American Born Chinese Foreigness and "The Other" Quotes

Chin-Kee is the definition of the foreignr with his accented English, his lewd suggestions to Danny's friend Melanie, and his Fu Manchu appearance. In fact, we're pretty sure that if Chin-Kee were visiting China, he would still be foreign. Why? Because we're betting that no one is like Chin-Kee, no matter where you go. He's an outdated fantasy of 1930s popular American culture. But he's still scary—especially to Danny, who's worried he'll seem like the Other just by being related to Chin-Kee.

We're just going to point out here that Mabel, the blonde with a ton of makeup on in Mr. Graham's class, looks a lot more Other than anyone else in the book. Yang completely exaggerates her features so that she resembles the live animals her mom's company Babelene Cosmetics has donated to the bio class, and by contrast, the Asian kids blend right in with the rest of the students.

Wei-Chen and Suzy are teasing Jin about his crush on Amelia, which makes Jin feel bad. But all three of them really feel awful when Timmy passes by and says to his friend, "'Hey, I chink it's getting a little nippy out there'" and his friend responds, "'You're right! I'm getting' gook bumps!'" Not cool, right? You've got to wonder: what can Wei-Chen, Jin and Suzy do to deal with that kind of everyday bullying? Note, by the way, a total absence of school administrators and teachers in all these bullying scenes…