine someone had arranged a class trip- but also 20-something couples and groups. I guess I shouldn't discount my own age group for taking part in such white collar festivities. Especially as I WAS there myself...
The program for the evening began with the Shostakovich Violin Concerto #1 (the proper phrasing for which can be found in the liner notes, not in my expertise of wording pieces of classical music) and ended with Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony. Now I'm not an expert in classical tunes, but I will say this- those old Russian composers, damn; they're just amazing. No one channels suffering and angst into an art form quite like they do. I've been a conscious fan of Tchaikovsky since I was a little kid prancing around to the Nutcracker Suite, and the pieces I heard Friday really hit that home for me. The melodrama that these guys conjure up, it's breath taking. Literally; there were points where I noticed I was holding my breath. So the score one for the scores; the musical selection was top notch.
With that in mind, you might say that blasting ol' Shasta and Pyotr Ilyich from my stereo might be just as soul-shaking as listening to it in a concert hall. There are a couple reasons you'd be wrong. First, and this is by no means restricted to Friday evening's events, the people at the symphony- they must be emo. Maybe they were getting into the music in their own heads, but physically, there was nary a demonstration that they were enjoying what they were hearing until the applause. No head bobbing or foot tapping; no jumping at shows, I tell you! I was struggling to keep from dancing in my seat, and after a drink at intermission, this was no easy task. I know it isn't appropriate to get into it that much in such a setting, but I have to ask- isn't that a touch ridiculous? Classical music is like the most respected art in the (western) world, so would it be a stretch to say that it's among the best art? Wouldn't that mean the most moving, by some definition? I know I'm jumping around a bit here, but you get my point- art is supposed to move you and it's completely backwards to perform it in a setting where being moved in certain ways is not proper. So from this point of view, listening to these pieces out of a symphony hall would facilitate a superior experience because it would allow lots of flailing and jumping around to the music. And that is my digression.
On the other hand, watching musicians perform can add something to the experience of a piece, and this was absolutely the case on Friday. The DSO has recently come under new conductorship (conduction? conductor-ing?)- Jaap Van Zweden. This guy was such a blast to watch; all the stuff I just said about symphony patrons above applies in NO WAY to our tiny Belgian leader of the band. He was all over the place, stomping and waving kinda goofily, like I might have, had I been in the comfort of my own living room. And he gets away with it BECAUSE he's the conductor- you see how this works? Not fair! Still, it was great to watch him do his thing.
Funnily enough, all of my training in the Classical arts (if you wanna call them that) was in ballet, and reading back over this, I notice that I'm thinking about this experience in terms of movement and the body. So there's some continuity for ya, where maybe you expected an informed point of view?
Anyway, we took the DART train downtown to the Meyerson Symphony Center, which I recommend doing if you're into irony of the class-based variety. The other symphony attendees were about as ostentatiously middle to upper-middle class as you get for a Friday evening, but I was surprised by the number of younger people there. Not only those of junior high, high school age- I imagine someone had arranged a class trip- but also 20-something couples and groups. I guess I shouldn't discount my own age group for taking part in such white collar festivities. Especially as I WAS there myself...
The program for the evening began with the Shostakovich Violin Concerto #1 (the proper phrasing for which can be found in the liner notes, not in my expertise of wording pieces of classical music) and ended with Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony. Now I'm not an expert in classical tunes, but I will say this- those old Russian composers, damn; they're just amazing. No one channels suffering and angst into an art form quite like they do. I've been a conscious fan of Tchaikovsky since I was a little kid prancing around to the Nutcracker Suite, and the pieces I heard Friday really hit that home for me. The melodrama that these guys conjure up, it's breath taking. Literally; there were points where I noticed I was holding my breath. So the score one for the scores; the musical selection was top notch.
With that in mind, you might say that blasting ol' Shasta and Pyotr Ilyich from my stereo might be just as soul-shaking as listening to it in a concert hall. There are a couple reasons you'd be wrong. First, and this is by no means restricted to Friday evening's events, the people at the symphony- they must be emo. Maybe they were getting into the music in their own heads, but physically, there was nary a demonstration that they were enjoying what they were hearing until the applause. No head bobbing or foot tapping; no jumping at shows, I tell you! I was struggling to keep from dancing in my seat, and after a drink at intermission, this was no easy task. I know it isn't appropriate to get into it that much in such a setting, but I have to ask- isn't that a touch ridiculous? Classical music is like the most respected art in the (western) world, so would it be a stretch to say that it's among the best art? Wouldn't that mean the most moving, by some definition? I know I'm jumping around a bit here, but you get my point- art is supposed to move you and it's completely backwards to perform it in a setting where being moved in certain ways is not proper. So from this point of view, listening to these pieces out of a symphony hall would facilitate a superior experience because it would allow lots of flailing and jumping around to the music. And that is my digression.
On the other hand, watching musicians perform can add something to the experience of a piece, and this was absolutely the case on Friday. The DSO has recently come under new conductorship (conduction? conductor-ing?)- Jaap Van Zweden. This guy was such a blast to watch; all the stuff I just said about symphony patrons above applies in NO WAY to our tiny Belgian leader of the band. He was all over the place, stomping and waving kinda goofily, like I might have, had I been in the comfort of my own living room. And he gets away with it BECAUSE he's the conductor- you see how this works? Not fair! Still, it was great to watch him do his thing.
Funnily enough, all of my training in the Classical arts (if you wanna call them that) was in ballet, and reading back over this, I notice that I'm thinking about this experience in terms of movement and the body. So there's some continuity for ya, where maybe you expected an informed point of view?
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