Yay, someone found my flailing and incoherent post useful! I have to say, I really didn't appreciate how brilliant American Born Chinese was until I sat down and started analyzing it panel by panel. (And I'm sure I would find it even more so if I really went through all of it that thoroughly, rather than just the Journey to the West bits.) The LA Chinatown signs outside the window in the first chapter were all in Chinese, too, and so was all the writing in the Journey to the West parts. And Jin calls his parents Ma and Ba! I love this book.

the ending, which is first devastating (and also a bit like a knife to the kidneys in that it's so smoothly done) and then hopeful.

Yes! That's a lovely description. Did you see the last panel, after the publishing info, with Jin and Wei-Chen in sports jerseys smiling at the video camera?