Sojourners in American born Chinese

American Born Chinese by Gene Yang

The Image of the Sojourner: American Born Chinese by Gene Yang

To sojourn is to stay in one place only temporarily. As such, sojourners are those who travel often, and are not in a particular place for a permanent span of time. This is especially interesting in regards to how it can be related to immigrants here in the United States. Gene Yang's graphic novel American Born Chinese features many examples of sojourners who are obviously not going to assimilate permanently into the majority culture because of the continuing strong ties they have with their ethnic heritage.

Sojourners definitely behave differently from other immigrants. They will not assimilate into the majority culture because they are only temporary residents. By embracing their ethnic heritage, they keep open a connection with their past. This ensures that they will not permanently become entirely American. This is exactly the image that repeats itself in Yang's work American Born Chinese. Essentially, the immigrants here do still retain their Chinese heritage very closely. The immigrant identity does not hold itself as synonymous with the United States. The book is a call to return to the ethnic identity. The friendship between the narrator and Wei-Chen can be seen as an example of a American born Chinese individual returns to his roots.

There are a number of other similar examples of the sojourner in the book. There is also Chin-Kee. He is heavily stereotyped against throughout the progression of the novel. He seems to be seen as the embodiment of the reason why Americans stereotype Chinese images as so. The typical clothing that is associated with old Chinese stereotypes blatantly marks him as not a member of the majority community. Yet, also he represents the more modern stereotype of the image of Asian-Americans as the model minority. Chin-Kee does very well in school, showing an adherence to a modern stereotype of Chinese and other Asian-Americans as being good students. Essentially, with Chin-Kee, Yang's saying that the immigrant should not be embarrassed of their heritage. Many immigrants to the United States have shown some degree of embarrassment in regards to their heritage, as in the case of Danny who seems to want to loose his ethnic heritage altogether and become more like the white majority around him.