Gene Yang: American Born Chinese

          American Born Chinese is the first full graphic novel I have read. Reading this book is sort of like reading a book and watching the movie at the same time because of the pictures that go along with the words.
         The first step to teaching this book in a class would be to teach about graphic novels. This would include things like what students will find within the text and within the pictures. It may be hard for the students to not just look at the pictures, but he content of the text is a really important aspect to graphic novels. Starting out this unit could be a lesson how to read and examine the pictures to see what is going on within the pictures and the text. This is a good way to start the unit before the students begin to read American Born Chinese. This way the students will begin the book knowing how to read and really analyze the content within the graphic novel.
         This is a great book to go over stereotypes and finding a persons identity. To really drive home the stereotypes with the students they could keep a journal about stereotypes they see in the media as they are out side of school. This is a good way to help the students recognize that stereotypes are all over the world. An example a journal entry that they students could do about a stereotype they found is with The Big Bang Theory. The students could explain how Howards mom is portrayed as a loud Jewish mother who is always pushing food onto her Howard. Going over that this is a stereotype of Jewish mothers and that not all Jewish mothers are like this is a good way to integrate pop culture into the lesson with the students.
          Another activity that could be done is to have the students create a comic of the main events within the book for each part within the book. This could be a really fun way to interact with the plot line of this book, because it does have the potential to be confusing with the different stories that are all being told at once.