Gene Luen Yang
1 book analyzed
Biography
Gene Luen Yang was born in 1973 in Alameda, California, to Chinese immigrant parents. He grew up navigating the space between his parents' Chinese culture and suburban American life — an experience that maps directly onto Jin Wang's story. Yang studied computer science at UC Berkeley and became a high school computer science teacher, writing comics on the side. American Born Chinese began as his MFA thesis project at Hamline University. He has spoken extensively about growing up ashamed of his Chinese heritage and the long process of self-acceptance that the novel dramatizes. A devout Catholic, Yang layers Christian theological concepts onto the Chinese mythological framework of the Monkey King story, creating a syncretic spiritual argument about identity and grace. He was appointed the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature by the Library of Congress in 2016.