Sunday, March 5, 2023

Why did the Monkey King portray Chin-Kee in the way he did if he was meant to guide Jin?

In American Born Chinese, Chin-Kee is portrayed with a very strong racial stereotype of Asian individuals. At the end of the book it is revealed that Chin-Kee is the Monkey King in disguise visiting Jin because he could no longer visit his son, Wei-Chen, and wanted to act as a guide to Jin. This made me question though, why did the Monkey King choose to make Chin-Kee portray such a strong stereotype if he wanted to show Jin the rights and wrongs of life and make him want to go back to himself again? One would think that the Monkey King would want to show Jin the good parts of being himself and not wanting to be white like everyone else in his school, but instead he did the exact opposite and portrayed Chin-Kee with all the stereotypes making Jin hate his “cousin” and not want to be himself at all. One reason why I believe the Monkey King may have done this though was to show Jin to hate just that, the stereotypes of Asian individuals. Jin was not meant to hate his cousin at all, but did because Chin-Kee showed all those stereotypes that Jin did not want to be known for. It showed Jin to almost recognize that those stereotypes are not him. In a way, this may have been done to help Jin realize that he was not those stereotypes at all, even though others may have made fun of him for those stereotypes. I believe these were the reasons that the Monkey King portrayed Chin-Kee in this manner because in the end Jin was able to recognize he was not those stereotypes and allowed himself to like the parts of his culture that he did not hate and that Chin-Kee did not show, it also showed him how hateful and selfish he was when he was Danny in the book. This was shown through Jin going to the bakery every night until close, learning how to read the menu and accept himself more. This was a turning point because Chin-Kee never had these qualities, he was just the exact horrible stereotypes. Jin went back to Wei-Chen and they became friends again in a way, showing Wei-Chen that humans are not horrible and showing Jin to accept himself and his qualities in the way the Monkey King had to learn to do.

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