Transforming Monkey

<p>Able to shape-shift and ride the clouds wielding a magic cudgel and playing tricks Sun Wukong (aka Monkey or the Monkey King) first attained superstar status as the protagonist of the sixteenth-century novel <i>Journey to the West</i> (Xiyou ji) and lives on in literature and popular culture internationally. In this far-ranging study Hongmei Sun discusses the thousand-year evolution of this figure in imperial China and multimedia adaptations in Republican Maoist and post-socialist China and the United States including the film <i>Princess Iron Fan</i> (1941) Maoist revolutionary operas online creative writings influenced by Hong Kong film <i>A Chinese Odyssey (1995) and Gene Luen Yang’s graphic novel American Born Chinese</i>.<br/><br/>At the intersection of Chinese studies Asian American studies film studies and translation and adaptation studies <i>Transforming Monkey</i> provides a renewed understanding of the Monkey King character as a rebel and trickster and demonstrates his impact on the Chinese self-conception of national identity as he travels through time and across borders.</p>