Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 34
September 8, 2019
A Review of Natasha Ngan's Girls of Paper and Fire (Jimmy Patterson, 2018)
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A Review of Natasha Ngan's Girls of Paper and Fire (Jimmy Patterson Books, 2018)
By Heejoo Park
A British Chinese Malaysian author Natasha Ngan’s third book and her first venture into fantasy was one of my recent finds in flash ebook deals. I have been on a YA SFF streak during summer. So, I was certainly in the mood for more action-packed books. To my surprise, Girls of Paper and Fire was a slow burn. However, I came to appreciate the overall effect the pacing had on the subject matters, which I will discuss later in this review.
In the first installment of her series, Ngan draws on various cultures across Asia to build a fantastical empire called Ikhara. Although I do appreciate the thought behind her world building, I could not help but wish that the cultural mixing had been done more carefully as many of the vocabulary for food, clothing and architecture in Ikhara are taken straight out of real world East / Southeast Asian contexts. For instance, the book mentions that the sari-making business is located in southern Kitori. This piece of information and other similar ones created a dissonance in my mind by meshing Indian / Japanese / Chinese / Malaysian / Arabic influences without providing a clear pattern and / or explanation for how the cultural hybridization took place.
While there is still something more to be desired for in the world building, I found the characters in the Girls of Paper and Fire and the development of their relationships intriguing and compelling. Once the Bull King of Han (formerly from Jana) conquers all of Ikhara through the Night War, pre-existing prejudices between clans and castes escalate. There are three castes in Ikhara: the Paper castes are humans without any animal-demon features and abilities; the Steel castes are humans with partial animal-demon features and abilities; the Moon castes have full animal-demon features though they appear humanoid in form. This premise reminded me of Majorie Liu and Sana Takeda’s graphic novel series, Monstress, which features the conflict between humans, Arcanics and the Ancients. This similarity in terms of premises and aesthetics helped me visualize the characters in Girls of Paper and Fire.
As it might be guessed from the title, the protagonist of the book is Lei, who is of Paper caste. Seven years after her mother has been taken during a raid by imperial soldiers, Lei tries to deal with grief while running a small herb shop with her father and a surrogate mother figure, Tien, who works for the family despite being of a higher (Steel) caste. However, her life is shattered further when the rumors of a Paper girl with demon-like eyes that are pure gold reaches one of the power hungry general. Lei is to become one of the Paper Girls, eight concubines presented as tributes every year to the Demon King.
*spoiler alert*
So, begins the journey of Lei being transported to the main kingdom of Han and being trained to become one of the Paper Girls in the Hidden Palace, which is why I described the book as a slow burn. What I appreciated the most was that Ngan does not minimize the fact that Lei is essentially forced to become a sex slave for the King. Throughout the journey to the palace and even after Lei begins to be trained as a concubine, the dread of one day being forced to spend the night with the King looms large. While the teachers at the Paper House attribute the fear to inexperience, Lei is acutely aware of how she must engage in a non-consensual sex act under the conditions of enslavement. The book accordingly includes a trigger warning for scenes depicting sexual assaults. I will say however that it is one of those cases in which the scenes are necessary to the plot development and not just there to provide graphic violence.
Even under such circumstances, Lei does find ways to defy the King and take back joys in her life. She falls in love with Wren, who is also a Paper Girl. While tenuous at times, she also finds friendship in Aoki and other women of the court. I appreciated the careful attention Ngan paid to female / female relationships romantic or otherwise. I found it very realistic that while all the girls are aware of their situation, they choose to deal with it in different ways so that their views are aligned in regards to one issue and not so much in another. And I loved that it is difficult to pass judgment on how each of the girls ultimately decide to exercise what little agency that they are afforded. The sequel to this book, Girls of Storm and Shadow, is set to come out this November. Based on where the Girls of Paper and Fire left the readers, I am guessing that the sequel will deal more with what is happening in Ikhara beyond the palace walls though I will not provide further spoilers.
Review Author: Heejoo Park, PhD Candidate in English hpark054@ucr.edu
Buy the Book Here: https://www.amazon.com/Girls-Paper-Fire-Natasha-Ngan-ebook/dp/B079RCLL3D/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=girls+of+paper+and+fire&qid=1567974871&s=gateway&sr=8-2
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August 29, 2019
A Review of Ruchika Tomar’s A Prayer for Travelers (Riverhead, 2019)
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A Review of Ruchika Tomar’s A Prayer for Travelers (Riverhead, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn
Cale Lambert, a bookish loner of mysterious parentage, lives in a dusty town near the California-Nevada border, a place where coyotes scavenge for backyard dogs and long-haul truckers scavenge for pills and girls. Cale was raised by her grandfather in a loving, if codependent, household, but as soon as she’s left high school his health begins an agonizing decline. Set adrift for the first time, Cale starts waitressing at the local diner, where she reconnects with Penélope Reyes, a charismatic former classmate running mysterious side-hustles to fund her dreams. Penny exposes Cale to the reality that exists beyond their small town, and the girls become inseparable—-until one terrifying act of violence shatters their world. When Penny vanishes without a trace, Cale must set off on a dangerous quest across the desert to find her friend, and discover herself.
An audacious debut, told in deftly interwoven chapters, A Prayer for Travelersexplores the complicated legacy of the American West and the trauma of female experience.
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Well, what a strange but immersive ride this book was! Here, I am reviewing Ruchika Tomar’s debut A Prayer for Travelers (Riverhead, 2019). The best book description I actually found was on Goodreads, so here it is:
“This daring debut novel propels readers into the world of Penny and Cale, two marginalized young women who forge an intense bond against a constricting backdrop of violence and isolation in Nevada's northern desert. Cale, a bookish loner of mysterious parentage, was abandoned by her mother and raised by her grandfather in a loving, if codependent, household. One pivotal summer her life is upended by the discovery of a devastating secret that irrevocably threatens this formative relationship. Set adrift for the first time in her life, Cale begins waitressing at the local diner, where she reconnects with Penélope Reyes, a charismatic former classmate and all-around hustler. Penny exposes Cale to the complicated reality that exists beyond their small town, and the girls become inseparable until one terrifying act of violence shatters their world. When Penny vanishes without a trace, Cale must set off on a dangerous quest across the desert to find her friend, and discover herself. Told in short, interconnecting chapters, A Prayer for Travelers explores the complicated legacy of the American West and the trauma of female experience.”
I was really thrilled to read that Tomar is from the Inland Empire; you can tell she has been a TON of time in deserts, understanding them both as a site of possibility but also of dystopian degradation. The hope we find in this novel is in the strong bond forged between Cale and the very alluring Penélope Reyes (who is called by her nickname Penny throughout the novel) but the problem is that trouble seems to follow Penny wherever she goes. It’s not surprising in some sense that Penny disappears; she seems to attract trouble, but the way that Tomar sequences the novel is what is startling. Highly anachronic but incredibly poetic chapters allow things to unfold at a leisurely yet meticulous pace. Throughout we get a very strong sense of Cale’s sense of isolation. It becomes increasingly evident that Penny’s allure for Cale—unlike so many others—is that Penny offers Cale the possibility of another family, one that is needed especially as her grandfather Lamb is slowly dying from cancer. Cale’s quest to find out what happened to Penny at first might seem a bit strange, even a bit obsessive, but Cale sees in Penny something absolutely effulgent, a brightly burning site of swagger and pomp that shines more hotly than the desert that surrounds them. While the novel is exquisitely written, I had considerable mixed feelings about the ending. As I edged every closer to the last page, I kept thinking to myself, there’s no way that Tomar can keep this pacing up. There’s something like an anticlimactic shift that occurs about 50 pages toward the end, but I won’t spoil it. It’s almost as if Tomar got painted a bit into a corner: the highly naturalistic world that has been created somehow does not swallow Cale up whole but the ending that awaits us may leave readers with far too many questions. Despite my feelings, let’s be clear: you should read this book if only to luxuriate in Tomar’s lush prose and her razor-harp regionalist eye. Never has a desert community felt both so palpable and illusive at the same time.
Find out more about this book here:
Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Nicholas Clark
Web Posting: Xiomara Forbez
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 sohnucr@gmail.com
Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu
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A Review of Rebecca Kim Wells’ Shatter the Sky (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2019)
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A Review of Rebecca Kim Wells’ Shatter the Sky (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn
So, I’ve been on a YA binge lately, as you might be able to tell based upon the review list. The latest I’ve read is Rebecca Kim Wells’ debut Shatter the Sky. I intended to put this book down somewhere halfway through but I literally could not put the book down. Wells has a fantastic plot that doesn’t really let up. Plus,—and I’m providing you with my spoiler warning here, so look away lest you find out things you wished you hadn’t—Wells’ plot also deals with a main character who needs to help of some dragons to accomplish a quest, so you had me at the word dragons. In any case, let’s let the official site provide us with some context:
“A determined young woman sets out to rescue her kidnapped girlfriend by stealing a dragon from the corrupt emperor in this stunning fantasy debut that’s perfect for fans of Margaret Rogerson, Rae Carson, and Rachel Hartman. Raised among the ruins of a conquered mountain nation, Maren dreams only of sharing a quiet life with her girlfriend Kaia—until the day Kaia is abducted by the Aurati, prophetic agents of the emperor, and forced to join their ranks. Desperate to save her, Maren hatches a plan to steal one of the emperor’s coveted dragons and storm the Aurati stronghold. If Maren is to have any hope of succeeding, she must become an apprentice to the Aromatory—the emperor’s mysterious dragon trainer. But Maren is unprepared for the dangerous secrets she uncovers: rumors of a lost prince, a brewing rebellion, and a prophecy that threatens to shatter the empire itself. Not to mention the strange dreams she’s been having about a beast deep underground… With time running out, can Maren survive long enough to rescue Kaia from impending death? Or could it be that Maren is destined for something greater than she could have ever imagined?”
Okay, so let’s backtrack a bit. Before Maren can even become the apprentice, she first has to be able to get into the emperor’s household! This little feat requires Maren to use her connection with a cousin to get a job that could very well kill her. Indeed, when she’s first hired in that residence, she has to work as the “royal” taster, a position that requires her to make sure food hasn’t been poisoned. The only problem with this job is that the last couple of tasters weren’t so lucky. Maren never gives up, which is why she ends up becoming the Aromatory’s apprentice. While the novel could have plodded at a snail’s pace here, Wells really amps up the stakes when Maren uses the information that she gathers from working as the Aromatory’s apprentice to try to steal a dragon. Although she fails, she ends up making a key ally with another mysterious coworker, and they journey together with a dragon egg that he managed to take with him. From here, I’m going to stop revealing more plot details, only to note that Wells leaves us with a pretty big cliffhanger, one that makes evident that there’s at least one more installment to this series. Naturally, since, you know, I finished this book in one single night, I immediately went and googled to find out what the deal was, and Goodreads already lists a 2020 publication for a book called Storm the Earth. I have to say, while I’m all for these titles that work as a series, the particular one for this novel wasn’t so apt. Shatter the Sky doesn’t come up as a very unique way to describe anything that happens. Sure, there are dragons that are in the sky, and they can be pretty violent, but beyond that, the phrase itself doesn’t carry much specific meaning for this fictional world. But, this one minor gripe doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s a fun book, with a romance plot that somehow didn’t even rile me up.
Buy the Book Here:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Shatter-the-Sky/Rebecca-Kim-Wells/9781534437906
Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Nicholas Clark
Web Posting: Xiomara Forbez
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 sohnucr@gmail.com
Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu
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A Review of Mira Jacob’s Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations (One World, 2019)
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A Review of Mira Jacob’s Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations (One World, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn
Mira Jacob’s Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations (One World, 2019) was another one of those books I was saving for the right time. It looked like a graphic memoir to me, at least at first, but what becomes apparently is the Jacob is employing a sort of visual staging for something closer to a visual documentary. It’s really hard to explain without the visuals, but Jacob herself (when I was listening to a podcast) calls it a kind of puppet show. A given panel usually has a standard pictographic background and then some faces, usually a picture of her son Z and then a picture of herself. Then, there is a conversation staged. In any case, one of the most challenging elements that Jacob makes clear is how to explain race and racism to a child, especially if your own child is of mixed-race background (half Indian/ half Jewish). Jacob’s child is incredibly sensitive and inquisitive, which enables Jacob to explore difficult topics, especially those that have arisen amid Trump’s ascendancy to the white house. Let’s get a snippet from the official page! So, the excerpt first begins with some of Z’s questions: “How brown is too brown?” “Can Indians be racist?” “What does real love between really different people look like?” From there, we get this description: “Like many six-year-olds, Mira Jacob’s half-Jewish, half-Indian son, Z, has questions about everything. At first, they are innocuous enough, but as tensions from the 2016 election spread from the media into his own family, they become much, much more complicated. Trying to answer him honestly, Mira has to think back to where she’s gotten her own answers: her most formative conversations about race, color, sexuality, and, of course, love. Written with humor and vulnerability, this deeply relatable graphic memoir is a love letter to the art of conversation—and to the hope that hovers in our most difficult questions.” Frankly, I adored this memoir. There was a section where I definitely had the feels. In the middle, there is a sequence during which Jacob narrates the period of time when she gets some marijuana for her father, who is suffering from cancer. As her father’s appetite has fallen, she seeks anything that might help stimulate his eating habits. Jacob’s therapeutic approach succeeds but also has an extra benefit: they end up starting to get high together and bonding in that process. One of the difficult things, though, is that Jacob’s father does not survive his bout with cancer. The other part of the memoir that was absolutely outstanding is Jacob’s treatment of her in-laws, who are Trump supporters. Somehow, Jacob has to find the right balance between allowing her in-laws to have their own political views while also articulating the fact that, despite this great gulf, she can somehow still love them. Given all of the factionalism and hate speech that has emerged in recent years, Jacob’s memoir strikes at the very heart of a divided America. I can’t think of a better book to stimulate deep conversations in the classroom. Though I won’t be teaching for the next year, I will certainly adopt this particular work at the first chance I can get. It will certainly pair well with the numerous outstanding graphic memoirs that have been coming out lately by Asian American writers (e.g. the work of Thi Bui, Malaka Gharib, G.B. Tran, etc).
For more on the book go here:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/543942/good-talk-by-mira-jacob/9780399589041/
Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Nicholas Clark
Web Posting: Xiomara Forbez
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 sohnucr@gmail.com
Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu
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A Review of Kris Hui Lee’s Out of Left Field (Sourcebooks Fire, 2018)
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A Review of Kris Hui Lee’s Out of Left Field (Sourcebooks Fire, 2018).
By Stephen Hong Sohn
I’ve been gravitating more and more to the YA genre in the summer. My days have been filled with struggles of writing, which often coincides with reading difficult academic and scholarly articles. By the time it’s bedtime, I want something admittedly a little bit more formulaic and dare-I-say-it, a little bit frothy. In any case, Kris Hui Lee’s Out of Left Field (Sourcebooks Fire, 2018) definitely hit the sweet spot one night. I read it RIGHT after Jenn P. Nguyen’s Fake It Till You Break It. Although I’m not big on courtship plots in paranormal fictions, I don’t seem to mind them in realist ones, for whatever reason. I guess it’s the formula I find comforting: there’s a match that should happen between two people who clearly are perfect for each other. Somehow, they don’t see it that way. Then, they eventually see it that way, but one or the other of the two does something to make the other see it back the old way. So, the two are splitsville, until the super romantic reconciliation fixes everything, and we see them together happily ever after. This general formula has been the gold standard for most romances I’ve been reading in the YA genre. In any case, let’s get to the official description offered by B&N:
“Marnie has never had a hard time fitting in with the guys. It would take a lot more than their goofy antics to keep her from joining them at the neighborhood sandlot to do what she loves best: play ball. An added perk of hanging out at the sandlot? Spending time with Cody Kinski, their high school's star pitcher and Marnie's best friend. Sure, he can be stubborn and annoying. He also knows how to make her laugh and respects her skills on the field. And when he gets nailed in the arm by a bone-fracturing pitch, Marnie becomes the team's best chance at making it to the playoffs. Except no one told the guys they're supposed to be on her side. With her own team against her, Marnie begins questioning her abilities. And when fate throws her a curveball, can she play without losing the game, Cody, and her belief in herself?”
So, the good: this YA is definitely sports-forward, especially in its consideration of gender equity in competition. Marnie’s as good as anyone, of any gender, non-gender, or any such associated category. She’s just plain good at baseball. So, of course, we’ll want her to beat any of her competition, especially traditionalist, masculinist high school dudes who don’t think she can hang. When that happens, you’re over the moon as a reader. The not-as-good: the cover! It has very little to do with baseball. Marnie definitely doesn’t seem to be the person on the cover, but maybe that’s just me. The interesting: Lee’s narrative is largely a deracinated one for the most part. There are some characters that are ethnically marked, but I did wonder about the racial backgrounds of some of the major characters, especially Marnie and Cody. After reading a book like Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth, I can’t assume anymore that a lack of racial signifiers means that we’re meant to assume the main characters are white. Final verdict: fans of the teen courtship plot will be satisfied provided that they are comforted, like I am, by the formula romance. Certainly, Lee is able to put her own spin on the genre by making the protagonist so “winning” and “winsome.” See what I did there?
Buy the Book Here:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/out-of-left-field-kris-hui-lee/1126980427
Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Nicholas Clark
Web Posting: Xiomara Forbez
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 sohnucr@gmail.com
Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu
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A Review of Joanne Ramos’s The Farm (Random House, 2019).
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A Review of Joanne Ramos’s The Farm (Random House, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn
So, Joanne Ramos’s The Farm (Random House, 2019) was one of my most anticipated debut reads for 2019. I recall reading a short description of it that made it sound like a speculative fiction, but it’s probably not quite a speculative fiction, which is a little bit alarming. The narrative discourse is brokered among four main characters (for the most part); there’s Ate, who works as a domestic. There’s Jane: a relative of Ate, who has just gotten out of a bad relationship and is trying to make a stable life for her and her newborn daughter Amalia. Later on, there’s a character named Mae, who works at a facility called the Farm. Regan is a character introduced later on, who becomes one of Jane’s friends and who is also at the farm. Let’s let B&N give us further context:
“Nestled in New York’s Hudson Valley is a luxury retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, personal fitness trainers, daily massages—and all of it for free. In fact, you’re paid big money to stay here—more than you’ve ever dreamed of. The catch? For nine months, you cannot leave the grounds, your movements are monitored, and you are cut off from your former life while you dedicate yourself to the task of producing the perfect baby. For someone else. Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines, is in desperate search of a better future when she commits to being a ‘Host’ at Golden Oaks—or the Farm, as residents call it. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her family, Jane is determined to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she’ll receive on the delivery of her child. Gripping, provocative, heartbreaking, The Farm pushes to the extremes our thinking on motherhood, money, and merit and raises crucial questions about the trade-offs women will make to fortify their futures and the futures of those they love.”
This description makes the novel seem as if it is focused primarily on Jane, which is not entirely true. The tension only works precisely because Ramos takes a lot of care in bringing out the nuances of each character. Despite the flaws that each character definitely possesses, Ramos is careful to carve out the motivations behind their sometimes-questionable decisions. Over the course of the novel, you begin to wonder whether or not Jane or anyone else can really escape the clutches of the Farm, given its extreme surveillance of its hosts. The level of emotional and physical manipulation of these women is harrowing, but the form of human trafficking that Ramos depicts is perhaps not entirely unlike other forms that still occur today. In this way, the novel’s most chilling political critique is in the metaphorical comparison between The Farm and other ways in which women’s reproductive capacities can be outsourced and used as a source of profit/capital. The ending will be sure to split readers. I was unconvinced by the type of reconciliation and alliance that was made in the final pages, but despite my personal feelings about this conclusion, the novel is a stand-out debut.
Buy the Book Here:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-farm-joanne-ramos/1129288695#/
Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Nicholas Clark
Web Posting: Xiomara Forbez
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 sohnucr@gmail.com
Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu
comments
A Review of Jenn P. Nguyen’s Fake It Till You Break It (Swoon Reads, 2019).
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A Review of Jenn P. Nguyen’s Fake It Till You Break It (Swoon Reads, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn
So, I remember really enjoying Jenn P. Nguyen’s debut, and I decided to save this particular book, Fake It Till You Break It (Swoon Reads), for a time when I knew I wanted to be entertained. Let us use the description from the official Swoon Reads website:
“Mia and Jake have known each other their whole lives. They’ve endured summer vacations, Sunday brunches, even dentist visits together. Their mothers, who are best friends, are convinced that Mia and Jake would be the perfect couple, even though they can’t stand to be in the same room together. After Mia’s mom turns away yet another cute boy, Mia and Jake decide they’ve have had enough. Together, they hatch a plan to get their moms off their backs. Permanently. All they have to do is pretend to date and then stage the worst breakup of all time—and then they’ll be free. The only problem is, maybe Jake and Mia don’t hate each other as much as they once thought...”
So, my first response when I was reading this novel was that it did tread some similar ground to Nguyen’s first novel, The Way to Game the Walk of Shame. In that particular novel, the main character manages to convince a popular boy to pretend they’re in a romantic relationship with each other. This character wants to avoid the negative publicity when it seems as though she has had an overnight hook up. To evade this kind of scrutiny, she is able to create this “fake” relationship to change the discourse on her romantic escapades. The “fake” relationship paradigm is carried over to this latest novel. For those of you who are even remotely aware of romance plots you can already tell that Mia and Jake are really destined for each other, so it’s really only matter of time before you wonder when each character is going to realize that they are supposed to be together. Perhaps, what’s best about this novel isn’t that we know the formula but that we also know that Nguyen has to throw a wrench into the “will they or won’t they” equation. By the time Mia and Jake realize that they are meant to be together (at least for their teenage time being), Nguyen has been planning for a hammer to drop, one that is absolutely logical and makes you wonder how the pair will recover. I must admit, I was expecting that period to perhaps be longer than it was, but these two protagonists are very likable, so you’re not entirely sad to see the work it out so quickly. The one critique that I had was that Nguyen used an alternating first person narration that I found to be difficult to distinguish. I sometimes found it challenging to figure out who was actually speaking, but fortunately the chapters are also labeled with the name of the character that is doing the narrating. Other than that, Nguyen’s Fake It Till You Break It (Swoon Reads, 2019) is certainly a work that will delight fans of the high school dramedy.
Buy the Book Here:
https://www.swoonreads.com/m/fake-it-till-you-break-it/
Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Nicholas Clark
Web Posting: Xiomara Forbez
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 sohnucr@gmail.com
Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu
comments
A Review of Eric C. Wat’s SWIM (Permanent Press, 2019).
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A Review of Eric C. Wat’s SWIM (Permanent Press, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn
Eric C. Wat has graced us with his debut novel SWIM (Permanent Press, 2019). Wat is probably more known to those of us in academia for his pioneering work The Making of a Gay Asian Community: An Oral History of Pre-AIDS Los Angeles (Pacific Formations: Global Relations in Asian and Pacific Perspectives). To this day, this book remains one of the few (perhaps only?) oral histories of the queer Asian American community. His novel likewise breaks new ground in what might be a kind of post-queer work. I use that phrase to attend to the ways in which the novel involves an Asian American protagonist (Carson) who just happens to be queer. Though sexuality and queer issues are major themes, coming out of the closet is not really the central concern nor do any of the protagonist’s family members really care about the fact that the protagonist identifies as queer. In fact, there’s a telling scene in which Carson and his Aunt are in a bakery and the bakery store owner sort of chides Carson for being single. The Aunt tells the bakery owner to “mind her own business,” but she retorts with the mention that she’s even making cakes now for gay weddings! Wat’s novel is one of the first that show changes not only in the general attitudes toward queer men but specifically toward queer Asian American men from within Asian American communities. In this sense, it’s perhaps the most progressive novel I’ve seen ever published from this particular perspective. It’s part of a growing set of novels (such as Rakesh Satyal’s No One Can Pronounce My Name and Brian Leung’s Lost Men) that are pushing the boundaries for queer Asian American representations. But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s let B&N do some set up for us:
“Carson Chow is a high functioning addict. For years, he's been able to meet the increasing demands from his aging immigrant parents, while hiding his crystal meth use every other weekend. One Friday night, as he's passed out from a drug binge, he misses thirty-eight phone calls from his father, detailing first the collapse and eventually the death of his mother. Carson has always been close to his mother; he was the only person she confided in when his father had a one-night affair with her younger sister twenty years ago. For the following two weeks, he throws himself into the preparation of his mother's funeral, juggling between temptations and obligations. Sometimes slipping into relapse, his efforts are thwarted by a stoic father who is impractical and unable to take care of himself, a grandmother suffering dementia, a sister with a failing marriage, and a young niece with unknown trauma that can be triggered by the sound of running water. He tries to find support from his ex, Jeremy. Now clean and sober, Jeremy rebuffs him. As Carson assumes his mother's caregiving role, her secret resurfaces and now haunts him alone. Will this tragedy plunge him deeper into his abuse or finally rouse him from his addiction stupor?”
This description does a great job of setting-up the various relational tribulations Carson and his family face. Once Carson’s mother dies, a whole host of new conundrums emerge, the most prominent of which is Carson’s drug use. Carson’s addictions come to a head precisely because of all the stress generated out of his mother’s death. Carson is so used to being the caretaker of his family that he begins to realize he must take care of himself as well. The novel’s strength is in these complicated family dynamics and how they unfold in a very textured construction of Los Angeles. There is a cultural geographer’s sensibility of the cityscape here, where scenes always unfold with a specificity of texture that always enhance the various dramas unfolding. The title, which might be better stylized as S.W.I.M., stands for “someone who isn’t me,” a phrase which calls attention to Carson’s inability at first to face the demons that germinate out of his drug use. In this sense, this novel is as much about coming into one’s identity as a mature and responsible adult as it is about the struggles of one Asian American family. Wat’s prose only grows stronger as the novel brings various threads together. For me, the narrative took a little bit longer to settle precisely because I found the character to be at first a little bit hard to like. I always remind students that we can’t always embrace characters, precisely because they’re meant to be three dimensional, so many harbor flaws that we wouldn’t want to admit that we ourselves might too possess. Fortunately, Wat’s patient and allows Carson’s personality and motivations to emerge with some grace, which enables the narrative only to grow richer by the conclusion. I imagine Wat’s trailblazing novel will be one that can be adopted on classes on Asian American issues and queer studies!
Buy the Book Here:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/swim-eric-c-wat/1129846378
Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Nicholas Clark
Web Posting: Xiomara Forbez
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 sohnucr@gmail.com
Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu
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August 27, 2019
A Review of Fae Myenne Ng's Bone
eeoopark
A Review of Fae Myenne Ng's Bone
By Heejoo Park
According to Fae Myenne Ng, bones, papers, and stories, those are what hold together a Chinese immigrant family – Leila, Ona, Nina, Leon, Mah, and Grandpa Leong – based in San Francisco more than blood. Published in 1993, Ng’s novel, Bone, follows a circular narrative that revolves around the death of Ona, the middle daughter of a Chinese American family that is trying to piece together what drove her to kill herself by jumping off a building in Chinatown. Told from Leila, the eldest daughter’s perspective, the narrative avoids returning to the immediate moments after Ona’s death until the very end as it is a traumatic loss that evades language. As it is often the case with children of immigrants who act as translators for their first generation parents, there is also a recognizable weariness in Leila’s narrative voice: “But I didn’t translate that for Mah or tell her everything else I heard, because by then I was all worn-out from dealing with death in two languages.”
While the characters are occupied with what went wrong and who is to blame, Ng invites the readers to consider more widely themes such as love, family, kinship, debts and so forth that have been taken up by various critics such as erin Khuê Ninh and Eleanor Ty. What struck out to me are the unmaking and the re-making of the family via bones, papers, and stories. Leon Leong, Leila’s stepfather and Ona’s biological father, for instance, believes that his failure to fulfill his duties as a paper son to return Grandpa Leong’s bones to China is to blame for his daughter’s death. However, bones also reappear in the novel as the bones of lesser parts such as the neck, the back, and the head, that Mah sucks in the kitchen. She says, “Bones are sweeter than you know.” It is those nonchalant words and those everyday acts that are her expression of love instead of “I love you” told directly to her daughters.
*mild spoiler alert*
Paper also looms as an important object that makes the ties between family members both tenuous and strong. Late into the novel, Leila finds a briefcase full of documents that Leon has kept all this time since coming to the United States on S.S. Lincoln. Leila wonders what kind of identity she has as a stepdaughter of a paper son. Where could she possibly find an authentic history of her and her sisters? As the narrative inches toward the event itself, she comes to the realization that it matters little which version of the story is real or fake as all versions structure their lives significantly in one way or another. Though Bone is on the shorter side of what I have read in the past couple of years, it is one of those works that takes time to emotionally recover from. If you are not already familiar with Ng’s work, I would strongly recommend picking this one up.
Review Author: Heejoo Park, PhD Candidate in English hpark054@ucr.edu
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August 24, 2019
A Review of Ling Ma's Severance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2018)
eeoopark
A Review of Ling Ma's Severance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2018)
By Heejoo Park
Ling Ma's Severance is one of my top picks for books read in 2018. But, I sometimes find that it is difficult to disentangle my thoughts from a text that I have been working with for a relatively long time. So, I am sticking to the basics in this post. One thing I would have to argue upfront in regards to Severance, however, is that I am in favor of approaching this novel as a multi-genre work that consists of a zombie narrative, an outbreak narrative, a ghost narrative, and an Asian American immigrant narrative. In reading Ma's debut, it is certainly impossible to avoid using zombie fiction as a frame of reference for “the fevered." However, I was drawn to Severance precisely because of how "the fevered" does not fit easily into either the Haitian or the popularized version of the zombies.
The novel opens with an unidentified narrator, who is later revealed to be the protagonist Candace Chen, who is a 1.5 generation Chinese American woman working as an overseas bible production manager for a New York publishing company. It is also interesting how Ma points out the irony of the Bible being produced in the manufacturing plants in Shenzen, China of all places. Certainly, Candace is not a character that you would immediately fall in love with. At first, she reminded me a lot of Suzy Park from Suki Kim's The Interpreter, whom Juliana Chang describes as "actively demolish[ing] domestic feelings and connection" in her work Inhuman Citizenship. However, Candace proves to be an intriguing first person narrator as her perspectives on the outbreak of Shen Fever and the fevered (those who are infected with Shen Fever) are different from those around her.
According to government organizations, Shen Fever is a fungal infection transmitted by breathing in airborne fungal spores. This description is strikingly similar to that of the mutated version of the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, a type of insect-pathogenizing fungus that turns ants into zombies, which provides the premise for Mike Carey’s novel, The Girl with All the Gifts (2014). Yet, unlike Carey’s novel that revolves around two characters – a military scientist and a second-generation zombie who further spreads the spores – Ma’s novel does not feature surviving characters who can verify Shen Fever’s origin and modes of transmission. Instead, as noted in the prologue, the group of survivors only consist of “brand strategists and property lawyers and human resources specialists and personal finance consultants," whose white-collar jobs are rendered useless in the post-pandemic world.
* spoiler alert*
Moreover, it seems that those who become fevered start showing the symptoms of Shen Fever when they return to a place filled with personal memories and nostalgia. In that regard, the disease can be classified as having a supernatural origin, rendering entities such as CDC useless. If the social orders such as neoliberalism and global capitalism have both collapsed beyond repair after the Shen Fever pandemic, then why does the narrator-protagonist of Severance (Candace) insist on remembering her racialized and gendered past? Especially when the pandemic is a disease intimately associated with nostalgia? And ultimately, what does it mean for an Asian American immigrant narrative to be embedded in speculative fiction (and other narratives modes) in this way?
One of the most frustrating but interesting dynamics that is well developed in the novel is that between Candace and Bob who is the self-appointed leader of a small group survivors. Once Candace leaves Manhattan and finds herself rescued by the group, she immediately distrusts Bob and hides the fact that she is several months along in her pregnancy. To keep that secret hidden a little longer, she continues to tell Bob bits and pieces of her past like Scheherazade from Arabian Nights. This is a detail that I almost missed in my first reading. However, this adds texture to the narrative and makes the readers wonder where various boundaries lie (between truth / lie, the fevered / non-fevered etc.).
Among their numerous arguments, I found the one about zombies the most fascinating. When Bob tells the group that the fevered are indeed zombies and therefore must be terminated, Candace interjects: “What are you saying? Because number one, the fevered aren’t zombies. They don’t attack us or try to eat us. They don’t do anything to us. If anything, we do more harm to them.” While I will not spoil the plot further, this is a moment worth revisiting after finishing the novel. On a personal level, I found myself wanting to know more about the fate of the characters and the world after the ending. Yet, I absolutely loved how Ma blurs the border between a before and an after, whether it be about the immigration to the United States or an apocalypse induced by an outbreak of Shen Fever.
Review Author: Heerjoo Park, PhD Candidate in English hpark054@ucr.edu
Buy the Book Here: https://www.amazon.com/Severance-Novel-Ling-Ma/dp/0374261598
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