Transforming Monkey Av Hongmei Sun

<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>.</P><P>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 demonstra