Belonging The Literature of Fighting to Find One’s Place

Abstract

Two novels that have shaped my experience at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa are Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese. These novels contain many elements of internalized racism, as well as exterior racism, which had not before been described in such ways. The authors each draw on their personal experiences as well as Chinese culture in order to portray life as an Asian American living in America. Through their respective novels, the authors create vivid tales of personal identity struggles and learning how to come into one’s own individuality in a society that often shames such behaviors.