모범적인 소수민, 아시아계 미국 남성성, 그리고 『미국 출생 중국인』

Abstract

This essay interrogates the model minority discourse and explores its counter-discourse in Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese (2006). Paying special attention to the historical context of racialization of Asian American men in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this essay sets out to investigates how such literary characters as Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan have developed American cultural biases against Asian American men. Pointing out that toxic racist narratives are intertwined with the model minority myth, this essay goes on to examine how Yang’s graphic novel challenges the model minority discourse of Asian American masculinity. American Born Chinese braids three different protagonists, each corresponding to a distinct narrative medium: the Monkey King (Chinse folklore), Jin (ethnic buildungsroman), and Danny/Chin-Kee (TV sitcom). My essay probes how all of the three stories examine the model minority myth and its attendant racialization of Asian American men. In doing so, I conclude that American Born Chinese asserts the conversion of the model minority into the “Asian American” as a new alternative discourse for Asian American men.