“But You Are Still a Monkey”: <i>American Born Chinese</i> and Racial Self-Acceptance

  • Mike Cadden Missouri Western State University

Abstract

Mike Cadden’s “‘But You Are Still a Monkey’: American Born Chinese and Racial Self-Acceptance” calls into question the wide acknowledgement of Gene Luen Yang’s young adult graphic novel, American Born Chinese, as a positive model of ethnic identity. This call for reassessment surfaces and questions passive assumptions about traditionally privileged subject positions (e.g. whiteness, maleness), suggesting that perhaps such ideologies are more powerful and have more currency than progressive and forward-thinking scholars and educators would like to admit.

Author Biography

Mike Cadden, Missouri Western State University
Mike Cadden is a professor of English and director of childhood studies at Missouri Western State University where he teaches classes in children’s and young adult literature. He has published extensively in these areas, served as president of the Children's Literature Association, and in 2008 received the Missouri Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Issue
Vol. 17 No. 2 (2014)
Section
Alice's Academy
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