Entertainment

How Gene Luen Yang Exorcised His Childhood Demons for Disney’s “American Born Chinese” Series

Gene Luen Yang’s “American Born Chinese” is a groundbreaking graphic novel that tells the stories of Asian American boyhood by threading them with a revered Ming dynasty novel. But a small character in the book has created fear and discomfort among readers. Chin-Kee, a cruel marionette packed with ugly stereotypes, has a minor yet critical role in the book. When news emerged that the book would be adapted as a live-action Disney+ streaming series in 2021, many readers were apprehensive. But the celebrated cast, which includes Ke Huy Quan and Michelle Yeoh, promised a predestined coronation for the graphic novel.

However, this adaptation wasn’t always a given. Hollywood wasn’t ready to center Asian American stories, and the character of Chin-Kee also posed a significant challenge. Yang, who grew up in a family of storytellers and felt Chin-Kee was a “haunting” presence, was afraid of how the character might be interpreted on screen. Yang was worried that if the character he made ended up on the screen, clips of the character would appear on YouTube and be completely decontextualized.

It wasn’t until Yang talked with the producers, Kelvin Yu and Melvin Mar, that Yang felt comfortable allowing Chin-Kee to be adapted for the screen. The challenge of preserving the story’s sharpness without defanging it was the key. Yang weaves many creative threads of Chinese American experience in his work, which includes a hero’s journey from arrogance to enlightenment inspired by the hero of the 16th-century Chinese novel “Journey to the West,” combined with his father’s love of inventing stories off the top of his head, such as a little boy in a Taiwanese village whose father makes him do gross chores.

Yang’s upbringing in a Chinese Catholic community in the Bay Area, where the revolution felt both very distant and absurdly fresh, has played a major role in his artistic development and storytelling style. The holidays he experienced were a cultural mishmash, with a Chinese Santa for Christmas and a celebration of All Souls’ Day as if it were Qingming Festival. These experiences have helped him tell stories about the tension between Western faith and Eastern culture that is unique to his specific Chinese American experience. Yang’s life has also been punctuated by moments of spiritual recognition, including a vision he had during a visit from a Taiwanese priest, which ultimately led him to become a high school teacher and pursue comics.

Credit: nytimes.com

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