The graphic novel, American Born Chinese, is an award as combination of all three protagonists dealing with same conflicts. As immigrants, he has to face a lot of problems in American society, which inspires Yang to describe all three main characters from different stories to bring out the themes. The protagonists all must struggle to racism first to learn the lesson of identity that they have to accept themselves before they expect others to accept their identities.
All main characters in the American Born Chinese face the identity crises before they learn the identity lesson. "I am a deity I am a committed disciple of the arts of kung-fu and I have mastered the four major heavenly disciplines, prerequisites to immortality " (Yang 14). He desires to be more than monkey like a god. He wants to be called Great Sage. "You may be a king- you may be a deity-but you are still a monkey " (16). The response of the guard makes him feel that he is no more than a monkey and the guard rejects him to the party as a result of his identified monkey. The people in the line are teasing him, which embarrass him in front of the guard. As a result, he becomes bad-tempered and he causes destruction and punches those laughing people to release his anger and hatred. The image on page 16 shows his fierceness to the rejection to party and the refusal of identifying him as a god. The embarrassment is catalyst to make him think of himself to accept who he is. The uses of animal character as human being is ironically literary to emphasize the identity crisis of the monkey because monkeys look similar to human but they are accepted to be human, other than a type of animal. "I'd like us all to give a warm mayflower elementary welcome to our new friend and classmate Jin Jang "(30). The teacher embarrasses Jin Wang in front of his peers by missing his name. Afterward, she makes assumption he moved to here all the way from China.