American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Lexile Level: 530

Genre: Fiction

Summary: American Born Chinese tells a story of three seemingly unrelated characters whose stories come together with an unexpected twist! This story speaks to anyone struggling to find acceptance. Jin Wang is the only Chinese American student at his new school. He is bullied, picked on, and lonely. He feels isolated and excluded and finds his feels parallel the Chinese myth of Monkey King, who wants to find acceptance among immortals. The third character is Danny, the all-American, blond-haired, blue-eyed high schooler who is tormented by the annual visit of his Chinese cousin, Chin-Kee. When Jin falls in love at his high school, all three stories come together for a heartbreaking and honest conclusion.

Standards:

CCSS:ELA-Literacy.RL.7.6 Analyze how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of different characters or narrators in a text

CCSS: ELA-Literacy.RL.7.2 Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text

CCSS: ELA-Literacy.RL. 7.3 Analyze how particular elements of a story or drama interact (e.g., how setting shapes the characters or plot).

Goal: Students will be answer the questions: Why do stereotypes exist? Are they ever accurate? Can a stereotype be positive? Are there connections between stereotypes and racism?

Objectives: Students will collaborate with others to compare their own understanding of cultural traditions and values using the text American Born Chinese.

Outcome: The students will be able to identify and share with the class different stereotypes present in the text and show how the characters resolved conflicts from these stereotypes.