This study will examine Gus Lee's novel China Boy, analyzing the issue of the coming of age of the protagonist as a young Chinese American in a hostile culture, and the effectiveness of the author's use of that issue in dramatizing Chinese American life. The study will then compare Lee's novel with Frank Chin's novel Donald Duk, focusing on the similarities and differences between the two authors' treatment of the issue of coming of age in a difficult and prejudiced environment. Both authors are relatively young Chinese-Americans whose experiences are clearly reflected in their hopeful portrayals of their young heroes.
Kai Ting, the young Chinese American protagonist of Lee's novel, is not only young, he is physically small, ignorant of the American culture in which he was born, and unable---except through his sense of humor---to defend himself in the tough streets of San Francisco. Kai has enjoyed a relatively peaceful early childhood, protected from the hostile culture around him by his sisters and mother. However, this protection has kept him from facing the harsh realities of that culture, and, when his mother dies and he is put into the custody of a Philadelphia society woman, his true coming of age begins.
Lee is highly effective in portraying Kai's coming of age in the context of a largely comic novel dealing with profoundly serious and painful experiences and life lessons. What marks this novel is Kai's being imbued with Chinese culture---in those protected years of early childhood---before he has to face the transition into the bigotry of American culture. As stated, the drawback of those protected years delayed the boy's coming of age, but those years also provided him with the foundation of knowledge of his native culture which gave him a context in which to successfully digest his encounters with American culture. He retains connections with his native culture while at the same time taking a more active and effect...