Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 31

A Review of Paul Yoon’s Run me to Earth (Simon & Schuster, 2020).

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

A Review of Paul Yoon’s Run me to Earth (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

I’ve been a huge fan of Paul Yoon ever since his debut collection, Once the Shore, which came out of Sarabande Books many moons ago. I taught that collection a couple of times in a “transnational asia-pacific” course in which I focus on story cycles set in Asia. Yoon’s collection is always a big hit. In any case, I’ve was really excited to see that he’d come out with a new novel Run me to Earth (Simon & Schuster, 2020). I’ll admit I still have to catch up on his last effort, The Mountain: Stories, but there always seems too much to read.

In any case, let’s let the official page provide us with some key contexts: “Alisak, Prany, and Noi—three orphans united by devastating loss—must do what is necessary to survive the perilous landscape of 1960s Laos. When they take shelter in a bombed out field hospital, they meet Vang, a doctor dedicated to helping the wounded at all costs. Soon the teens are serving as motorcycle couriers, delicately navigating their bikes across the fields filled with unexploded bombs, beneath the indiscriminate barrage from the sky. In a world where the landscape and the roads have turned into an ocean of bombs, we follow their grueling days of rescuing civilians and searching for medical supplies, until Vang secures their evacuation on the last helicopters leaving the country. It’s a move with irrevocable consequences—and sets them on disparate and treacherous paths across the world. Spanning decades and magically weaving together storylines laced with beauty and cruelty, Paul Yoon crafts a gorgeous story that is a breathtaking historical feat and a fierce study of the powers of hope, perseverance, and grace.”

I started this novel on a night in which insomnia would feature heavily. I’m glad I had something to turn to, especially because this novel was so, so beautifully written. Yoon’s prose has always been sparkling, so I knew I was in for a treat, but as always, the pairing of such elegant writing with such devastating storylines still produces a kind of readerly exhaustion. In this case, the story of Alisak, Prany, and Noi is really about the different fates that befall these orphans once they are forced to evacuate the field hospital. The danger inherent in where they live is apparent in Yoon’s opening section: the field hospital is essentially surrounded by unexploded bombs, so they have to be careful. Every moment they make must be considered with respect to what might be in the field, the possibility of more detonations.

So, I’ll provide a brief spoiler warning here, so that you might turn away (especially if you don’t want to know about the varied fates of these characters). Of the three, only Alisak is able to evacuate Laos. Noi tragically dies when she loses control of her bicycle in a field filled with bombs. Prany and their caretaker Vang are unable to evacuate in the chaos of that time; they are instead taken into interrogation and tortured over a period of about seven years. Much of the novel details Prany and Vang’s lives during and after their imprisonment and reeducation. Prany still holds on to the possibility that Alisak is alive and thriving; it is this remaining and luminescent attachment that provides the one important thread of hope. When Prany is able to secure the passage of a young girl named Khit, who becomes a kind of replacement for Noi, Yoon is helping to stage an imperfect reunion by the novel’s end. Readers will want something to hold on to, given so much deprivation and destruction that pervades the novel. Fortunately, we will be buoyed for much of it with Yoon’s always crystalline prose, which acts as a salve against the heartrending circumstances of war. Yoon’s prose is most reminiscent of writers like Alexander Chee (in Edinburgh) and Julie Otsuka; there’s a poetic sparseness that is perfectly right and pristine. Scholars of refugee studies might find this novel a useful book to assign in classes on that topic.

Buy the Book Here:

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu

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A Review of Marie Lu’s Rebel (Roaring Brook, 2019).

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

A Review of Marie Lu’s Rebel (Roaring Brook, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

Despite the fact that I would consider myself I huge fan of Marie Lu’s Legend series, which was originally a trilogy. I stalled out of this book at least twice. For some reason, I could not get into the rhythm of this version of alternate narration. Let’s let the official site give us some background: “Respect the Legend. Idolize the Prodigy. Celebrate the Champion. But never underestimate the Rebel. With unmatched suspense and her signature cinematic storytelling, #1 New York Times–bestselling author Marie Lu plunges readers back into the unforgettable world of Legend for a truly grand finale. Eden Wing has been living in his brother’s shadow for years. Even though he’s a top student at his academy in Ross City, Antarctica, and a brilliant inventor, most people know him only as Daniel Wing’s little brother. A decade ago, Daniel was known as Day, the boy from the streets who led a revolution that saved the Republic of America. But Day is no longer the same young man who was once a national hero. These days he’d rather hide out from the world and leave his past behind. All that matters to him now is keeping Eden safe—even if that also means giving up June, the great love of Daniel’s life. As the two brothers struggle to accept who they’ve each become since their time in the Republic, a new danger creeps into the distance that’s grown between them. Eden soon finds himself drawn so far into Ross City’s dark side, even his legendary brother can’t save him. At least not on his own . . .” So, Lu shifts the dynamic from June Iparis and Daniel Altan Wing (otherwise known as Day) to Day and his little brother Eden. The first person perspective toggles back and forth between them. We see things get complicated once Eden gets involved with illegal drone races that put him on the radar of a criminal kingpin called Dominic Hann. Day’s overprotective vibe does not sit well with Eden, and they are continually drifting apart.

The most interesting world building element that Lu works in is a futuristic city that is based upon game experience points and levels. Anyone who has ever played a dungeons and dragons or fantasy based game or even most MMORPGs knows that you have to kill things, go on quests, or unlock major achievements to get a higher experience level. In a similar fashion, life has become game-ified, with every actions or thing you do giving you points. Points can also be subtracted. The problem with the system becomes pretty clear quite quickly: it cannot regulate certain things like intent. In addition, the people who excel at the game are given way more liberties and rights than those who do not choose to “play the game.”

The reason why I stalled out was really a subjective response to one character: I just did not find Eden very likable. I’ll be the first to say that I try to encourage students to look beyond value judgments when they are digesting a book, so I really tried hard to instill that in myself as I plowed through the book. Even after a couple of “stalls,” I eventually did finish. I suppose I didn’t empathize with Eden’s sense of the world around him but Lu attempts to give Eden far more roundedness in the back half, especially when Day finally gives Eden a stronger sense of the home (in the Republic) that they had to leave behind. It is at that point that Eden more fully understands the life of privilege that he has led, giving him the character motivation that most of us were waiting for anyway. The romance plot I found far less compelling, as this novel was more about the relationship between two brothers than it was about June and Day. I did have to say that I was very originally impressed by Lu’s ending to what was then conceived of as a trilogy. There was not “happily ever after,” but the open-endedness was apparently something that compelled Lu to return to it, after she too began to wonder what had happened between her characters. In any case, despite my admittedly mixed feelings about the final installment, anyone who has read the original Legend trilogy will not be able to stop themselves to read this unexpected addition to the series. 

Buy the Book Here:

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu

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A Review of Meng Jin’s Little Gods (Custom House, 2020).

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

A Review of Meng Jin’s Little Gods (Custom House, 2020).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

Meng Jin’s debut novel, Little Gods (Custom House, 2020), is an exquisitely crafted novel about loss and family genealogy. Let’s let the HarperCollins official site give us some more information on it:  “Combining the emotional resonance of Home Fire with the ambition and innovation of Asymmetry, a lyrical and thought-provoking debut novel that explores the complex web of grief, memory, time, physics, history, and selfhood in the immigrant experience, and the complicated bond between daughters and mothers. On the night of June Fourth, a woman gives birth in a Beijing hospital alone. Thus begins the unraveling of Su Lan, a brilliant physicist who until this moment has successfully erased her past, fighting what she calls the mind’s arrow of time. When Su Lan dies unexpectedly seventeen years later, it is her daughter Liya who inherits the silences and contradictions of her life. Liya, who grew up in America, takes her mother’s ashes to China—to her, an unknown country. In a territory inhabited by the ghosts of the living and the dead, Liya’s memories are joined by those of two others: Zhu Wen, the woman last to know Su Lan before she left China, and Yongzong, the father Liya has never known. In this way a portrait of Su Lan emerges: an ambitious scientist, an ambivalent mother, and a woman whose relationship to her own past shapes and ultimately unmakes Liya’s own sense of displacement. A story of migrations literal and emotional, spanning time, space and class, Little Gods is a sharp yet expansive exploration of the aftermath of unfulfilled dreams, an immigrant story in negative that grapples with our tenuous connections to memory, history, and self.”

I was listening to a podcast episode with Meng Jin, which was really useful. Jin was quite purposeful in the many gaps that would emerge in her story. There’s a point at the ending—and I should provide my spoiler warning here to look away lest you be spoiled—where I simply did not know what happened. The wording is ambiguous enough to make me wonder if the entirety one of the character’s narrative sequences is something that might have been made up. In any case, the way that the novel ends makes me want to grab someone who has read it and ask: did Liya actually almost meet her father and then leave him behind? Did she actually travel to see her grandmother, or was that sequence in her mind? Who knows? I was confused, but it was nice to know that it was part of Jin’s point.

The other element that was a real revelation was Jin’s discussion of narrative perspectives: she did not include any sections from Su Lan’s perspective, so Su Lan becomes this kind of empty center around which all the characters revolve. Jin herself called Su Lan a kind of “black hole,” which I agree with. Precisely because she gives so little of herself sometimes to others, they attempt to figure her out, try to understand her motivations or, in the worst cases, they simply ignore her and impress upon her their own aspirations and dreams. The most challenging relationship in the text for me was the one between Sun Lan and her husband Yongzong. It seemed like there were so many red flags between them even before they were married that I was skeptical that they’d even go through with it. Then, there was the strange issue of Yongzong disappearing from Su Lan’s life just after the Tiananmen Square massacre. The narrative, if I read it properly, seems to suggest that Yongzong abdicates from his responsibilities as a husband and father simply because he cannot deal with the life he has made.

It is perhaps this kind of detail that makes the novel so hard to read, as you see the self-delusion that characters retain in order to render their lives more meaningful. If I had to hazard a critique of the novel, it was in the positionality of Zhu Wen. I found her a fascinating figure, a kind of watchwoman for Su Lan, but who sort of disappears from the narrative by the conclusion. I wish Jin had found a way to bring her back in, because even as the novel is moving toward increasing entropy (as is necessary given the thematic of physics), there is a sense that the narrative perspectives are Jin’s way of reversing this chaotic process, giving readers more to hold on to.

Buy the Book Here!

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu

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A Review of Mary H.K. Choi’s Permanent Record (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2019).

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

A Review of Mary H.K. Choi’s Permanent Record (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn


 
I was a big fan of Mary H.K. Choi’s debut novel, Emergency Contact, so I was definitely looking forward to Permanent Record (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2019). Let’s let the official S&S page give us some background information on the novel: On paper, college dropout Pablo [Neruda] Rind doesn’t have a whole lot going for him. His graveyard shift at a twenty-four-hour deli in Brooklyn is a struggle. Plus, he’s up to his eyeballs in credit card debt. Never mind the state of his student loans. Pop juggernaut Leanna Smart has enough social media followers to populate whole continents. The brand is unstoppable. She graduated from child stardom to become an international icon and her adult life is a queasy blur of private planes, step-and-repeats, aspirational hotel rooms, and strangers screaming for her just to notice them. When Leanna and Pablo meet at 5:00 a.m. at the bodega in the dead of winter it’s absurd to think they’d be A Thing. But as they discover who they are, who they want to be, and how to defy the deafening expectations of everyone else, Lee and Pab turn to each other. Which, of course, is when things get properly complicated.” Ethnicity and race always have a huge part in Choi’s novels so it’s important to lay out that Pablo is Pakistani Korean -American, while Leanna is a mixed race Chicanx character.

The premise of the novel is perhaps the classic rom-com set up: two wildly different characters are thrust together at a strange moment, the meet-cute, in which they discover sparks for each other. In this particular case, it’s the bodega in which Pablo works. These two characters are on opposite sides of the economic and social spectrum. Everyone knows who Leanna Smart is, and she’s mega-rich on top of it. While Pablo has an intimate circle of friends, he has been listlessly living his life after dropping out of NYU. I have to admit, when I first saw these two get together, I didn’t imagine this romance lasting long at all—so now I’ll provide my requisite spoiler warning, as I will be giving away precious details concerning the conclusion—thus, I wasn’t surprised when this relationship wasn’t going to work out.

What I appreciated about this particular relationship is that Choi makes it clear why they were never a good fit: Pablo’s got a very idealized notion of love, even as he can’t be honest about the way he feels about Leanna nor about the fact that he feels like a failure. Leanna herself lives a life that is constructed through surfaces and illusions, so when Pablo’s so-called authenticity is put into question, you can’t help but know that the relationship will soon go the way of dinosaurs. Despite the mismatch, what Choi knows about these characters is that they’re both frightfully smart and witty. In this sense, they get along on a certain level that sustains them for a good period of time. I did find that the novel tended to be a bit overlong, but I suppose my response was more from the perspective of the readerly skeptic: I never expected nor desired this relationship to last haha. In any case, despite these personal feelings, Choi always put her A+ game into the creation of the dynamics between these two characters. The conclusion is particularly strong, as Choi refuses the sentimental tropes that might have plagued a similar type young adult narrative.
 
Buy the Book Here!

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu

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A Review of Leland Cheuk’s No Good Very Bad Asian (C&R Press, 2019).

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

A Review of Leland Cheuk’s No Good Very Bad Asian (C&R Press, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

 

Sometimes I stall on one novel, then I’ll pick up something else. In this case, the “something else” was Leland Cheuk’s No Good Very Bad Asian (C&R Press, 2019). We’ll let the official site give us some background: “Meet Sirius Lee, a fictive famous Chinese American comedian. He’s a no good, very bad Asian. He’s not good at math (or any other subject, really). He has no interest in finding a ‘good Chinese girlfriend.’ And he refuses to put any effort into becoming the CEO/Lawyer/Doctor his parents so desperately want him to be. All he wants to do is making people laugh. A cross between Paul Beatty’s The Sellout and Jade Chang’s The Wangs Vs. The World, NO GOOD VERY BAD ASIAN follows Sirius from his poor upbringing in the immigrant enclaves of Los Angeles to the loftiest heights of stardom as he struggles with substance abuse and persistent racism despite his fame. Ultimately, when he becomes a father himself, he must come to terms with who he is, where he came from, and the legacy he’ll leave behind.” So “Sirius Lee”—get it, seriously—is the stage name for a character whose actual birth name is Hor. You can imagine that Hor did not like the various ways in which his name might be appropriated, so when he meets Johnny Razzmatazz, a well-known comic, and finds a kind of occupational inspiration, he creates his new identity: Sirius Lee.

The early stages of the novel reflect Sirius’s growing distance from his biological family. He comes from a lower middle class Chinese immigrant family, which (as you might imagine) is not so supportive of his interests in comedy or performance. In fact, not long after Sirius embraces his life as the protégé of Johnny Razzmatazz, he is essentially disowned by his family. During this period of exploration of his new found career, Sirius continues to pine away for Johnny’s daughter Veronica. While this romance never blooms, Sirius eventually falls in love with Tina, a fellow Chinese American, but her relationship to her family is decidedly different. In any case, as a so-called happy couple, they eventually have a daughter named Maryann. As you can imagine, in a novel like this one, there is no easy happy-ever-after, and soon their marriage begins to fray.

The emotional heart of the novel is in the epistolary address, as it becomes more and more evident that Sirius is conveying his life’s story to his daughter, Maryann. The danger of this kind of novel is that Cheuk must be consistently funny. That is, the story is about a comic, one who sees a fair amount of success on the circuit and in performance. Cheuk is more than up to the task, as his Sirius is quite full of witticism and self-deprecating humor. I especially found this novel to be refreshing precisely for its unique take on challenging the model minority narrative.  

Buy the Book Here! 

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu

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A Review of Jeremy Jusay’s The Strange Ones (Gallery 13, 2019).

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

A Review of Jeremy Jusay’s The Strange Ones (Gallery 13, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

Well, all I’m going to say is that I’m so, so disappointed that Jeremy Jusay’s The Strange Ones (Gallery 13, 2019) was not PAGINATED! There was a point about 1/3rd of the way through where I was thinking to myself: I have to teach this graphic novel, it is SO, SO good!!! And then, of course, I look down to check if I *can* teach this novel at all because graphic novels are sometimes not paginated. And then, I saw that there were no page numbers. I was SO sad!

This graphic novel is about a friendship, one that unfolds over the course of many days spent in NYC. We’ll let the official page provide more information: “Filled with visceral and engaging prose, this graphic novella offers a nostalgic look at two young misfits who manage to find belonging and heartbreak in each other’s friendship. Anjeline walks with an open heart, but alone, through a world that consistently rejects her; Franck, another loner, never smiles. After the hand of fate literally shoves them together in the roiling mosh pit at a Midtown rock concert, they bond over the long commute back to Staten Island, and begin a friendship that makes the world a little better for them both. Together, this strange pair turns the sharp-edged, gloomy New York City into their playground...even as pain and heartbreak await around the corner.” This description does a great job of packing a lot in. Much of the story appears in Jusay’s incredibly patient and restrained mode of storytelling. As two great friends, much of Anjeline and Franck’s time is spent finding new, cool places throughout New York City. Apparently, The Cloisters in Washington Heights is one of the highlights, a veritable oasis in the busy city.

Over the course of the graphic novel, we begin to see why Franck is so closed off. It also becomes more and more apparent that Anjeline might be harboring slightly more than friendly feelings for Franck. So, here I am going to be providing you with a spoiler warning: look away if you do not want to know the ending of the story. Eventually Franck does tell Anjeline why he is so melancholic. He had fallen in love with someone who did not return his feelings. It’s a poignant moment because you know Anjeline might be feeling something similar about Franck. Cue to the next section of the story, and Franck is DEAD! He died trying to save someone from being robbed. The rest of the graphic novel deals with grief and mourning, in relation to Franck’s family, his friends, and of course Anjeline.

Jusay’s panels are first rate, and I very much appreciated how this text wove in ethnic registers in a very seamless way. Franck happens to be Filipino, but this ethnic background does not end up being a driver to the story, as it sometimes in in other fictions concerning migration and acculturation. This comment is not to say that it makes this work better but only that is renders ethnicity under a different function within the narrative-space, which was interesting to see and read. Finally, having recently lost my mother to cancer, I found the novel incredibly affecting. I shed more than a tear, realizing that this friendship had been lost. Despite the lack of pagination, you bet I’m still going to teach it. I’ll probably spend some class time actually bringing post-its in and allowing all of my students to paginate it with me together. I look forward to the discussions.

Buy the Book Here! 

Review Author: Stephen 
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu

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Avon Books Acquires Two New Original Romance Novels for 2021

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, announced the acquisition of two original works of romance fiction by Preslaya Williams and Thien-Kim Lang as part of their Own Voices series of romance novels. The selections were part of an open submission call in 2019 from the publisher to "encourage increased diversity and amplify representation of writers of all backgrounds." Both novels are scheduled to be published in 2021. Below are the provided summaries of the novels from the official press release.

"Lam’s novel centers on heroine Trixie Nguyen, who is determined to make her sex toy business a success, proving to her traditional Vietnamese parents that she can succeed in a non-traditional career. Her first pop-up event is going well…until she runs into the ex who dumped her."

"Williams’s novel features an exciting new slow-burn contemporary about Maya Jackson, a Manhattan-based, Afro-Filipina wedding gown designer who learns to trust in herself and her ability to love again when she returns home to Charleston, South Carolina, and finds herself helping a widowed single father keep his struggling bridal shop afloat."

The full press release can be found here!

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez , PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu

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A Review of Rin Chupeco’s The Never Tilting World (HarperTeen, 2019).

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

A Review of Rin Chupeco’s The Never Tilting World (HarperTeen, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn



Readers of AALF will know that I am a fan of Rin Chupeco. I’ve taught one of her novels and just finished her other series. Now she’s moved over to HarperTeen with this latest, The Never Tilting World (HarperTeen, 2019).

We’ll let the official description provide us with the backdrop: “Generations of twin goddesses have long ruled Aeon—until one sister’s betrayal split their world in two. A Great Abyss now divides two realms: one cloaked in eternal night, the other scorched beneath an ever-burning sun. While one sister rules the frozen fortress of Aranth, her twin rules the sand-locked Golden City—each with a daughter by their side. Now those young goddesses must set out on separate, equally dangerous journeys in hopes of healing their broken world. No matter the sacrifice it demands. Told from four interweaving perspectives, this sweeping epic fantasy packs elemental magic, star-crossed romance, and incredible landscapes into a spectacular adventure with the fierce sisterhood of Frozen and the breakneck action of Mad Max: Fury Road.”

Now, the four interweaving perspectives are all first-person narrators: the twins are Haidee and Odessa; the other two are their respective romantic counterparts, Arjun and Lan. The world building aspect is totally intriguing, especially as readers basically hopscotch from one side of the world to the other. The monsters and mythical beings on each side are obviously different based upon the divergent climates. Krakens appear on one side while sand worms appear on the other. It’s constantly freezing on one size while it’s frightfully hot on the other. Chupeco also gives us enough information to realize that Haidee and Odessa don’t really know the other is alive; as each journeys toward the Breach that separates the worlds, there is a sense that they must figure out why the worlds remain so unbalanced and in threat of dissolution.

Inevitably, because there is a bifurcation, readers will probably find one side more compelling than the other. Chupeco also wisely shifts the tonalities from one world to the next. There is more of a gothic, horror element that pervades the ice-water world, while there is more of a thriller-romance that follows the sun-desert world. I found myself more compelled by the ice-water world only because there is a kind of survivor-like conceit going on there. What occurs in that side of the narrative is that Odessa is starting to receive gifts from underworld demons. These seven gifts will ultimately all result in Odessa losing some part of herself: what readers (and everyone who is journeying with her) begin to understand is Odessa is losing her humanity.

If I had one minor negative response to this narrative, then it comes in the form of readerly sequencing. I had just finished Kendare Blake’s series concerning the queens on Fennbirn. For those familiar with that series, the basic premise is that three daughters are born every generation, who basically must duel each other to the death. A similar conceit is being considered here, at least insofar as two sisters are basically supposed to duel each other until one dies, which provides a sort of balance to the worlds. When this sacrificial line isn’t followed, the world goes unbalanced. Such also seemed to be the case in Blake’s series. Despite the overlaps, the multiplied narrative discourse and the bifurcation of worlds makes Chupeco’s novel have some of its own unique elements. Fans of the paranormal romance will thus have something new to chew on in her latest offering.

Buy the Book Here!

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Gnei Soraya Zarook, PhD Student in English, at gzaro001@ucr.edu

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A Review of Logathasan Tharmathurai’s The Sadness of Geography: My Life as a Tamil Exile (2019)

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

A Review of Logathasan Tharmathurai’s The Sadness of Geography: My Life as a Tamil Exile (Dundurn, 2019)
By Stephen Hong Sohn

So I’ve been lately more interested in reading some texts that concern Sri Lanka, so naturally I was excited to read Logathasan Tharmathurai’s The Sadness of Geography: My Life as a Tamil Exile (Dundurn, 2019).

Let’s let the official page at Dundurn set this book up for us: “The harrowing journey of a teenage refugee who never gave up on his dream of seeing his family again. Born to a wealthy family in northern Sri Lanka, Logathasan Tharmathurai and his family lost everything during the long and brutal Sri Lankan Civil War. In January 1985, at the age of eighteen, he left his home in a desperate bid to build a new life for himself and his family abroad after a deeply traumatic encounter with a group of Sinhalese soldiers. As his terrifying and often astonishing journey unfolds, he finds himself in a refugee camp, being smuggled across international borders, living with drug dealers, and imprisoned. The Sadness of Geography is a moving story of innocence lost, the persecution of an entire people, and the universal quest for a better life.”

The early parts of the memoir set up Tharmathurai’s life when things are fairly stable. The wealth of his family—due in part of the success of his father’s business—allows him considerable privilege, but this status soon disintegrates in light of political instability. The dangerous conditions of the country envelope his family. His father descends into drinking; the family’s unity fractures, and the future naturally looks uncertain. Soon, Tharmathurai sees no other option but to radicalize and considers working with revolutionary groups. But, this approach seems less and less viable, so Tharmathurai then considers leaving the country entirely, hoping he can settle somewhere else and send money back home. His first stop is Germany. While he languishes in refugee detention, he receives word from his brother Lathy, who is in France, that Lathy intends to smuggle him into the country. Tharmathurai thus crosses the border into France, but his life there is a struggle. Without official documentation, he cannot attain any sustainable work or income, and he soon realizes that he’s become a burden to his brother. A last-ditch attempt to get to Canada enables him to get the foothold he has needed. This final transnational journey proves to be fruitful, and he is able not only to find refuge and employment, but also secure the passage of his remaining family back to Canada.

The latter portions of the memoir—and I provide a spoiler warning here—reveal the continuing fissures between Tharmathurai and his father, who tragically dies before any familial reconciliation can be reached. The political heft in this memoir clearly is rooted in the way that Tharmathurai details the oppressive conditions under which Tamils had to live in Sri Lanka. It is not surprising to see Tharmathurai attempt risky migrations in order to find a better life. Even in the space of detention and refugee liminality, Tharmathurai’s memoir makes it ever clear that the potentiality for something more is what drives him to go on these perilous paths, ones that promise far more than what might have been possible in the proverbial homeland.

If I can offer one small critique, it is that I did want more information about his time in Canada. There is a compression to the memoir that occurs in the final chapters, and given his surely astonishing trajectory as an immigrant, I wanted to know more about this path toward financial stability and family reunification.

For more, and to buy the book, go here!

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Gnei Soraya Zarook, PhD Student in English, at gzaro001@ucr.edu

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A Review of Maura Milan’s Eclipse the Skies (Albert Whitman & Company, 2019)

Posted by: lesliejfernandez

A Review of Maura Milan’s Eclipse the Skies (Albert Whitman & Company, 2019)
By Stephen Hong Sohn



Maura Milan’s Eclipse the Skies (Albert Whitman & Company, 2019) continues the adventures that first began with Ignite the Stars. Let’s let the official page give us some context: “Ia Cōcha never thought she’d be working for the Olympus Commonwealth. But that was before she found out her trusted brother Einn was trying to tear apart the universe. Now, Ia, the Blood Wolf of the Skies, has agreed to help the Royal Star Force on one condition: when she finds him, she gets to kill Einn herself. Brinn Tarver has just come to terms with her Tawny identity when the public lashes out against her people, crushing her family. At her breaking point, she starts to question everything she believes in—including Ia. After the death of his mentor, Knives Adams is doing his best to live up to a role he didn’t ask for as Aphelion’s new headmaster. Still, with each new step deeper into war, he feels torn between his duties and the pull of Ia’s radical—sometimes criminal—ideas. As they fight to keep darkness from eclipsing the skies, their unpredictable choices launch this breathtaking sequel to explosive new heights.”

At the end of the last novel,—and I am providing my requisite spoiler warning here—Ia found out that her brother was the Big Bad, a bigger bad, anyway, than the Olympus Commonwealth. Einn’s mission is to create a kind of interdimensional portal that will bring together two different universes. The problem is that the other dimension is one in which beings of immense power reside; such beings may have more malevolent tendencies, but Einn doesn’t really care: he just wants to produce chaos. Einn’s modus operandi is perhaps one of the elements that I didn’t find as compelling; his monstrosity is one that generally left one-dimensional. There’s a moment when Milan begins to suggest there’s something for more complex in terms of the psychosocial dimensions of Einn’s quest but it’s never fully engaged. Milan had a real opportunity to make Einn’s objectives that much more chilling.

Milan does provide us with some great character development. Brinn’s trajectory, in particular, was pleasantly surprising. I couldn’t at first believe the rather drastic change that was occurring with this character, but Milan is far more patient about this development. In some sense, the change in Brinn’s approach to the Commonwealth is one that also pushes the plot forward because without Brinny’s talents, Einn cannot build that inter-dimensional gateway. Milan makes effective use of extensive battle sequences, and the action never lets up. The conclusion is a little bit darker than I’d expected, but it’s a fitting end given the stakes in this particular world.

Buy the book here!

Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Gnei Soraya Zarook, PhD Student in English, at gzaro001@ucr.edu

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