Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 14
December 16, 2022
A Review of Akemi Dawn Bowman’s The Genesis Wars (Simon & Schuster for YR, 2022).
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ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
Well, I read this book sometime over the summer, and unfortunately, I have not gotten around to writing this review until now. It’s been BUSY! Major apologies, but Akemi Dawn Bowman’s The Genesis Wars (Simon & Schuster for YR, 2022) is the second in the “Infinity Courts” trilogy. Secretly, I was hoping that this novel would be part of a duology, just so I could get some sense of finality, but hey, it’s such an engrossing series that I’m not too disappointed. Let’s let the official marketing description give us some key information: “It’s been ten months since Nami narrowly escaped the Four Courts and Ophelia’s wrath. Ten months since she was betrayed by someone she once considered a friend. Someone she poured her heart out to. And now her family here in the afterlife are gone, captured, and Nami is utterly alone. On the run, only steps ahead of the AI forces pursuing her, and desperate to free her friends, Nami must take the allies she can find, even if she doesn’t fully trust them. And as she tests the limits of her own power, she must also reckon with the responsibility that entails. Stakes are high as Nami navigates old enemies, unexpected allies, and an ever-changing landscape filled with dangers and twists at every turn. Along the way, she’ll learn powerful truths about who she can trust and the sacrifices that must be made in order to fight for a better, freer world for all.”
This pithy description doesn’t do much to detail the other major characters. Of particular note is Prince Caelan, whom Nami does not see as an ally. Though the first in the series suggested that the two might find a way to move forward, so that humans and artificial intelligences might find some way to coexist, this possible rapprochement is violently dashed. Nami spends much of this installment trying to find her purpose in the world of the Four Courts. Once she must tangle again with Prince Caelan, the narrative momentum really takes off. Part of what makes Bowman’s work so intriguing is that we don’t really know what’s behind Prince Caelan’s actions, and it increasingly seems that there is an alliance he is trying to form. Ophelia remains the so-called Big Bad of this fictional universe, and the novel leaves us with a very intriguing time jump that sets up what will be sure to be a riveting finish. Bowman’s second installment avoids the dragginess that can befall the middle of a trilogy, as the mix of action, character development, and world building continue to impress. YA readers of paranormal fantasy will surely find much to enjoy!
Buy the Book Here
comments
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
Well, I read this book sometime over the summer, and unfortunately, I have not gotten around to writing this review until now. It’s been BUSY! Major apologies, but Akemi Dawn Bowman’s The Genesis Wars (Simon & Schuster for YR, 2022) is the second in the “Infinity Courts” trilogy. Secretly, I was hoping that this novel would be part of a duology, just so I could get some sense of finality, but hey, it’s such an engrossing series that I’m not too disappointed. Let’s let the official marketing description give us some key information: “It’s been ten months since Nami narrowly escaped the Four Courts and Ophelia’s wrath. Ten months since she was betrayed by someone she once considered a friend. Someone she poured her heart out to. And now her family here in the afterlife are gone, captured, and Nami is utterly alone. On the run, only steps ahead of the AI forces pursuing her, and desperate to free her friends, Nami must take the allies she can find, even if she doesn’t fully trust them. And as she tests the limits of her own power, she must also reckon with the responsibility that entails. Stakes are high as Nami navigates old enemies, unexpected allies, and an ever-changing landscape filled with dangers and twists at every turn. Along the way, she’ll learn powerful truths about who she can trust and the sacrifices that must be made in order to fight for a better, freer world for all.”
This pithy description doesn’t do much to detail the other major characters. Of particular note is Prince Caelan, whom Nami does not see as an ally. Though the first in the series suggested that the two might find a way to move forward, so that humans and artificial intelligences might find some way to coexist, this possible rapprochement is violently dashed. Nami spends much of this installment trying to find her purpose in the world of the Four Courts. Once she must tangle again with Prince Caelan, the narrative momentum really takes off. Part of what makes Bowman’s work so intriguing is that we don’t really know what’s behind Prince Caelan’s actions, and it increasingly seems that there is an alliance he is trying to form. Ophelia remains the so-called Big Bad of this fictional universe, and the novel leaves us with a very intriguing time jump that sets up what will be sure to be a riveting finish. Bowman’s second installment avoids the dragginess that can befall the middle of a trilogy, as the mix of action, character development, and world building continue to impress. YA readers of paranormal fantasy will surely find much to enjoy!
Buy the Book Here
comments
A Review of Debra Magpie Earling’s Perma Red (Milkweed Editions, 2022).
Posted by:
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
Debra Magpie Earling’s Perma Red has sat on my bookshelf and endured at least two moves, about two decades, until I got up, dusted the book off, and finally read it. Occasionally, as you know, we do cast light on other writers, typically BIPOC, as a wider acknowledgment of the need to read beyond a specific field or body of texts. In this specific case, I was spurred to return to this book by the fact that I occasionally am called on to read other things as part of a sort of book club. My copy is so old that it’s the original hardcover edition by the now defunct imprint Blue Hen (of Penguin Putnam). For whatever reason, Earling’s Perma Red never went into paperback, which might have meant that the hardcover did not sell (a similar fate befell Fae Myenne Ng’s highly underrated second novel, Steer Toward Rock). Perma Red subsequently went out of print. Fortunately, Milkweed Editions has put a reissue of this book, so I’ve acknowledged this much needed new edition by highlighting it here.
Now let’s let the official marketing description do some work for us: “On the Flathead Indian Reservation, summer is ending, and Louise White Elk is determined to forge her own path. Raised by her Grandmother Magpie after the death of her mother, Louise and her younger sister [Florence] have grown up into the harsh social and physical landscape of western Montana in the 1940s, where Native people endure boarding schools and life far from home. As she approaches adulthood, Louise hopes to create an independent life for herself and an improved future for her family—but three persistent men have other plans. Since childhood, Louise has been pursued by Baptiste Yellow Knife, feared not only for his rough-and-tumble ways, but also for the preternatural gifts of his bloodline. Baptiste’s rival is his cousin, Charlie Kicking Woman: a man caught between worlds, torn between his duty as a tribal officer and his fascination with Louise. And then there is Harvey Stoner. The white real estate mogul can offer Louise her wildest dreams of freedom, but at what cost? As tensions mount, Louise finds herself trying to outrun the bitter clutches of winter and the will of powerful men, facing choices that will alter her life—and end another’s—forever.”
This description does a really great job of situating the complicated relationship dynamics that Louise must navigate. The description doesn’t fully account the level of poverty that Louise grows up in and how young she actually is at the start of the novel when these various men are already pursuing her. Indeed, Earling doesn’t specifically denote Louise’s age, but it seems that she’s initially in high school, yet still going out to bars, running away from authorities (repeatedly), and finding herself in abusive and dangerous situations. The question that Earling obviously sets up for us is the question of Louise’s agency in these matters. Earling’s novel is immersive but incredibly dark. You get a sense of the wide and often austere landscape that Louise must traverse, as well as the close-knit but uneven indigenous community that surrounds her. Earling also masterfully employs the use of shifting narrative perspectives to grant us a better glimpse into the lives of both Baptiste Yellow Knife and Charlie Kicking Woman. I especially gravitated to the sections concerning Charlie Kicking Woman because I’m always a huge fan of first-person narration. Charlie Kicking Woman is one of those challenging characters. He’s a police officer, straddling both white and native worlds, and finding himself fitting really in neither one. As the novel moved toward its conclusion, I was increasingly worried about Louise’s fate. I found myself hoping she’d find a way out of all the men that had come into her life. Earling’s ending gives us a slight reprieve, with a touch of something out of the ordinary to make us wonder what has actually happened. Earling’s Perma Red is an assured novel with incredible depth, scaffolded by sweeping passages full of complicated insights.
Buy the Book Here
comments
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
Debra Magpie Earling’s Perma Red has sat on my bookshelf and endured at least two moves, about two decades, until I got up, dusted the book off, and finally read it. Occasionally, as you know, we do cast light on other writers, typically BIPOC, as a wider acknowledgment of the need to read beyond a specific field or body of texts. In this specific case, I was spurred to return to this book by the fact that I occasionally am called on to read other things as part of a sort of book club. My copy is so old that it’s the original hardcover edition by the now defunct imprint Blue Hen (of Penguin Putnam). For whatever reason, Earling’s Perma Red never went into paperback, which might have meant that the hardcover did not sell (a similar fate befell Fae Myenne Ng’s highly underrated second novel, Steer Toward Rock). Perma Red subsequently went out of print. Fortunately, Milkweed Editions has put a reissue of this book, so I’ve acknowledged this much needed new edition by highlighting it here.
Now let’s let the official marketing description do some work for us: “On the Flathead Indian Reservation, summer is ending, and Louise White Elk is determined to forge her own path. Raised by her Grandmother Magpie after the death of her mother, Louise and her younger sister [Florence] have grown up into the harsh social and physical landscape of western Montana in the 1940s, where Native people endure boarding schools and life far from home. As she approaches adulthood, Louise hopes to create an independent life for herself and an improved future for her family—but three persistent men have other plans. Since childhood, Louise has been pursued by Baptiste Yellow Knife, feared not only for his rough-and-tumble ways, but also for the preternatural gifts of his bloodline. Baptiste’s rival is his cousin, Charlie Kicking Woman: a man caught between worlds, torn between his duty as a tribal officer and his fascination with Louise. And then there is Harvey Stoner. The white real estate mogul can offer Louise her wildest dreams of freedom, but at what cost? As tensions mount, Louise finds herself trying to outrun the bitter clutches of winter and the will of powerful men, facing choices that will alter her life—and end another’s—forever.”
This description does a really great job of situating the complicated relationship dynamics that Louise must navigate. The description doesn’t fully account the level of poverty that Louise grows up in and how young she actually is at the start of the novel when these various men are already pursuing her. Indeed, Earling doesn’t specifically denote Louise’s age, but it seems that she’s initially in high school, yet still going out to bars, running away from authorities (repeatedly), and finding herself in abusive and dangerous situations. The question that Earling obviously sets up for us is the question of Louise’s agency in these matters. Earling’s novel is immersive but incredibly dark. You get a sense of the wide and often austere landscape that Louise must traverse, as well as the close-knit but uneven indigenous community that surrounds her. Earling also masterfully employs the use of shifting narrative perspectives to grant us a better glimpse into the lives of both Baptiste Yellow Knife and Charlie Kicking Woman. I especially gravitated to the sections concerning Charlie Kicking Woman because I’m always a huge fan of first-person narration. Charlie Kicking Woman is one of those challenging characters. He’s a police officer, straddling both white and native worlds, and finding himself fitting really in neither one. As the novel moved toward its conclusion, I was increasingly worried about Louise’s fate. I found myself hoping she’d find a way out of all the men that had come into her life. Earling’s ending gives us a slight reprieve, with a touch of something out of the ordinary to make us wonder what has actually happened. Earling’s Perma Red is an assured novel with incredible depth, scaffolded by sweeping passages full of complicated insights.
Buy the Book Here
comments
August 2, 2022
A Review of Renée Ahdieh’s The Beautiful (2019), The Damned (2020), The Righteous (2021)!
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
So, I literally waited three years before reading most in this series: Renée Ahdieh’s The Beautiful (2019), The Damned (2020), The Righteous (2021)! After some point, I realized that I was beginning to lose threads in YA series because they were too long. Now that the fourth is set to be published in the quartet (in 2022, called The Ruined), I knew it was time to catch up. There are a lot of spoilers in this review because three books have happened. I’m sequencing all the marketing descriptions in tandem, so you have them for your information, but be forewarned that if you plan to read them and hate spoilers, you will need to stop reading here. Before you stop reading though: if you’re a fan of Anne Rice, Julie Kagawa, and Charlaine Harris, you’ll likely want to read this series because there are vampires, werewolves, fairies and all sorts of other things that go bump in the night.
The Beautiful: “In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans is a safe haven after she's forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent, Celine is quickly enraptured by the vibrant city becoming embroiled in the glitzy underworld, known as La Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group's enigmatic leader, Sébastien Saint Germain. When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in Sébastien's own lair—the second dead girl to turn up in recent weeks—Celine must battle her attraction to Sébastien and suspicions about his guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret.”
The Damned: “Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly. But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien. Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can't quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn't know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she's not ready to learn. Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.”
The Righteous: “Following the explosive events of The Damned, Odette faces a vampire’s final death. The Court of the Lions have done everything they can to save her but have failed. A healer from the Sylvan Vale could help her, but only Arjun Desai, as a half fey, can cross the boundary between realms. The Sylvan Vale is a world Arjun despises, and in return, it despises him. But knowing it could save Odette, he returns to the Vale with all haste, leaving the mirrored tare between the two worlds open and unwittingly setting the stage for both love and war. It’s mere days until Pippa Montrose is to wed Phoebus Devereux and become a member of his well-heeled family, offering salvation to her own. But Celine is missing. Pippa has no idea where her best friend has gone, but she’s certain it’s in the company of vampire Sébastien Saint Germain and that Arjun can lead her to them. Pippa enjoins the help of Eloise, the daughter of a powerful sorceress, to discover the gateway Arjun uses to travel between worlds. Pippa, tired of hesitating in life, marches right through in search of her friend. But what she discovers on the other side is a dangerous, duplicitous world full of mischief and magic she doesn’t understand, and most unexpectedly, she finds love.”
So, yes, there’s vampires, fairies, werewolves, as I mentioned! Each installment focuses a little bit on a given character. The first is definitely Celine’s novel, where the “beautiful” of the title is certainly her. Celine’s escaped to New Orleans under a cloud of infamy, where she hopes she can start a new life, but Celine’s got a little bit of wild streak in her, which is how she gets wrapped up with La Cour des Lions (individuals with supernatural backgrounds who are tasked with protecting Sébastien) and its leader, Sébastien Saint Germain! A key double cross by one of the Lions leads to the novel’s conclusion, where Celine makes a bargain with Sébastien’s uncle Nicodemus: turn Sébastien into a vampire in order to save his life, and Celine will assent to having her memories wiped, so everyone can start afresh. Naturally, the second book is all about how Celine and Sébastien will still find their way back to each other even with these circumstances, but more mischief and mayhem follow the two, especially as Celine begins to explore her supernatural heritage: she’s a fairy y’all! The third book moves us to Pippa Montrose, a fully human being (shocker, I know) who is Celine’s good friend, and Arjun Desai, part fairy (and part of La Cour des Lions), while Celine and Sébastien’s story moves somewhat into the background. Celine is on the run from authorities after her secret (a homicide that occurred prior to the events of the first installment!) comes to light, and Sébastien goes along with her. While the two camp out in the world of the fairy, Pippa, Celine’s friend, wants to know exactly what has happened to her. Pippa gets herself into a ton of trouble while going into the world of the fairies, and Arjun has to make sure Pippa doesn’t get herself killed. Ahdieh is clearly drawing on more classical renderings of fairies—not the benevolent ones that were Disney-ified as happy helpers—who are mischievous, double-dealing, and always trying to make you owe something. This installment was by far my favorite: I was frankly shocked that the novel turned so far in the direction of what were originally side characters and made them so compelling. These two are also a great comic duo, and Ahdieh is clearly having a lot of fun with their various adventures. But, as with all good things, they must come to an end, and Ahdieh leaves us with another huge cliffhanger.
There will be a lot of threads to deal with in the final installment because fairies do not get along with vampires, who in turn to do not get along with werewolves. I didn’t mention that a love triangle emerges earlier between Celine and a police detective, Michael Grimaldi, who later becomes a werewolf (oy, too much to cover), and Grimaldi’s involvement with his fellow hairy predators leads to more social instability in the world of the supernatural. The other thing to note: this series is not your typical YA, as there is some serious, clear romantic involvement! This series reads more like paranormal adult romance to me, so actual teen readers should be forewarned LOL. Otherwise, the first three in the series are the perfect, decadent summer read for those with an inclination toward impossible creatures and their yet seemingly oh-so-human romantic entanglements! The title of the last in the quartet leads me to believe there will be more heartbreak and sadness, but I’d be surprised if Celine and Sébastien don’t end up together. After all, they seem to be endgame.
Buy the Books here, here, and here, (along with pre-ordering the fourth)
[image error] comments
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
So, I literally waited three years before reading most in this series: Renée Ahdieh’s The Beautiful (2019), The Damned (2020), The Righteous (2021)! After some point, I realized that I was beginning to lose threads in YA series because they were too long. Now that the fourth is set to be published in the quartet (in 2022, called The Ruined), I knew it was time to catch up. There are a lot of spoilers in this review because three books have happened. I’m sequencing all the marketing descriptions in tandem, so you have them for your information, but be forewarned that if you plan to read them and hate spoilers, you will need to stop reading here. Before you stop reading though: if you’re a fan of Anne Rice, Julie Kagawa, and Charlaine Harris, you’ll likely want to read this series because there are vampires, werewolves, fairies and all sorts of other things that go bump in the night.
The Beautiful: “In 1872, New Orleans is a city ruled by the dead. But to seventeen-year-old Celine Rousseau, New Orleans is a safe haven after she's forced to flee her life as a dressmaker in Paris. Taken in by the sisters of the Ursuline convent, Celine is quickly enraptured by the vibrant city becoming embroiled in the glitzy underworld, known as La Cour des Lions, after catching the eye of the group's enigmatic leader, Sébastien Saint Germain. When the body of one of the girls from the convent is found in Sébastien's own lair—the second dead girl to turn up in recent weeks—Celine must battle her attraction to Sébastien and suspicions about his guilt along with the shame of her own horrible secret.”
The Damned: “Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly. But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien. Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can't quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn't know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she's not ready to learn. Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.”
The Righteous: “Following the explosive events of The Damned, Odette faces a vampire’s final death. The Court of the Lions have done everything they can to save her but have failed. A healer from the Sylvan Vale could help her, but only Arjun Desai, as a half fey, can cross the boundary between realms. The Sylvan Vale is a world Arjun despises, and in return, it despises him. But knowing it could save Odette, he returns to the Vale with all haste, leaving the mirrored tare between the two worlds open and unwittingly setting the stage for both love and war. It’s mere days until Pippa Montrose is to wed Phoebus Devereux and become a member of his well-heeled family, offering salvation to her own. But Celine is missing. Pippa has no idea where her best friend has gone, but she’s certain it’s in the company of vampire Sébastien Saint Germain and that Arjun can lead her to them. Pippa enjoins the help of Eloise, the daughter of a powerful sorceress, to discover the gateway Arjun uses to travel between worlds. Pippa, tired of hesitating in life, marches right through in search of her friend. But what she discovers on the other side is a dangerous, duplicitous world full of mischief and magic she doesn’t understand, and most unexpectedly, she finds love.”
So, yes, there’s vampires, fairies, werewolves, as I mentioned! Each installment focuses a little bit on a given character. The first is definitely Celine’s novel, where the “beautiful” of the title is certainly her. Celine’s escaped to New Orleans under a cloud of infamy, where she hopes she can start a new life, but Celine’s got a little bit of wild streak in her, which is how she gets wrapped up with La Cour des Lions (individuals with supernatural backgrounds who are tasked with protecting Sébastien) and its leader, Sébastien Saint Germain! A key double cross by one of the Lions leads to the novel’s conclusion, where Celine makes a bargain with Sébastien’s uncle Nicodemus: turn Sébastien into a vampire in order to save his life, and Celine will assent to having her memories wiped, so everyone can start afresh. Naturally, the second book is all about how Celine and Sébastien will still find their way back to each other even with these circumstances, but more mischief and mayhem follow the two, especially as Celine begins to explore her supernatural heritage: she’s a fairy y’all! The third book moves us to Pippa Montrose, a fully human being (shocker, I know) who is Celine’s good friend, and Arjun Desai, part fairy (and part of La Cour des Lions), while Celine and Sébastien’s story moves somewhat into the background. Celine is on the run from authorities after her secret (a homicide that occurred prior to the events of the first installment!) comes to light, and Sébastien goes along with her. While the two camp out in the world of the fairy, Pippa, Celine’s friend, wants to know exactly what has happened to her. Pippa gets herself into a ton of trouble while going into the world of the fairies, and Arjun has to make sure Pippa doesn’t get herself killed. Ahdieh is clearly drawing on more classical renderings of fairies—not the benevolent ones that were Disney-ified as happy helpers—who are mischievous, double-dealing, and always trying to make you owe something. This installment was by far my favorite: I was frankly shocked that the novel turned so far in the direction of what were originally side characters and made them so compelling. These two are also a great comic duo, and Ahdieh is clearly having a lot of fun with their various adventures. But, as with all good things, they must come to an end, and Ahdieh leaves us with another huge cliffhanger.
There will be a lot of threads to deal with in the final installment because fairies do not get along with vampires, who in turn to do not get along with werewolves. I didn’t mention that a love triangle emerges earlier between Celine and a police detective, Michael Grimaldi, who later becomes a werewolf (oy, too much to cover), and Grimaldi’s involvement with his fellow hairy predators leads to more social instability in the world of the supernatural. The other thing to note: this series is not your typical YA, as there is some serious, clear romantic involvement! This series reads more like paranormal adult romance to me, so actual teen readers should be forewarned LOL. Otherwise, the first three in the series are the perfect, decadent summer read for those with an inclination toward impossible creatures and their yet seemingly oh-so-human romantic entanglements! The title of the last in the quartet leads me to believe there will be more heartbreak and sadness, but I’d be surprised if Celine and Sébastien don’t end up together. After all, they seem to be endgame.
Buy the Books here, here, and here, (along with pre-ordering the fourth)
[image error] comments
A Review of Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation (Penguin Press, 2022).
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Well, my brilliant colleague James Kim was the one who had been telling me about Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel Disorientation. He did so just before I was heading off to the Association of Asian American Studies in Denver, so I knew I had the perfect book to bring with me on the plane. Little did I know the novel would pack such an incredible punch. Let’s let the official marketing description give us some key information: “Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about ‘Chinese-y’ things again. But after years of grueling research, all she has to show for her efforts are junk food addiction and stomach pain. When she accidentally stumbles upon a curious note in the Chou archives one afternoon, she convinces herself it’s her ticket out of academic hell. But Ingrid’s in much deeper than she thinks. Her clumsy exploits to unravel the note’s message lead to an explosive discovery, upending not only her sheltered life within academia but her entire world beyond it. With her trusty friend Eunice Kim by her side and her rival Vivian Vo hot on her tail, together they set off a roller coaster of mishaps and misadventures, from book burnings and OTC drug hallucinations, to hot-button protests and Yellow Peril 2.0 propaganda. In the aftermath, nothing looks the same to Ingrid—including her gentle and doting fiancé, Stephen Greene. When he embarks on a book tour with the super kawaii Japanese author he’s translated, doubts and insecurities creep in for the first time… As the events Ingrid instigated keep spiraling, she’ll have to confront her sticky relationship to white men and white institutions—and, most of all, herself.”
What can I say? Hard to describe this dark, satirical look at academia. There are a lot of absolutely bonkers elements to this narrative that I think, had a lesser novelist engaged them, might have come off unsuccessfully. But Chou is clearly well-versed in the politics of Asian American Studies and culture, so it almost seems as if she wrote this novel not only for the general public, but scholars and students of the field as well. I guess I have to list a spoiler warning here, so look away unless you plan to know some of the major plot twists. So, with that out of the way, one of the biggest elements that the novel hinges on is a form of yellowface involving Xiao-Wen Chou, but it’s the kind of yellowface that almost borders on the speculative. That being said, it’s really clear that Chou is bringing up something like that Araki Yasusada controversy which involved a poet of East Asian descent who was later unmasked as a fictive construct likely by a white poet. In any case, the question of Asian American authenticity as it relates not only to representation and authorship but also to one’s commitments to social justice traffic throughout this text, making it one of the best in terms of covering the thorny questions that undergird the field. Where the novel is particularly outstanding is in its unflinching portrayal of interracial desire, and the work reminds me a little bit of Laurence Chua’s Gold by the Inch in how it drives head into a very difficult topic and stays there. This novel is clearly going to get a lot of critical interest, and I’ll be waiting to read all the wonderful scholarship it is going to produce.
Buy the Book Here
[image error] comments
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Well, my brilliant colleague James Kim was the one who had been telling me about Elaine Hsieh Chou’s debut novel Disorientation. He did so just before I was heading off to the Association of Asian American Studies in Denver, so I knew I had the perfect book to bring with me on the plane. Little did I know the novel would pack such an incredible punch. Let’s let the official marketing description give us some key information: “Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about ‘Chinese-y’ things again. But after years of grueling research, all she has to show for her efforts are junk food addiction and stomach pain. When she accidentally stumbles upon a curious note in the Chou archives one afternoon, she convinces herself it’s her ticket out of academic hell. But Ingrid’s in much deeper than she thinks. Her clumsy exploits to unravel the note’s message lead to an explosive discovery, upending not only her sheltered life within academia but her entire world beyond it. With her trusty friend Eunice Kim by her side and her rival Vivian Vo hot on her tail, together they set off a roller coaster of mishaps and misadventures, from book burnings and OTC drug hallucinations, to hot-button protests and Yellow Peril 2.0 propaganda. In the aftermath, nothing looks the same to Ingrid—including her gentle and doting fiancé, Stephen Greene. When he embarks on a book tour with the super kawaii Japanese author he’s translated, doubts and insecurities creep in for the first time… As the events Ingrid instigated keep spiraling, she’ll have to confront her sticky relationship to white men and white institutions—and, most of all, herself.”
What can I say? Hard to describe this dark, satirical look at academia. There are a lot of absolutely bonkers elements to this narrative that I think, had a lesser novelist engaged them, might have come off unsuccessfully. But Chou is clearly well-versed in the politics of Asian American Studies and culture, so it almost seems as if she wrote this novel not only for the general public, but scholars and students of the field as well. I guess I have to list a spoiler warning here, so look away unless you plan to know some of the major plot twists. So, with that out of the way, one of the biggest elements that the novel hinges on is a form of yellowface involving Xiao-Wen Chou, but it’s the kind of yellowface that almost borders on the speculative. That being said, it’s really clear that Chou is bringing up something like that Araki Yasusada controversy which involved a poet of East Asian descent who was later unmasked as a fictive construct likely by a white poet. In any case, the question of Asian American authenticity as it relates not only to representation and authorship but also to one’s commitments to social justice traffic throughout this text, making it one of the best in terms of covering the thorny questions that undergird the field. Where the novel is particularly outstanding is in its unflinching portrayal of interracial desire, and the work reminds me a little bit of Laurence Chua’s Gold by the Inch in how it drives head into a very difficult topic and stays there. This novel is clearly going to get a lot of critical interest, and I’ll be waiting to read all the wonderful scholarship it is going to produce.
Buy the Book Here
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A Review of Claire Stanford’s Happy for You (Viking, 2022)
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
A sparkling, eminently readable debut from Claire Stanford’s Happy for You (Viking, 2022)! Let’s let the marketing description give us something to work off of: “Four years into writing her still-unfinished philosophy dissertation, and anticipating a marriage proposal from her long-term boyfriend, Evelyn Kominsky Kumamoto is wrestling with big questions about life: How can she do meaningful work in the world? Is she ready for marriage—and motherhood? But no one else around her seems to share her ambivalence. Her relentlessly optimistic, Midwestern boyfriend has no hesitation about making a lifelong commitment; her best friend, Sharky, seems to have wholeheartedly embraced his second-choice career as a trend forecaster; and her usually reserved father has thrown himself headlong into a new relationship—his first since her mother’s passing when Evelyn was fourteen. Swallowing her doubts, Evelyn makes a leap, leaving academia for a job as a researcher at the third-most popular internet company, where her team is tasked with developing an app that will help users quantify and augment their happiness. Confronting Silicon Valley’s norm-reinforcing algorithms and predominantly white culture, she struggles to find belonging: as a biracial person, as an Asian American, and as someone who doesn’t know how to perform social media’s vision of what womanhood should look like. As her misgivings mount, an unexpected development upends her assumptions about her future, and Evelyn embarks on a journey toward an authentic happiness all her own.”
I read this novel not long after Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something, so it’s a great to see such complicated and robust depictions of mixed race Asian American protagonists. And, I also read this not long after Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation, so I’ve been thinking about the often-vexed experience of Asian Americans in academic settings. In any case, the real philosophical dilemma that Evelyn is wrestling with is that common one we all wonder about: what is our pursuit of happiness really about? What is it that is driving us forward? Evelyn doesn’t seem to fully know herself, which is partly why she takes on the new job, which seems to be a larger manifestation of the many crosswords her life is taking. Her relationship with her father is under serious change, her relationship with her partner is reaching new milestones, and then she’s wondering what it is that she really wants to do for her work! Sprinkled in between such incredibly difficult life questions is Evelyn’s obsession with an animal television show called Misfits. I absolutely loved these asides because it’s actually something that I do too: I like learning about new animals, often ones that have unique characteristics. My jam is finding out if there are any new Lazarus taxon additions: those animals that we thought had gone extinct (like the coelacanth) only to reappear sometimes many decades after their last sighting. In any case, the concept of the animal misfit is perhaps an analogue to Evelyn’s own experiences, given that she’s not sure she fits in with academics or with the tech-savvy culture of Silicon Valley. Then there’s the question of whether or not she sees herself as a mother or not. The other interesting element that really pushes the novel in terms of its momentum is the work that Evelyn’s doing for the new tech company she’s involved in. She’s essentially tasked with helping develop an app that tracks individual happiness, but such an occupational pursuits leads to many doubts. Should she really care that much about tracking her happiness to the point where it would be documented on an app? Evelyn’s ambivalence about the app leads to a number of interesting conversations and thought pieces throughout the novel, giving readers quite a lot to contemplate. A spritely, quirky work grounded by an unconventional, yet winning narrator!
Buy the Book Here
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ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
A sparkling, eminently readable debut from Claire Stanford’s Happy for You (Viking, 2022)! Let’s let the marketing description give us something to work off of: “Four years into writing her still-unfinished philosophy dissertation, and anticipating a marriage proposal from her long-term boyfriend, Evelyn Kominsky Kumamoto is wrestling with big questions about life: How can she do meaningful work in the world? Is she ready for marriage—and motherhood? But no one else around her seems to share her ambivalence. Her relentlessly optimistic, Midwestern boyfriend has no hesitation about making a lifelong commitment; her best friend, Sharky, seems to have wholeheartedly embraced his second-choice career as a trend forecaster; and her usually reserved father has thrown himself headlong into a new relationship—his first since her mother’s passing when Evelyn was fourteen. Swallowing her doubts, Evelyn makes a leap, leaving academia for a job as a researcher at the third-most popular internet company, where her team is tasked with developing an app that will help users quantify and augment their happiness. Confronting Silicon Valley’s norm-reinforcing algorithms and predominantly white culture, she struggles to find belonging: as a biracial person, as an Asian American, and as someone who doesn’t know how to perform social media’s vision of what womanhood should look like. As her misgivings mount, an unexpected development upends her assumptions about her future, and Evelyn embarks on a journey toward an authentic happiness all her own.”
I read this novel not long after Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something, so it’s a great to see such complicated and robust depictions of mixed race Asian American protagonists. And, I also read this not long after Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation, so I’ve been thinking about the often-vexed experience of Asian Americans in academic settings. In any case, the real philosophical dilemma that Evelyn is wrestling with is that common one we all wonder about: what is our pursuit of happiness really about? What is it that is driving us forward? Evelyn doesn’t seem to fully know herself, which is partly why she takes on the new job, which seems to be a larger manifestation of the many crosswords her life is taking. Her relationship with her father is under serious change, her relationship with her partner is reaching new milestones, and then she’s wondering what it is that she really wants to do for her work! Sprinkled in between such incredibly difficult life questions is Evelyn’s obsession with an animal television show called Misfits. I absolutely loved these asides because it’s actually something that I do too: I like learning about new animals, often ones that have unique characteristics. My jam is finding out if there are any new Lazarus taxon additions: those animals that we thought had gone extinct (like the coelacanth) only to reappear sometimes many decades after their last sighting. In any case, the concept of the animal misfit is perhaps an analogue to Evelyn’s own experiences, given that she’s not sure she fits in with academics or with the tech-savvy culture of Silicon Valley. Then there’s the question of whether or not she sees herself as a mother or not. The other interesting element that really pushes the novel in terms of its momentum is the work that Evelyn’s doing for the new tech company she’s involved in. She’s essentially tasked with helping develop an app that tracks individual happiness, but such an occupational pursuits leads to many doubts. Should she really care that much about tracking her happiness to the point where it would be documented on an app? Evelyn’s ambivalence about the app leads to a number of interesting conversations and thought pieces throughout the novel, giving readers quite a lot to contemplate. A spritely, quirky work grounded by an unconventional, yet winning narrator!
Buy the Book Here
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A Review of Alma Katsu’s The Fervor (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2022)
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
So, I have always been a fan of Alma Katsu, and I was really jazzed to see The Fervor (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2022) come out. There have been more and more speculative fictions involving Japanese American incarceration, and I find the melding of the impossible and the historical to be quite fascinating. Let’s let the marketing description do some work for us: “1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko's husband's enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government. Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world. Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores the horrors of the supernatural beyond just the threat of the occult. With a keen and prescient eye, Katsu crafts a terrifying story about the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it's too late. A sharp account of too-recent history, it's a deep excavation of how we decide who gets to be human when being human matters most.”
There are at least two other major characters that are important to discuss: the newspaper reporter is named Fran, and the widowed missionary is Archie. Fran’s storyline is at first entirely separate from Meiko and her daughter, but Archie’s storyline is very much intertwined, as Meiko and her husband were once very good friends with Archie and his wife. They have a major falling out, which is in part attributed to Meiko’s racial difference, so the story also explores how they manage to have a rapprochement. Fran’s storyline really gives us a glimpse into the life of an independent-minded woman in the forties and reveals the struggles she must endure just to investigate the story of strange happenings going on. The other obviously foundational element is that all of these supernatural events are occurring during the period of the incarceration camps. On this level, I was really ambivalent. On the one hand, Katsu’s really just wonderful at plotting, especially in supernatural fictions (see, for instance, The Hunger). Yet, at the same time, I’ve been thinking a lot about the choice to bring horror elements to already awful historical and actual occurrences. In this case, Japanese American incarceration is already in my mind a form of horror, so it sometimes felt as though the elements of the supernatural only piled onto something I find already so difficult to read about. My experience is obviously subjective, and I do think that Katsu’s work ultimately does cast light upon a period that always deserves more representational complexity, so I’m willing to dwell in this space of discomfort and acknowledge the import of this fictional rendering. Final verdict: a dark twist on an already dark moment in American history! It will get you in the mood for Halloween, which is just around the corner!
Buy the Book Here
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ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
So, I have always been a fan of Alma Katsu, and I was really jazzed to see The Fervor (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2022) come out. There have been more and more speculative fictions involving Japanese American incarceration, and I find the melding of the impossible and the historical to be quite fascinating. Let’s let the marketing description do some work for us: “1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko's husband's enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the Midwest. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government. Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world. Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores the horrors of the supernatural beyond just the threat of the occult. With a keen and prescient eye, Katsu crafts a terrifying story about the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it's too late. A sharp account of too-recent history, it's a deep excavation of how we decide who gets to be human when being human matters most.”
There are at least two other major characters that are important to discuss: the newspaper reporter is named Fran, and the widowed missionary is Archie. Fran’s storyline is at first entirely separate from Meiko and her daughter, but Archie’s storyline is very much intertwined, as Meiko and her husband were once very good friends with Archie and his wife. They have a major falling out, which is in part attributed to Meiko’s racial difference, so the story also explores how they manage to have a rapprochement. Fran’s storyline really gives us a glimpse into the life of an independent-minded woman in the forties and reveals the struggles she must endure just to investigate the story of strange happenings going on. The other obviously foundational element is that all of these supernatural events are occurring during the period of the incarceration camps. On this level, I was really ambivalent. On the one hand, Katsu’s really just wonderful at plotting, especially in supernatural fictions (see, for instance, The Hunger). Yet, at the same time, I’ve been thinking a lot about the choice to bring horror elements to already awful historical and actual occurrences. In this case, Japanese American incarceration is already in my mind a form of horror, so it sometimes felt as though the elements of the supernatural only piled onto something I find already so difficult to read about. My experience is obviously subjective, and I do think that Katsu’s work ultimately does cast light upon a period that always deserves more representational complexity, so I’m willing to dwell in this space of discomfort and acknowledge the import of this fictional rendering. Final verdict: a dark twist on an already dark moment in American history! It will get you in the mood for Halloween, which is just around the corner!
Buy the Book Here
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August 1, 2022
A Review of Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club (Dutton Books for YR, 2021)
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
So I read Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club (Dutton Books for YR, 2021) as part of a two person reading group! It’s always so amazing to see works like this one, which do the work of historical revisionism, by presenting us with a queer Asian American teen protagonist trying to survive in a much earlier era. Let’s let the official marketing description do some work for us: “Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible. But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.”
The novel sets up twin problems: one related to racial formation and the predicament facing Chinese Americans as the Cold War begins to heat up. The second is related to Lily’s queer subjectivity, as she seeks to explore her same-sex desires, despite such a hostile environment. The brilliance of Lo’s work is really in the excavation of queer subcultures in this 50s period, which was well known for the stereotype of the American nuclear family, the stay-at-home wife, etc. While such depictions have been unmasked by many scholars as myths, these enduring tropes certainly resonate against Lo’s novelistic backdrop. The relationship between Kath and Lily is further complicated by Lily’s bestie, Shirley Lum, who doesn’t approve of Kath and Lily’s connection, even before it becomes something more than platonic. The bigger quandary that Lo sets for herself is how to deal with a coming out story in the fifties. Thus, if I have one quibble with the novel, it’s that the conclusion is rushed. We don’t see how the fallout from the relationship’s unveiling really bears out, and that particular narrative is the one that perhaps is the most critical, at least from the perspective of the queer Asian American young adult. Despite this one concern, this novel is certainly one of Lo’s best, standing high alongside her earlier speculative fictions.
Buy the Book Here
[image error] comments
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
So I read Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club (Dutton Books for YR, 2021) as part of a two person reading group! It’s always so amazing to see works like this one, which do the work of historical revisionism, by presenting us with a queer Asian American teen protagonist trying to survive in a much earlier era. Let’s let the official marketing description do some work for us: “Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the feeling took root—that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club. Suddenly everything seemed possible. But America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.”
The novel sets up twin problems: one related to racial formation and the predicament facing Chinese Americans as the Cold War begins to heat up. The second is related to Lily’s queer subjectivity, as she seeks to explore her same-sex desires, despite such a hostile environment. The brilliance of Lo’s work is really in the excavation of queer subcultures in this 50s period, which was well known for the stereotype of the American nuclear family, the stay-at-home wife, etc. While such depictions have been unmasked by many scholars as myths, these enduring tropes certainly resonate against Lo’s novelistic backdrop. The relationship between Kath and Lily is further complicated by Lily’s bestie, Shirley Lum, who doesn’t approve of Kath and Lily’s connection, even before it becomes something more than platonic. The bigger quandary that Lo sets for herself is how to deal with a coming out story in the fifties. Thus, if I have one quibble with the novel, it’s that the conclusion is rushed. We don’t see how the fallout from the relationship’s unveiling really bears out, and that particular narrative is the one that perhaps is the most critical, at least from the perspective of the queer Asian American young adult. Despite this one concern, this novel is certainly one of Lo’s best, standing high alongside her earlier speculative fictions.
Buy the Book Here
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A Review of Kylie Lee Baker’s The Keeper of Night (Inkyard Press, 2021)
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Originally, when I started Kylie Lee Baker’s The Keeper of Night (Inkyard Press, 2021), I thought it was going to be a one-shot, meaning that it wasn’t going to be part of a (A) duology, (B) trilogy, or (C) quartet. But, as I headed toward the ending, I kept thinking: uh oh, there’s no way things can be wrapped up! I was right! In any case, here is the official marketing description: “Half British Reaper, half Japanese Shinigami, Ren Scarborough has been collecting souls in the London streets for centuries. Expected to obey the harsh hierarchy of the Reapers who despise her, Ren conceals her emotions and avoids her tormentors as best she can. When her failure to control her Shinigami abilities drives Ren out of London, she flees to Japan to seek the acceptance she’s never gotten from her fellow Reapers. Accompanied by her younger brother, the only being on earth to care for her, Ren enters the Japanese underworld to serve the Goddess of Death…only to learn that here, too, she must prove herself worthy. Determined to earn respect, Ren accepts an impossible task—find and eliminate three dangerous Yokai demons—and learns how far she’ll go to claim her place at Death’s side.”
I really did have a lot of fun reading this novel! Baker’s work really gets at the political possibilities in the YA genre, precisely because it explores not only mixed-race subjectivity, but mixed being subjectivity. In this case, Ren, finding the life she’s carved with the reapers to be one of subjection and marginalization, decides to flee to Japan. Reluctantly, she agrees to go along with her younger brother Neven. It is this relationship that exists at the core of this particular novel, as Ren must find a way to sustain her connection to Neven, even despite all of the different quests she is forced to go on. The latter half of the novel is truly action-packed, as Ren must vanquish different demons. As I mentioned earlier, though, the novel leaves us on a huge cliffhanger, which I will not spoil, leaving us with the inevitable second installment to come out later this year. I, for one, will need to get it immediately to figure out what happened. Dynamic world building lifts up this paranormal YA to the next level!
Buy the Book Here
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ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Originally, when I started Kylie Lee Baker’s The Keeper of Night (Inkyard Press, 2021), I thought it was going to be a one-shot, meaning that it wasn’t going to be part of a (A) duology, (B) trilogy, or (C) quartet. But, as I headed toward the ending, I kept thinking: uh oh, there’s no way things can be wrapped up! I was right! In any case, here is the official marketing description: “Half British Reaper, half Japanese Shinigami, Ren Scarborough has been collecting souls in the London streets for centuries. Expected to obey the harsh hierarchy of the Reapers who despise her, Ren conceals her emotions and avoids her tormentors as best she can. When her failure to control her Shinigami abilities drives Ren out of London, she flees to Japan to seek the acceptance she’s never gotten from her fellow Reapers. Accompanied by her younger brother, the only being on earth to care for her, Ren enters the Japanese underworld to serve the Goddess of Death…only to learn that here, too, she must prove herself worthy. Determined to earn respect, Ren accepts an impossible task—find and eliminate three dangerous Yokai demons—and learns how far she’ll go to claim her place at Death’s side.”
I really did have a lot of fun reading this novel! Baker’s work really gets at the political possibilities in the YA genre, precisely because it explores not only mixed-race subjectivity, but mixed being subjectivity. In this case, Ren, finding the life she’s carved with the reapers to be one of subjection and marginalization, decides to flee to Japan. Reluctantly, she agrees to go along with her younger brother Neven. It is this relationship that exists at the core of this particular novel, as Ren must find a way to sustain her connection to Neven, even despite all of the different quests she is forced to go on. The latter half of the novel is truly action-packed, as Ren must vanquish different demons. As I mentioned earlier, though, the novel leaves us on a huge cliffhanger, which I will not spoil, leaving us with the inevitable second installment to come out later this year. I, for one, will need to get it immediately to figure out what happened. Dynamic world building lifts up this paranormal YA to the next level!
Buy the Book Here
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A Review of Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something (Tin House Books, 2021)
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Ah, I picked this book to read on the plane back to California! Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something (Tin House Books, 2021) was exactly the right choice, as it is a quiet burn of the novel, the kind that gets under your skin and reminds you of the very intricate dynamics that emerge between employees and their employers! Let’s let the official marketing description provide us with some key information (as per usual): “A perceptive and powerful debut of identity and belonging—of a young woman determined to be seen. Willa Chen has never quite fit in. Growing up as a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey, Willa felt both hypervisible and unseen, too Asian to fit in at her mostly white school, and too white to speak to the few Asian kids around. After her parents’ early divorce, they both remarried and started new families, and Willa grew up feeling outside of their new lives, too. For years, Willa does her best to stifle her feelings of loneliness, drifting through high school and then college as she tries to quiet the unease inside her. But when she begins working for the Adriens—a wealthy white family in Tribeca—as a nanny for their daughter, Bijou, Willa is confronted with all of the things she never had. As she draws closer to the family and eventually moves in with them, Willa finds herself questioning who she is, and revisiting a childhood where she never felt fully at home. Self-examining and fraught with the emotions of a family who fails and loves in equal measure, Win Me Something is a nuanced coming-of-age debut about the irreparable fissures between people, and a young woman who asks what it really means to belong, and how she might begin to define her own life.”
This description is quite useful, as it explores why the novel contains two temporal signatures. One, in the diegetic present, involves Willa’s adventures as a live-in nanny. The other, set in the past, gives us the context from which Willa emerges, the challenges of growing up as “a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey.” Without the stability of a social collective behind her, Willa naturally seeks out these connections elsewhere, including in the home of her employer. The problem that the novel sets up is that really fine line between employee and employer, especially because Willa becomes something more like an extended family member over time. Willa’s relationship with Bijou becomes particularly close, giving us a sense that we’re moving in a somewhat naturalistic direction. Here, I provide a bit of a spoiler warning, so turn away from these last lines if you intend on reading the novel but haven’t yet had the chance. Wu’s debut doesn’t disappoint precisely because the conclusion is profoundly unsentimental and squarely confronts the overall disposability of the worker, no matter how seemingly essential she may be. But, Wu’s protagonist is a particularly spritely one, so we know that she is just really beginning on her journey. An understated, but glowing first novel.
Buy the Book Here
[image error] comments
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Ah, I picked this book to read on the plane back to California! Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something (Tin House Books, 2021) was exactly the right choice, as it is a quiet burn of the novel, the kind that gets under your skin and reminds you of the very intricate dynamics that emerge between employees and their employers! Let’s let the official marketing description provide us with some key information (as per usual): “A perceptive and powerful debut of identity and belonging—of a young woman determined to be seen. Willa Chen has never quite fit in. Growing up as a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey, Willa felt both hypervisible and unseen, too Asian to fit in at her mostly white school, and too white to speak to the few Asian kids around. After her parents’ early divorce, they both remarried and started new families, and Willa grew up feeling outside of their new lives, too. For years, Willa does her best to stifle her feelings of loneliness, drifting through high school and then college as she tries to quiet the unease inside her. But when she begins working for the Adriens—a wealthy white family in Tribeca—as a nanny for their daughter, Bijou, Willa is confronted with all of the things she never had. As she draws closer to the family and eventually moves in with them, Willa finds herself questioning who she is, and revisiting a childhood where she never felt fully at home. Self-examining and fraught with the emotions of a family who fails and loves in equal measure, Win Me Something is a nuanced coming-of-age debut about the irreparable fissures between people, and a young woman who asks what it really means to belong, and how she might begin to define her own life.”
This description is quite useful, as it explores why the novel contains two temporal signatures. One, in the diegetic present, involves Willa’s adventures as a live-in nanny. The other, set in the past, gives us the context from which Willa emerges, the challenges of growing up as “a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey.” Without the stability of a social collective behind her, Willa naturally seeks out these connections elsewhere, including in the home of her employer. The problem that the novel sets up is that really fine line between employee and employer, especially because Willa becomes something more like an extended family member over time. Willa’s relationship with Bijou becomes particularly close, giving us a sense that we’re moving in a somewhat naturalistic direction. Here, I provide a bit of a spoiler warning, so turn away from these last lines if you intend on reading the novel but haven’t yet had the chance. Wu’s debut doesn’t disappoint precisely because the conclusion is profoundly unsentimental and squarely confronts the overall disposability of the worker, no matter how seemingly essential she may be. But, Wu’s protagonist is a particularly spritely one, so we know that she is just really beginning on her journey. An understated, but glowing first novel.
Buy the Book Here
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A Review of Joseph Han’s Nuclear Family (Counterpoint, 2022)
Posted by:
ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Well, what a fantastic debut we have here from Joseph Han’s Nuclear Family (Counterpoint, 2022). The novel is filled with really unique stylistics, which combine with an equally engaging plot. Let’s let the official marketing description do some work for us: “Things are looking up for Mr. and Mrs. Cho. Their dream of franchising their Korean plate lunch restaurants across Hawaiʻi seems within reach after a visit from Guy Fieri boosts the profile of Cho’s Delicatessen. Their daughter, Grace, is busy finishing her senior year of college and working for her parents, while her older brother, Jacob, just moved to Seoul to teach English. But when a viral video shows Jacob trying—and failing—to cross the Korean demilitarized zone, nothing can protect the family from suspicion and the restaurant from waning sales. No one knows that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his lost grandfather, who feverishly wishes to cross the divide and find the family he left behind in the north. As Jacob is detained by the South Korean government, Mr. and Mrs. Cho fear their son won’t ever be able to return home, and Grace gets more and more stoned as she negotiates her family’s undoing. Struggling with what they don’t know about themselves and one another, the Chos must confront the separations that have endured in their family for decades. Set in the months leading up to the 2018 false missile alert in Hawaiʻi, Joseph Han’s profoundly funny and strikingly beautiful debut novel is an offering that aches with histories inherited and reunions missed, asking how we heal in the face of what we forget and who we remember.”
It’s interesting that the description uses the phrase “profoundly funny,” precisely because Han’s work has so many different tones to it. There is definitely a humorous quality to a number of the scenes, especially ones involving Grace, but the sections set in Korea often take a different tack. Indeed, Han’s work reminds us that the Korean War has never officially ended. The speculative conceit he offers, that even in death Koreans still remain separated across the peninsula, makes this novel particularly rich in terms of its political orientation. As the novel hurtles toward its conclusion, there is a level of narrative coherence that is utterly lost, but that’s part of Han’s point, given the volatile family and national dynamics he’s so invested in exploring. The experimental aspects of this novel reveal a writer who is not afraid of embedding poetic stylistics into narrative terrains, which makes this work a particularly complex and rich reading experience. A super compelling read!
Buy the Book Here
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ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Well, what a fantastic debut we have here from Joseph Han’s Nuclear Family (Counterpoint, 2022). The novel is filled with really unique stylistics, which combine with an equally engaging plot. Let’s let the official marketing description do some work for us: “Things are looking up for Mr. and Mrs. Cho. Their dream of franchising their Korean plate lunch restaurants across Hawaiʻi seems within reach after a visit from Guy Fieri boosts the profile of Cho’s Delicatessen. Their daughter, Grace, is busy finishing her senior year of college and working for her parents, while her older brother, Jacob, just moved to Seoul to teach English. But when a viral video shows Jacob trying—and failing—to cross the Korean demilitarized zone, nothing can protect the family from suspicion and the restaurant from waning sales. No one knows that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his lost grandfather, who feverishly wishes to cross the divide and find the family he left behind in the north. As Jacob is detained by the South Korean government, Mr. and Mrs. Cho fear their son won’t ever be able to return home, and Grace gets more and more stoned as she negotiates her family’s undoing. Struggling with what they don’t know about themselves and one another, the Chos must confront the separations that have endured in their family for decades. Set in the months leading up to the 2018 false missile alert in Hawaiʻi, Joseph Han’s profoundly funny and strikingly beautiful debut novel is an offering that aches with histories inherited and reunions missed, asking how we heal in the face of what we forget and who we remember.”
It’s interesting that the description uses the phrase “profoundly funny,” precisely because Han’s work has so many different tones to it. There is definitely a humorous quality to a number of the scenes, especially ones involving Grace, but the sections set in Korea often take a different tack. Indeed, Han’s work reminds us that the Korean War has never officially ended. The speculative conceit he offers, that even in death Koreans still remain separated across the peninsula, makes this novel particularly rich in terms of its political orientation. As the novel hurtles toward its conclusion, there is a level of narrative coherence that is utterly lost, but that’s part of Han’s point, given the volatile family and national dynamics he’s so invested in exploring. The experimental aspects of this novel reveal a writer who is not afraid of embedding poetic stylistics into narrative terrains, which makes this work a particularly complex and rich reading experience. A super compelling read!
Buy the Book Here
[image error] comments
