This terrific graphic novel is not a book you just put on your bookshelf to gather dust once you have finished reading it. You leave it somewhere close by, so that you can dip back in at any time, and relive bits of the pleasure it gave you the first time round.
There are few books around that warrant this status. American Born Chinese is a book that you really want to own and keep returning to, because it gives you pleasure. Even the cover is something special.
The first character we meet is the Monkey King, who is having personal problems. Adored by his subjects, a top master of kung-fu, he is the most powerful monkey on earth.
But this is not enough. He is dissatisfied with being the ruler of the monkey kingdom, and he wants to be elevated to the status of a god. He is constantly looking up to heaven and seeing all the gods having a wonderful time. He wants to join them.
The Monkey King decides to take a chance and gate-crash one of the gods' parties. He is discovered, and the angry gods punish him by throwing him out of heaven and burying him under a mountain of stone. There we leave him, a pathetic figure who has lost everything.
We now meet Jin Wang, a school student who also has problems. His family has recently moved to a new neighbourhood, and Jin Wang finds himself the only Chinese-American pupil at his school.