American Born Chinese

by: Gene Luen Yang

     This week we are to blog about the use of stereotype in comics and the graphic narrative.

 I looked at quite a few of the suggested reading but found this on particularly enjoyable. It employs the use of some cleaver plot lines to get the story across, and a lot of it made me laugh. There were different points of view in the book on stereotype, one from a Chinese boy trying to fit into white suburban culture and the other a glaring representation of what some Americans view as the "typical" Asian person. It was dealt with mostly with humor, but I believe that the implementation of stereotypes in comics and the graphic novel are best used to get a point across quickly, but to its own detriment. As soon as we begin to stereotype, we limit the possibilities of that character immediately and leave little room for advancement. It had it's place long ago with the development of the "white super hero" to sell some comics because that what the demographic was. Now it is a very different story when it comes to the readership of comics and the graphic narrative, and stereotyping really has no place anymore, mostly due to the way our culture has changed so much over the last decades to praise the individual over all.