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A Review of Rachel Heng's Suicide Club (Henry Holt and Co, 2018)

Posted by: eeoopark

A Review of Rachel Heng's Suicide Club (Henry Holt and Co, 2018)
By Heejoo Park




Set in the futuristic New York City, the premise of Rachel Heng’s debut is deceptively simple. What happens when humanity achieves near-immortality? What will be the cost of defying death? When I began reading Suicide Club, I had just found out through one of my students that there are indeed conferences devoted to “curing” aging and death. So, I was very curious as to how Heng would convincingly build onto that premise and make the readers wrestle with the question of what kind of life we must strive for.

Suicide Club definitely delivers in that regard, providing us with detailed descriptions of life-enhancing technologies such as SmartBlood™ and DiamondSkin™ that make the bodies of the so-called "lifers" almost invincible. Even with the enhancements, however, the daily existence of the lifers are carefully monitored by the government so that they may reach their maximum life expectancy and counterbalance the plummeting birth rate. In short, it seems that the cost of youth and longevity is the pleasures of living itself such as listening to stirring music or enjoying a sumptuous meal. In a way, the future depicted in Suicide Club is the direct opposite of the pleasure driven dystopian society in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

As the title suggests, Suicide Club makes us wonder if that kind of life is worth living at all. That question holds more weight for those who are “misaligned,” which means that their organs have different expiration dates as a result of unauthorized black market procedures. Even in those unfortunate cases, the law forbids the misaligned to commit suicide or get end-of-life care and assisted death, leaving them no choice but to slowly atrophy and decay for an indefinite time at body farms. As a protest against such government, a secret network of lifers called Suicide Club releases viral videos of its members taking their own lives in front of the camera. Although the Suicide Club’s agenda seem to revolve more around individual freedom than justice as it is mostly comprised of affluent lifers, Heng also considers the issue of unequal distribution of life chances by introducing sub-100s, who are not only excluded from receiving government subsidized life enhancing treatments but also treated as second class citizens.

 

*spoiler alert*

 

What I appreciate the most about recently published speculative fiction books by Asian North American women writers (Book of M, Severance, Ocean of Minutes, Suicide Club) is that each work revolves around characters of Asian descent, who are afforded complex personhood and therefore do not easily fit into the good subject / bad subject grid. 

Even so, I had a particularly difficult time dealing with Lea Kirino, one of the two main characters in Suicide Club alongside Anja Nilsson. The novel itself is immensely readable. Heng does take an interesting spin on the model minority myth by providing flashbacks to Lea’s childhood. We find out that Lea is torn between the memory of her mother, Uju, who was determined to make her daughter into an immortal and that of her alive but missing father, Kaito, who became a fugitive of the government labelled “antisanct.” In this fictional world, the upward mobility is taken to an extent that promises immortality, and brings with it more complications. Tellingly, one of Lea’s insurance firm’s clients is a Musk as in Elon Musk. However, the more I read the more frustrated I became at Lea, who seemed unbearably self-occupied and immature despite being over a hundred years old. While that would be hardly a character trait unique to Lea and quite common among lifers, I still desired more growth from her.

The dynamic between Lea and Anja, however, proved to be more interesting. Anja, the daughter of a famous Swedish opera singer whose misalignment covered the front pages of the news, turns out to be the one who came up with the idea of viral videos. Even as the new leader of the Suicide Club, she finds it difficult to decide what to do with her own life as well as that of her mother’s. Lea somehow becomes the catalyst that prompts Anja into action, leading to a Thelma and Louise-esque ending minus suicide. The ending provided a much desired relief for me though I could not help but wonder what chaos the two women might have left behind in the city. All in all, Heng’s debut was an enjoyable read and one that might also work well as a text to teach in the classroom and open up discussions.

Review Author: Heejoo Park, PhD Candidate in English hpark054@ucr.edu

Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Suicide-Club-Novel-About-Living/dp/1250185343/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Suicide+Club&qid=1566684549&s=gateway&sr=8-2

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A Review of Teresa Wong’s Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression (Arsenal Pulp, 2019).

Posted by: xiomara

A Review of Teresa Wong’s Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression (Arsenal Pulp, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn 

Here we have yet another home run from Arsenal Pulp with Teresa Wong’s Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression (Arsenal Pulp, 2019). Let’s let the official site provide us with a description of this cultural production:

“In this intimate and moving graphic memoir, Teresa Wong writes and illustrates the story of her struggle with postpartum depression in the form of a letter to her daughter Scarlet. Equal parts heartbreaking and funny, Dear Scarlet perfectly captures the quiet desperation of those suffering from PPD and the profound feelings of inadequacy and loss. As Teresa grapples with her fears and anxieties and grasps at potential remedies, coping mechanisms, and her mother's Chinese elixirs, we come to understand one woman's battle against the cruel dynamics of postpartum depression. Dear Scarlet is a poignant and deeply personal journey through the complexities of new motherhood, offering hope to those affected by PPD, as well as reassurance that they are not alone.”

First off, I wanted to commend the fact that there are page numbers. Yes, you might think this detail a trivial fact, but you’d be surprised at just how many graphic narratives are published without page numbers. This oversight presents a problem for those who want to teach these works in the classroom, so we can expect that Wong’s Dear Scarlet to be a fine choice for course adoptions (and a work to be taught alongside perhaps other graphic memoirs such as Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do and Lorina Mapa’s Duran Duran, Imelda Marcos, and Me). The other element to really applaud is Wong’s very direct confrontation with the complication that is clinical depression, which has many manifestations and just as many possible treatments. For Wong, postpartum depression is not simply dealt with by taking a pill. Instead, Wong must undergo a variety of different treatments and put to use a number of resources. For instance, beyond therapy, she gets the services of a doula. She also finds a community of women who have gone through similar things as she has. She also, of course, comes to rely upon her husband. What becomes evident is that healing takes a lot of work and support. Wong reminds us about how difficult it can be to ask for help but that once you do ask for help, you might have more support that you could have ever expected. If I do have one minor critique of the text, I would say that I would have loved the use of more grayscales. The images throughout and the panels are really done well, but there was a level of dimensionality that I sometimes desired that is difficult to depict in black and white tones. The title is, of course, a kind of love letter to her daughter, giving her daughter the extensive background to the first years of her life. As Wong goes on to detail, postpartum depression struck her again with her second child, but of course, by that point, she had some experience and tools that she could use to combat the deep well of negativity that she faced that second time around. As always, you can bet on Arsenal Pulp to publish socially conscious works, and Dear Scarlet is one that certainly reminds of the power that representation has to give voice to the struggles of motherhood.

Buy the Book Here:

https://arsenalpulp.com/Books/D/Dear-Scarlet

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!
Nicholas Clark, PhD Student in English, at nclar004@ucr.edu
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at sohnucr@gmail.com

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A Review of Swati Teerdhala’s The Tiger at Midnight (Katherine Tegen Books, 2019).

Posted by: xiomara

A Review of Swati Teerdhala’s The Tiger at Midnight (Katherine Tegen Books, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn 

In this post, I review Swati Teerdhala’s debut novel The Tiger at Midnight (Katherine Tegen Books, 2019). And let me be clear. This book had to win me over. Many of you know how I feel about the often-requisite romance plots that appear in young adult paranormal/speculative fictions, and I was occasionally just not-on-the-boat with the two major characters that anchor this book. In any case, let’s get us a description from the official HarperCollins site:

“The first book in an epic heart-pounding fantasy trilogy inspired by ancient Indian history and Hindu mythology, perfect for fans of Sabaa Tahir and Renée Ahdieh. . .Esha lost everything in the royal coup—and as the legendary rebel known as the Viper, she’s made the guilty pay. Now she’s been tasked with her most important mission to date: taking down the ruthless General Hotha. Kunal has been a soldier since childhood. His uncle, the general, has ensured that Kunal never strays from the path—even as a part of Kunal longs to join the outside world, which has only been growing more volatile. When Esha and Kunal’s paths cross one fated night, an impossible chain of events unfolds. Both the Viper and the soldier think they’re calling the shots, but they’re not the only players moving the pieces. As the bonds that hold their land in order break down and the sins of the past meet the promise of a new future, both the soldier and the rebel must decide where their loyalties lie: with the lives they’ve killed to hold on to or with the love that’s made them dream of something more.”

The immediate reference to Sabaa Tahir and Renée Ahdieh is pretty spot on. Teerdhala is operating with what I would call the neo-Oriental tale genre. It’s not quite Orientalist in the way that it has been traditionally defined as a kind reductive flattening. Nevertheless, it’s pretty clear that Teerdhala is working off of South Asian contexts despite the speculative terrains that she’s created. She meshes these ethnic references amongst a landscape filled with shapeshifters, assassins, and apocalyptic occurrences, AND OF COURSE the epic love story that must move us all (I’m not entirely being sarcastic here, as I was moved LOL). The premise brings us to a kind of Romeo and Juliet model: Kunal and Esha are pretty much on the opposite sides of the social spectrum, so Teerdhala gives herself a monumental task. How can Kunal, who is part of an imperial project, be with Esha, who is a revolutionary seeking justice for the people? Oh, and let me put in some spoilers here, so look away lest you receive far more information than you would like. . . So, I was thinking to myself: there’s no way that this ONE guy Kunal can be that much better than his imperial fellow soldiers, but Teerdhala’s got a sense of this individual’s history and backstory, one that makes his entry into Empire much different. In fact, he’s far more different than anyone ever realizes until about three hundred pages into the novel. That was the point where I thought to myself: okay, Kunal and Esha make sense. Otherwise, I was quite frankly not won over by Kunal. He seemed, in my mind, to be a kind of apologist: hey, empire can’t be ALL that bad, really, I mean, right? In any case, Teerdhala allows the love plot to really structure the momentum, which is why this type of book isn’t one that’s going to win me over right away. Nevertheless, once the plot moves away from the cat-and-mouse dynamics that bog down the first half of the book, the story really takes off. The more fascinating characters—and perhaps I’m betraying my own idiosyncrasies as a reader—are the rebels that populate the last quarter of the book. Teerdhala is also well aware that even the so-called revolutionaries-for-justice have their own motivations and problems related to intrigue, so not everyone can necessarily be trusted. It is in this kind of murky landscape that the novel works best, revealing that the line between good and evil is one as mercurial as shapeshifting.

Buy the Book here:

https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062869210/the-tiger-at-midnight/

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 Sea Sirens (written by Amy Chu, illustrated by Janet K. Lee; Viking Books for YR, 2019).

Posted by: xiomara

A Review of Sea Sirens (written by Amy Chu, illustrated by Janet K. Lee; Viking Books for YR, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn



So, on the same night that I picked up Super Sikh Vol. 1, I also picked up this title. I guess I was in a graphic narrative mood; I had yet more entertaining fun with Sea Sirens (written by Amy Chu, illustrated by Janet K. Lee; Viking Books for YR, 2019). Let’s get the official description first:

“Dive into this visually stunning, middle-grade graphic novel about a spunky Vietnamese American surfer girl and her cantankerous talking cat who plunge into a fantasy world of oceanic marvels . . . and mayhem! Trot, a Vietnamese American surfer girl, and Cap'n Bill, her cranky one-eyed cat, catch too big a wave and wipe out, sucked down into a magical underwater kingdom where an ancient deep-sea battle rages. The beautiful Sea Siren mermaids are under attack from the Serpent King and his slithery minions--and Trot and her feline become dangerously entangled in this war of tails and fins. This beautiful graphic novel was inspired by The Sea Fairies, L. Frank Baum's ‘underwater Wizard of Oz.’ It weaves Vietnamese mythology, fantastical ocean creatures, a deep-sea setting, quirky but sympathetic main characters, and fast-paced adventure into an imaginative, world-building story.”

One of the interesting things about this graphic narrative it is multifaceted genealogy, weaving together multiple intertexts. I didn’t realize that L. Frank Baum had written something called Sea Fairies, but The Wizard of Oz was the first “long” novel I remember reading as a kid. In any case, Trot and her pet cat are great characters. The best thing that Chu does it to make sure that Cap'n Bill gets to talk. The comedy factor ramps up once these two figures are allowed to have some more dialogic banter. I’d also like to provide my requisite spoiler warning here—look away lest you find out more than you would like—and discuss the fact that Chu decides to make the king of serpents be another human. In this case, Anko—a.k.a. the king of serpents—took this position because he happened to be drowning at the precise time that the previous king of serpents was dying. The other serpents, thinking that this human was the reincarnation of the king, decide to christen him their new leader. Correspondingly, the dying serpent king breathes magic into this human, allowing him to breathe underwater. Anko spends his time in the undersea realm actually trying to find board games and other such things to keep his eternal life more interesting, while the sea sirens have been assuming that the serpents are actually waging war against them. In fact, their animosities are, at that point, more of a misunderstanding rather than anything else, so Trot and Cap’n Bill are somewhat employed (at least on the plot level) to broker a kind of peace between the serpents and the sea sirens. Of course, they can’t possibly stay in the undersea realms forever. A late stage appearance by a surprise guest to the undersea world also offers them yet more motivation to return to the surface where they have to consider the fact that they have lives with people who can breathe in air rather than water. Lee’s visuals are absolutely perfect, and Chu’s story is certainly one for all ages. I have to say though that the Asian Americanist in me did wonder about whether or not Chu would choose to connect these Vietnamese American characters with the refugee experience, given the boat flights of so many, but this relationality is untouched!

For more on the book Go Here!

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/573447/sea-sirens-by-amy-chu-illustrated-by-janet-k-lee/9780451480163/

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 Super Sikh Vol. 1, By E.K. Alden, S.S. Manchanda, Illustrated by A. Tayal (Rosarium Pub)

Posted by: xiomara

A Review of Super Sikh Vol. 1, By Eileen Kaur Alden, By Supreet Singh Manchanda, Illustrated by Amit Tayal (Rosarium Publishing 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

So, when I saw this alliterative title, involving a South Asian “superhero,” I sort of chuckled to myself and said, “it’s about time.” Growing up while reading Marvel Comic Books, there was the occasional South Asian/American mutant with superpowers. The New Warriors series had a mutant by the name of Timeslip (aka Rina Patel), who could shift a little bit forward or backward in time. I recall that Timeslip was the first time I had seen a South Asian/American superhero, so it’s certainly a welcome time for more. Publishers Weekly provides us with a really great review and overview here:

“Deep Singh is a hard-working schmoe just looking to visit Graceland. Too bad he’s also an international man of mystery being hunted by the sinister forces of Group X. Can he, with the help of his genius cousin Preeti, a great many friends, and a beautiful stranger named Janelle finally reach the peak of Elvis fanhood without being taken down by terrorist bigotry? This is undoubtedly a send-up of lantern-jawed action heroism, but it’s a loving one: Deep is comically overpowered, but readers just can’t help but root for him after watching him cheer on an Elvis impersonator. In counterpoint, the book skewers the infantile pseudomasculinity that fuels extremism, personified by Group X’s leader, murky villain Salar Al Amok. His naked hatred of all that makes him feel small is among the most resonant aspects of the story. Unfortunately, though the line art is strong, the lettering and coloring look more like a first draft than a finished product. With refinement, however, Deep Singh could have a long and vibrant future as an independent action hero—and, of course, as an Elvis devotee” (https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-9987059-8-9).

It’s interesting that the lettering and coloring get so much critique. I wasn’t bothered by these elements at all. I frankly had a great time in the reading experience. The comic banter that occurs throughout was certainly a highlight. I also appreciated the “James Bond”-esque flourishes that happen throughout. Deep’s cousin is none other than an “Q” type who has the ability to make cool little gadgets that Deep is able to use to protect himself. At one point, something that looks like a shiv becomes none other than an automatic handgun. My favorite character hands-down though was Janelle. Though the two could certainly have been put together for romantic purposes, the co-creators and writers of this series have other more compelling ideas, opting to reveal that Janelle is not just a pretty face, but someone who has an affinity for weaponry. At a pivotal point in the story, it is Janelle who is able to help Deep out of some trouble. The payoff for this revelation is high because earlier on in the series, we are introduced to Janelle, as a sort of damsel-in-distress. When she tells Deep she could have taken care of some too-aggressive customers on her own, we don’t see how she might have engaged in this process but it becomes clear how well equipped she is for self-defense. The other obvious strength of this particular work is its timeliness given post-9/11 contexts in which oppressive surveillance still looms large. Deep is able to navigate these complications while still making his way to Graceland. The one problem—and here I will provide my requisite spoiler warning—is that Graceland is becomes the subject of a rather destructive plot development, so Elvis fans may not be too happy with the way the comic ends up. Fortunately, we’re in the wonderful land of speculative fiction, so we don’t have to worry too much. In any case, Super Sikh’s certainly a fun adventure. I can’t wait to see what trouble Deep Singh will get into in Vol. 2!

Buy the Book Here:

https://rosarium.bookstore.ipgbook.com/super-sikh-volume-one-products-9780998705989.php

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 Jaeyoon Song’s Yoshiko’s Flags (Quattro Books, 2018).

Posted by: xiomara

A Review of Jaeyoon Song’s Yoshiko’s Flags (Quattro Books, 2018).
By Stephen Hong Sohn 

So, I’ve been trying to catch up on some offerings north of the U.S. border. Quattro Books has been one of my favorite indie presses, as they often come out with novellas, a form that I think is overlooked (both critically and popularly). In this review, I cover Jaeyoon Song’s Yoshiko’s Flags (Quattro Books, 2018). Let’s begin with the official description from the Quattro site:

“Heeja, a displaced North Korean expatriate, decides to become an American citizen at the age of eighty. On the ride to the immigration office two hundred miles away, she tells the unrevealed stories of her past to her loving daughter Euna. When, at the final interview, the officer unexpectedly calls Heeja by the name Yoshiko, a name she carried more than seventy years ago under Japanese imperial rule, Heeja begins to travel to the deepest abyss of her weary soul.”

I don’t think this description is TOO accurate. Much of the novella actually reminded me of oral histories, as there are very attentive details to Heeja’s past. The novella is, as described here, a kind of road novel, as Euna gets the chance to ask more and more things about Heeja’s past. What I appreciated was the way that Song represented the schism between Euna and Heeja’s understanding of history and the past. The gulf between them operates in part precisely because Heeja has not fully dealt with the complicated trajectory of her life. Part of Heeja’s reticence is obviously the trauma of her upbringing. For instance, her name Yoshiko was only given to her precisely because of the oppressive policies mobilized under the Japanese occupation of Korea. Heeja could not use her Korean name or speak Korean freely precisely because of colonial occupation. Thus, Heeja has not told much of this kind of context to Euna. The other element that I thought was absolutely outstanding was the concluding arc, which brings together the larger political stakes of the novella. Song is patiently taking us to the point where we fully understand why Heeja might be a little bit ambivalent about becoming a U.S. Citizen. Over the course of Heeja’s life, she has had to show a form of loyalty to multiple different national entities, including Japan, North Korea, South Korea, and the United States. One of the most problematic moments is when she’s in South Korea, and she is forced to conceal her North Korean background. For Heeja, the concept of her many “flags,” as is alluded to in the title, is that it comes with so many possible burdens and expectations. At her age, can she really be expected to flee and make a new life if she had to yet again? This question is the one that pushes the novella forward. Song’s work of course ultimately reminds us of the Korea’s quite turbulent history. Heeja’s age, of course, also emphasizes how experiential memory of this history is slowly ebbing away. 

Buy the Book Here:

http://quattrobooks.ca/books/yoshikos-flags/

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 Ted Chiang’s Exhalation: Stories (Knopf, 2019).

Posted by: xiomara

A Review of Ted Chiang’s Exhalation: Stories (Knopf, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

Ted Chiang has graced us with a new collection, Exhalation: Stories (Knopf, 2019), which brings together mostly works that have been previously published in other arenas. As B&N tells it,

“In these nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories, Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine. In ‘The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,’ a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In ‘Exhalation,’ an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In ‘Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,’ the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will. Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.”

I’ll provide you with some shameless self-promotion here, as I wrote about “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” in Racial Asymmetries, when it was published as a novelette through Subterranean Press. That print run was so limited I needed to get the university I was working at to buy it for something like $150 dollars. In any case, the dream is to still own my own copy of this limited print run, but alas, that’s not going to happen soon. That novelette is something I often teach in a narrative and narrative theory class because it includes a very conscientious use of the frame narrative with accompanying intradiegetic narration. It’s a brilliant time-loop type story in which the protagonist attempts to alter the course of his personal history. He is able to use something called the Gate of Years, which allows anyone who travels through it to travel 20 years either into the future or into the past (depending on where the Gate is located). It’s set during the Islamic Golden Age and is still a work I come back to and reread. The other major reprint is the “Lifecyle of Software Objects,” which was published as a novella also via Subterranean Press, also in a limited print run. By that point, I was already on the Chiang fan bus, so I managed to snag a couple of copies. Fortunately, for all readers, now this publication is also more readily available in this edition. It’s one of my favorites for the simple fact that it explores the life of digients, which are virtual pets that have attained a level of autonomy and sentience. The narrative reminds me of the problem that virtual worlds create when human users stop finding them interesting to interact with. A number of the other stories in the collection boast Chiang’s signature melding of secular thought and religious/spiritual philosophy, such as “Omphalos,” which seems to be a story (if I am reading it right) that explores a kind of mirror Earth dynamic in which scientific discovery, technology and religion are intriguingly intertwined. One of my favorite stories was “The Great Silence,” which (again if I’m reading the story correctly, haha) involves sentient parrots as narrating entities. I don’t always get to see examples of animal narrators, so I really appreciated Chiang’s attempt to render nonhuman subjects in narrative discourse. “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny” was another really wonderful story, which explores the development of the “automatic nanny,” a kind of robot that can be used to care for human children. Once the “automatic nanny” fails in her care-work duties, the popularity of this invention drops drastically. My favorite story of the collection is the “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling,” which is a narrative I was primed to enjoy when Chiang came to UC Riverside last year to talk about something called “lifelogging,” which is a way of keeping a record of all of your memories that you can then review at any point in time. The story itself involves two different narratives: one involving a father and daughter and the rift that emerges between them and the second involving a tribal type society that is learning the intricacies of written language (in contrast to oral storytelling). The larger point that Chiang’s story makes is whether or not technology is beneficial, especially when it can create shortcuts. If something like lifelogging exists, would humans be able to retain any long-term memory if humans didn’t need to? This question animates this story and makes it one that you’ll certainly want to talk to friends about. Another outstanding collection by Chiang. Let’s hope we won’t have to wait as long for the next publication =).

Buy the Book Here:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/exhalation-ted-chiang/1129288493#/

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 Reema Zaman’s I am Yours: A Shared Memoir (Amberjack Publishing, 2019)

Posted by: xiomara

A Review of Reema Zaman’s I am Yours: A Shared Memoir (Amberjack Publishing, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn



I was interested in reading this title because of the subtitle actually: I wondered what a “shared memoir” might be. In any case, the marketing description over at B&N gives us a sense of Reema Zaman’s political aims in publishing I am Yours: A Shared Memoir (Amberjack Publishing, 2019):

“It is time. It is time to free our voice. To speak is a revolution. For too long, through the most intimate acts of erasure, women have been silenced. Now, women everywhere are breaking through the limits placed on us by family, society, and tradition. To find our voices. To make space for ourselves in this world. Now is the moment to reclaim what was once lost, stolen, forsaken, or abandoned. I Am Yours is about my fight to protect and free my voice from those who have sought to silence me, for the sake of creating a world where all voices are welcome and respected. Because the voice, without intimacy, will atrophy. We’re in this together. You are mine, and I am yours.”

Clearly inspired by the #metoo movement, Zaman pens a particularly timely memoir concerning the pitfalls of codependence and the need to speak out against forms of violence (sexual, emotional, and otherwise). Zaman, at first, structures the memoir chronologically and uses the present tense mode. While a bit awkward in its execution, the immediacy of the temporality draws in the reader. We see as Zaman struggles growing up as the child of Bangladeshi migrants (she grows up in various parts of the world, including Hawai‘i and Thailand). But the real centerpiece of the memoir is Zaman’s first marriage, which initiates in her mid-20s and becomes a space of domestic abuse, especially focused on a vicious form of gaslighting. From my personal perspective, Zaman sets up the reader quite well for this sequence: the romance is truly too picture perfect. The man comes off as an absolute charmer, the kind scene in romance plots of Hollywood films, so my suspicions were already raised. I was waiting for something to fall apart and fall apart it does. Zaman patiently shows us how she begins to walk increasingly on egg shells around him, making sure to keep him steady so that the marriage remains relatively stable. But her partner’s emotional swings continue to escalate in their fluctuating capacities, and Zaman becomes spent by this labor. Eventually, the marriage disintegrates and the memoir’s subsequent portions enable Zaman to reflect upon the problematics of that connection. Zaman is working through her troubles, not only through her writing, but also through the dynamics of other relationships in her life. Her family, for instance, undergoes considerable transformation as she grows up. Her parents divorce, her mother remarries, while her father also moves on with his life. She begins to see that much of her sense of attachment comes from the complexities of her initial upbringing. The other element, which sometimes takes a backseat to these personal struggles, is Zaman’s challenges navigating the acting/performance industry as a woman of color. I would have loved to hear more about these issues and perhaps that story is better served in a memoir of its own. The “shared” from the title not only speaks to the shared struggles of so many women, but also the internal identities that Zaman is attempting to cohere. Thus, the phrase “I am Yours,” while initially spoken in the context of a romance with another man is really repurposed to mean that Zaman has come to love herself, a powerful affirmation of the intimacy that she ultimately needs to find an independence that will more productively serve her.

Buy the Book Here:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/i-am-yours-reema-zaman/1129823649#/

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 Peter Tieryas’s Mecha Samurai Empire (Ace, 2018)

Posted by: xiomara

A Review of Peter Tieryas’s Mecha Samurai Empire (Ace, 2018).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

Peter Tieryas has brought us another action-packed work from the United States of Japan alternate timeline. In Tieryas’s Mecha Samurai Empire (Ace, 2018), our protagonist is Makoto Fujimoto. As with the original USJ publication, we live in a United States that has been broken up into factions based upon German and Japanese supremacy. But, in this particular universe, the Germans and the Japanese are not allies. Amid this tension, Makoto is attempting to ascend the ladder of robot pilots, which is particularly difficult because of his class background. We’ll let B&N provide us with some basics:

“Makoto Fujimoto grew up in California, but with a difference--his California is part of the United States of Japan. After Germany and Japan won WWII, the United States fell under their control. Growing up in this world, Mac plays portical games, haphazardly studies for the Imperial Exam, and dreams of becoming a mecha pilot. Only problem: Mac's grades are terrible. His only hope is to pass the military exam and get into the prestigious mecha pilot training program at Berkeley Military Academy. When his friend Hideki's plan to game the test goes horribly wrong, Mac washes out of the military exam too. Perhaps he can achieve his dream by becoming a civilian pilot. But with tensions rising between the United States of Japan and Nazi Germany and rumors of collaborators and traitors abounding, Mac will have to stay alive long enough first.”

This overview gives us a basic set up that gets us into about the first seventy pages of the novel, but the unexpected tragedy regarding Hideki leads him to find a potential alternative to becoming a mecha pilot. He joins a civilian corps, which requires him to complete an intense training. There’s no guarantee that he’ll ever get to do much piloting, but the dream is what fuels Mac to go forward. From here, I’ll provide a basic spoiler warning—here’s your chance to stop reading—in order to set up the rest of the novel. Eventually, Mac and his fellow trainees discover that their lives are expendable. On one of their first missions as civilian pilots, they are ambushed by German robotic forces, and most of Mac’s allies are killed. Because of Mac’s ability to navigate through the ambush, he is able to get the backing of an important military figure and he is able to negotiate his (and a fellow civilian pilot’s) admittance into BEMA, otherwise known as the Berkeley Military Academy. From this point in the novel, Mac must figure out how to rise up the ranks of BEMA, so that he might be part of an elite mecha piloting group. A crucial side plot involves Mac’s budding romance with a figure of mixed German ancestry named Griselda. Due to Griselda’s ancestry, she is considered with much suspicion, and Mac must tarry with the many who do not approve of his connection to her. The novel’s concluding arc is absolutely kinetic: battle sequences, robot sparring and duels ultimately provide the main propulsion to the final page. The ingenuity of Tieryas’s work appears primarily from the alternative timeline premise: we’re already intrigued by the various political tensions arising due to the differentiation of the WWII outcome. From there, Mac is a likable protagonist, we want him to succeed precisely because the odds are always stacked up against him. From a more expansive Asian Americanist perspective, Tieryas’s creative work here adds much more dimension to the existing corpus of speculative fiction. I don’t recall any other works off the top of my head involving Asian American characters piloting large robot-type exoskeletons. On this level alone, I find the narrative dimensions to be highly original and contextually inventive. In terms of the alternate history and timeline, Liu’s work can be taught alongside works such as Sesshu Foster’s Atomik Aztex and Caroline Tung Richmond’s The Only Thing to Fear!

Buy the Book Here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mecha-samurai-empire-peter-tieryas/1127724360?ean=9780451490995

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 Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019)

Posted by: xiomara

A Review of Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Press, 2019).
By Stephen Hong Sohn

I was a little bit cautious when approaching Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous precisely because I had heard so many things (in advance) about how wonderful the work was. I have been a big fan of Vuong’s poetry. I reviewed Burnings (a chapbook out from Sibling Rivarly Press) here on AALF and then taught Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Copper Canyon), so when I heard about the publication of his first novel, I was both elated and a little bit trepidatious that the novel might fall short of my expectations. Fortunately, such was NOT the case. Here is a description over from B&N:

“On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.  With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.”

I have no idea who wrote this description but its highly suspect for one huge reason: the word “sexuality” never appears anywhere in the description. God forbid someone actually market something as “queer,” especially because so much of the emotional heft in this novel is embedded in the protagonist’s relationship to a teenager named Trevor. I’m surprised (and incredibly disappointed) that Trevor doesn’t merit a mention. The other major character—if we want to call “it” that—is the city of Hartford, Connecticut. I was absolutely transported by Vuong’s breathtaking narrative, especially in its careful and deliberate rendering of a heterogeneous city, one marked by great disparities in wealth and health resources. Of course, the description pays great attention to the ethnic and racial aspects of the work: the protagonist has a pretty tortured but still loving relationship to his family. Never is this fact more present than in the way he speaks about both his mother and grandmother, a lineage of powerful, strong-willed women who obviously enable him to endure his own trials as a racial and sexual minority. The novel only gets stronger as it moves forward. Part of this momentum is achieved because the reader must get situated within the superbly lyrical way that Vuong renders the fictional world, no doubt a reflection of his abilities as an exceptional poet. It’s the kind of work that will not only receive much critical attention but will be taught in the classroom. I can easily see this work being taught alongside other narratives of migration and assimilation such as le thi diem thuy’s The Gangster We are All Looking For or Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic. It can also work quite well in classes that cover gender and sexuality, where it could find a wonderful place next to novels and works such as Carla Trujillo’s What Night Brings or Justin Torres’s We the Animals. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is one of the stand-out reads for me of 2019, and I will certainly be recommending it to any reader, any lover of words printed on the page. Let’s hope Vuong goes on to have a career much like Michael Ondaatje, someone who has been able to find as much success in poetry as in prose.

Buy the Book Here:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/on-earth-were-briefly-gorgeous-ocean-vuong/1129509905#/

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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