Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 49
September 6, 2015
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for September 6, 2015.
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for September 6, 2015.
Happy Labor Day weekend!
AALF uses “maximal ideological inclusiveness” to define Asian American literature. Thus, we review any writers working in the English language of Asian descent. We also review titles related to Asian American contexts without regard to authorial descent. We also consider titles in translation pending their relationship to America, broadly defined. Our point is precisely to cast the widest net possible.
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide-ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
In this post, reviews of I.W. Gregorio’s None of the Above (Balzer + Bray, 2015); Mike Wu’s Ellie (Disney-Hyperion, 2015); Karl Taro Greenfield’s Subprimes (Harper, 2015); Anita Kushwaha’s The Escape Artist (Quattro Books, 2015); Griffin Ondaatje’s The Mosquito Brothers (House of Anansi, 2015); Mia Alvar’s In the Country (Knopf, 2015); Taran Matharu’s Novice (Feiwel & Friends, 2015); Nina Revoyr’s Lost Canyon (Akashic, 2015).
A Review of I.W. Gregorio’s None of the Above (Balzer + Bray, 2015).
I knew that the basic premise of I.W. Gregorio’s None of the Above concerned an intersex protagonist, so I was pretty jazzed to read this debut novel, which is firmly couched in the young adult fictional realms. Our first person storyteller and featured heroine is Kristin Lattimer. Upon losing her virginity to her boyfriend Sam, Kristin experiences serious pain during/ after intercourse, so much so that she sets up a doctor’s appointment with her OBGYN. Once there, it becomes apparent that there may be some anatomical issues, as her vagina is deemed to be unnaturally short. Upon further tests, Kristin discovers that she’s biologically intersex, as she still possesses some rudimentary gonads, which she may elect to remove (though there are risks associated with the surgery). Indeed, as she is informed, a gonadectomy will necessarily force her to take hormone pills for the rest of her life, and there is the possibility of other side effects as well. She is also diagnosed with AIS, which is androgen insensitivity syndrome. Though biologically intersex, Kristin identifies as female in terms of her gender and heterosexual in terms of her sexuality, but these identifications don’t mean much to many of her classmates who soon find out about her medical diagnosis when one of her close friends becomes a little loose-lipped about what Kristin’s diagnoses. Sam soon dumps her, while Kristin is the subject of cyberbullying, especially as she is repeatedly called a hermaphrodite. Thus, Kristin faces intense shame in the face of the fact that so many of her schoolmates know about her intersexuality and are being outwardly prejudiced toward her. Fortunately, a friend from an earlier period, the class nerd Darren Kowalski, is there to help her out. Additionally, Kristin volunteers her time at a clinic and learns to look beyond her own issues to see that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. For a young adult novel, Gregorio has tackled a very difficult topic; she does so with a strong understanding of the medical background of AIS, which increases the texture and impact of this novel. Though Gregorio does not identify as intersex herself, the author’s note details the impact that one former patient of hers had on her. Once the controversy concerning the middle distance runner Caster Semenya hit the news, Gregorio knew she had to write on this topic. Gregorio’s choice to address this issue in the young adult arena has its advantages and its drawbacks. Certainly, the novel will appeal to a younger audience and even influence a more liberal attitude to develop amongst the target audience, many of whom will be under normalizing scrutiny as high school students. At the same time, the novel’s more limited focus on romance and the travails of high school can at times overshadow fact that Kristin’s experience is of course more largely part of a huge discourse on queerness that needs to be understood as having a longer historical and contextual trajectory. Fortunately, Kristin does have a network of AIS supporters to draw from, including an understanding father and great doctor, but her experience is not necessarily the most common one, and in this sense, we must attend to the fact of the novel’s fictionality and perhaps its optimistic exceptionality.
Buy the book here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062335319/none-of-the-above
A Review of Mike Wu’s Ellie (Disney-Hyperion, 2015).
It’s been AGES since I’ve reviewed any picture and board books, but I’ve had more motivation to read them ever since one of my nieces who is autistic just learned to read, and we’ve been celebrating that event with the purchase of a number of different cultural productions so that she can explore the wonderful wide world of literature. Mike Wu’s Ellie is a spirited story of the titular elephant who attempts to save a financially beleaguered zoo through her unique talent: she uses her trunk to paint. Ellie’s talents obviously draw wide interest, and soon the numbers of visitors coming to the park soars, thereby ensuring the survival of the zoo. I agree with the sentiment provided by Publishers Weekly stated here: “Wu is a literal writer, but his visual storytelling, rendered in sweet, throwback-style watercolors, shows creativity and poise.” There is little that breaks this work out of the mold of many other outstanding coloring books, but Wu’s visuals are sure to capture the attentions of its youthful target audience. Of course, those who oppose the zoo as an institution and site for the displaying of animals will want to steer clear of this book. Despite possible political misgivings, the picture book is an important metaphorical exploration of the power of art to inspire and to save a larger community.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ellie-mike-wu/1120332648?ean=9781484712399
A Review of Karl Taro Greenfield’s Subprimes (Harper, 2015)
In the not too distant future, there exists a world that might look like the one depicted in Subprimes, which is Karl Taro Greenfield’s second novel after Triburbia. Greenfield is also the author of numerous other nonfiction books, including the memoir Boy Alone and the more anthropological, creative nonfictional works Speed Tribes and Standard Deviations. Subprimes might be seen as a natural follow-up to Triburbia, if we were to imagine an increasingly gentrifying world in which class disparity results in extreme forms of urban dislocation and segregation. In the fictional world of Subprimes, there are those who are at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, which is the majority of people living in the United States, and then there is the 1%. The title invokes the 99% who must live in subprime areas, houses given up due to mass foreclosures and areas that ended up becoming ghost towns due to rampant speculation. These individuals basically squat on properties that have become abandoned, hoping that they will never be pushed out due to redevelopment or revitalization. Greenfield’s version of the United States might not seem that far out of reality, except he dials up the class disparity factor by giving it an Octavia Butler-style postapocalyptic feel. As the 99% seek to find homes, they must continually move from one place to another as their itinerant status is regulated, policed, and marked as unwelcome. Greenfield fragments narrative perspective amongst a group of core characters, including Sargam, a mixed race and charismatic leader of the 99% who begins to foment a revolution against those who continually seek the displace the homeless wanderers; Arthur Mack, a man who seeks to make a new life in the wake of having been prosecuted for securities fraud; Arthur’s estranged wife, Gemma, who attempts to find her independence from her husband while raising her daughters; and a first person narrator, a journalist, who makes a connection with Gemma and later must go on the run with his children. Ultimately, it is the class warfare emblematized by Sargam’s makeshift community in Valence that leads all of the characters together. Greenfield’s novel is best understood as a biting satire of the current neoliberal economic model and deregulation of financial institutions, which is seeing most of the wealth in the world retained by a select few. In this sense, Subprimes may be an unfortunate harbinger of an actual future. The novel is most successful when it turns up the satirical impulses. For instance, Greenfield makes the most of the Inland Empire by transforming its value. Whereas places like Riverside have often been seen as one of the most undesirable Southern California locations, for Greenfield’s fictional world, Riverside is practically a mecca. Such is the nature of social inequality as it has become hyperformulated in Subprimes. Certainly, this novel is of interest to any scholar and fan of speculative fiction and satirical treatises.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-subprimes-karl-taro-greenfeld/1120425304
A Review of Anita Kushwaha’s The Escape Artist (Quattro Books, 2015).
After reading a book the length of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, you need something like Anita Kushwaha’s novella The Escape Artist. This slim fictional work gives you a chance to breathe a little bit and enjoy something much more compact in its form. The plot summary is given here: “The Escape Artist is the story of Nisha, a nine-year-old Indian-Canadian girl whose vivid imagination keeps her entertained in the loneliness she experiences as an only child and one of the few children in her neighbourhood. After her grandmother dies, her aunt Neela comes to live with Nisha and her parents. Neela suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder after having witnessed the death of her father when she was a girl. Neela and Nisha bond over their active imaginations, dreaming up adventures together in the room Neela all but refuses to leave - until an unexpected emergency.” Nisha is the narrator of this story, which is told retrospectively, though we’re unsure of how many years have passed since the events of the novel. The opening of the novel sets up Nisha’s general boredom, as she seeks to find a better playmate than the children who live closest to her. Neela’s presence thus offers Nisha a potential salve precisely because she has a more mature attitude, while still maintaining a kind of childlike wonder that allows her to connect more readily to Nisha. They spend many hours together, but at one point, Nisha discovers that she can say the wrong thing, leading Neela to shut down and to isolate herself. Indeed, as Nisha finds out, it is extremely difficult to get Neela out of the house. Thus, Nisha ends up pushing her mother to tell her the details surrounding her grandfather’s death, providing Nisha a better sense of why Neela might have been so traumatized and why, for instance, she does not want to leave the house. The concluding sequence details a kind of bildungsromanesque plot that forces Nisha to grow up, perhaps a little bit faster than she wants, but the brevity of this novella does have its drawbacks: we do wonder about the period following the concluding events and all the gritty details that come in the wake of her coming-of-age. The story also reminds me somewhat of the work of Jhumpa Lahiri and Rishi Reddi in the novella’s nuanced depictions of South Asian North American family lives and local communities and would pair well with any number of stories from Interpreter of Maladies, Unaccustomed Earth, and Karma and Other Stories. We’ll look forward to future works from Kushawa.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-escape-artist-anita-kushwaha/1120851612?ean=9781927443743
A Review of Griffin Ondaatje’s The Mosquito Brothers (House of Anansi, 2015).
So, there I was on a Friday night with writers’ block. I gave up on some of the revisions I was working on and picked a couple of different books out. The first was Griffin Ondaatje’s The Mosquito Brothers. I don’t read many books targeted for children in the mid to later elementary school years, so this book was a great one to remind myself of the different techniques that writers can take to engage their intended audience. As the official page notes, the story revolves around a young mosquito by the name of Dinnn (three “n’s” for those that are counting) Needles. The plot is described like so: “After he nearly drowns in a parking-lot puddle, Dinnn Needles is fearful of many things, including flying. When his four hundred siblings swarm off without him, he finds time to dream —about family stories, a lost brother, adventure in The Wild and, above all, how to be cool.” Dinnn is one of 401 children who are born in a mosquito “clutch,” so to speak, so he has to compete for the attention of his parents and his many classmates. As the runt of the litter, Dinnn attempts to carve out a sense of individuality by wearing a tiny leather jacket, which is later inscribed with the word “mosquito brothers,” which provides us with the origination of the title. In the latter half of the book, Dinnn goes on a country adventure with his family, manages to survive a harrowing encounter with predatory dragonflies and is even reunited with a long lost half-brother. Ondaatje’s choice to anthropomorphize an insect more commonly associated with pestilence and parasitic qualities is an intriguing one. Here, children will have to consider and perhaps even discard their presumptions about what animals deserve value and even human sympathy, but the novel does generate other questions, especially because the mosquitos in this narrative rarely if ever feed on the blood of animals directly. Ondaatje’s choice to elide this particular manner of consumption is one that is a gamble in some sense, especially as it undercuts some of the impact of his decision to recreate mosquitos with so many relatable and endearing qualities. The illustrations by Erica Salcedo are quite vital in establishing the amiable qualities of these mosquitos and Salcedo’s technique serves the general conceit and ambience that Ondaatje generates through the written word. Certainly, an inventive work, one that will impress young readers in the hybridity that Ondaatje creates between insects and alternative social formations.
Buy the Book Here:
http://houseofanansi.com/products/the-mosquito-brothers
A Review of Mia Alvar’s In the Country (Knopf, 2015).
It’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed a short story collection, or at least it seems to me. These days, I hear rumblings that it’s getting more and more difficult to publish a collection and that the big publishing houses are less likely to consider these kinds of manuscripts. Fortunately, Knopf didn’t pass on Mia Alvar’s In the Country, a wonderful meditation on the Filipino diaspora. Alvar takes inspiration from the fact that the Philippines has one of the biggest diasporic populations, in part spurred by governmental incentives to encourage laborers and corporate entities to work abroad. Thus, these stories take place (or mention) a number of countries beyond the Philippines, including most prominently United States and Bahrain. Most stories are told in the first person mode, though Alvar never operates from what might be called an “autobiographical” impulse, as the narrator may not be Filipina or may not even be a woman. The opening story, “Contrabida,” for instance, involves a pharmacist who travels home because his father is dying. He has also brought back some contraband, hence the title, which comes in the form of a very powerful painkiller, one apparently more effective than morphine. This story is representative of the many others that come afterword: characters generally come from modest or upper middle class backgrounds, but struggle to find connections to the people they hold most dear. Many of the stories thus come off as quietly pessimistic and exude a realist aesthetic that is important for the collection’s cohesion. In “Miracle Worker,” the narrator, a housewife in Bahrain, puts her skills to use in special education to help direct a child, who has a developmental disability, to show more awareness to external stimuli. Her conflict comes in the form having to tell the child’s parent, who believes that her young infant will somehow overcome the disability, that her improvements will always be limited. “Shadow Families” is perhaps my favorite story in Alvar’s collection. Alvar decides to use a first person plural narration, articulating the extensive reach of the Filipina diaspora as it connects housewives together, even as their families start to change and even to disintegrate due to transnational movements and cultural adjustments. “Esmerelda” was another sentimental favorite, as it follows as a domestic laborer and office cleaner who falls into an unconventional romance with the businessman she often sees while working her shift. The title story, “In the Country,” by far the longest of the collection, gives us a sense of Alvar’s potential as a novelist. The story employs anachronic sequencing to explore the lives of a given family under the Marcos regime, especially as they attempt to find a sense of justice amid corruption and Martial law. In many ways, this story reminded me of the work of a number of other Filipin@ writers such as Jessica Hagedorn, Gina Apostol, and Ninotchka Rosca in its obvious critique of a governmental regime that harmed so many. Alvar’s collection is a wide-ranging and epic in scale, surely a work that gestures to a bright literary future. In the Country would also be an excellent work to teach alongside others, especially Lysley Tenorio’s equally outstanding Monstress.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/in-the-country-mia-alvar/1120377330
A Review of Taran Matharu’s Novice (Feiwel & Friends, 2015).
Taran Matharu’s debut Novice (Feiwel & Friends, 2015), which is probably part of an intended trilogy called Summoner, is another addition to the paranormal young adult archive. In this work, our protagonist is an orphan named Fletcher Wulf, who is raised by a blacksmith in the provincial town of Pelt. Fletcher’s life is guided by the forge: he is being apprenticed and must learn the tools of his trade. Given his status as an orphan, his chances for upward mobility are limited, but by developing a skill, Fletcher will be able to secure future employment. At the same time, there are dangerous changes afoot: criminals are now being allowed to serve in the military due to the fact that humans are waging war with the orcs and the military is running low on options. Fletcher’s life goes into disarray when he comes upon a summoning book and uses it to summon a demon. After this summoning occurs, he engages in a fight with the local bully Didric and ends up seriously injuring and possibly even killing him. Fletcher realizes that he must leave Pelt behind and the secure the independent life that his adoptive father had helped make possible; he decides to head toward a major city and look for work there as a tradesman. Once landing in a more urban location, Fletcher not surprisingly gets into more trouble, but his demon and his summoning skills are noted by a battlemage known as Arcturus, and he is given a provisional acceptance into a local school where he will learn the magical arts. The schooling portion ends up being the strongest, as Matharu is able to weave in the complicated social dynamics that occur amongst teenagers while still keeping the readers interested through his worldbuilding. In this particular fictional world, demons come from different classes and different skill levels; the higher the skill level, the more rare the demon and the more difficult the demon will be able to control, but the more likely it will be powerful when it is more fully grown. Demons are captured in a space known as the ether, an alternate landscape that is as dangerous as it sounds and has rules all of its own. In the summoning world, there are class divisions. First, there are the nobles, who are usually gifted with their first demons from their parents. Then, some commoners are also able to summon, though they must be given demons from other mages who have been able to capture one for them. Complicating the social dynamics in this fictional world are the dwarves, who have long been subjected to “racist” policies handed down to them by humans. Additionally, the isolated elves have made a bid to re-align with humans, sending a chieftain’s daughter (named Silva) to train at the school. Not surprisingly, Fletcher, who is obviously a clear outcast, makes fast friends with his commoner classmates (Rory, Genevieve, Atlas, Seraph) and his dwarven classmate Othello. Silva’s position as the chieftain’s daughter is complicated, as she must attempt to establish more diplomatic alliances with the first year nobles, who include snobbish twins Tarquin and Isadora, while also realizing that her closest allies are actually the commoners. Matharu knows how to add some excitement into the plot by developing these class rivalries and building these competitive tensions into a final tournament that will be instrumental in deciding where the summoners will be posted for their military positions. The nobles obviously want nothing to do with the commoners, the dwarves, and even the elves, so they attempt to ensure that they will top the tournament standings, but Fletcher and his merry band have other ideas. I read Matharu’s debut in one sitting and look forward to the following installments. It’s clear that Matharu understands the fantasy-based lore that he draws from and the assuredness comes off in the evenly paced plotting and dynamic narrative momentum. Matharu does draw from one common genre conceit in which the protagonist is an ordinary but also extraordinary young individual from humble origins, but he does complicate other more established tropes. There is no clear romance plot in this first installment, and the narrative certainly does not suffer from this lack. An enterprising paranormal young adult fiction debut. As I told a friend of mine, this novel is like Pokemon, but with demons. Gotta read this novel and the following all.
Buy the book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-novice-taran-matharu/1120371435
A Review of Nina Revoyr’s Lost Canyon (Akashic, 2015).
Well, what a happy day! I get to review Nina Revoyr’s fifth novel, Lost Canyon, published after four outstanding works, including The Necessary Roughness, Southland, The Age of Dreaming, and Wingshooters. Lost Canyon returns Revoyr to the use of rotating third person narrative perspectives, an aesthetic she employed to great effect in Southland. That particular novel moved back and forth through different historical moments. Lost Canyon toggles between the perspectives of three characters but all in the contemporary moment: Gwen, an African American who engages in social advocacy for at-risk youth in Watts; Oscar, a Chicano real estate developer, whose fortunes have fallen on hard times after the global economic downturn and the subsequent impact on home buying; and Todd, a Caucasian financial executive from a humble background who finds his ascendancy into the white collar elite to be somewhat mystifying. These three characters are united by the fact that they all work out at SportZone with a woman named Tracy, a fitness instructor with the kind of zeal that pushes them to their physical limits. Tracy also is the nexus point for the plot because she’s leading the three characters on a challenging multi-day hike through the Sierras. Once the four characters finally make their intended destination, they discover that the trail that they wanted to hike has been closed due to a raging wildfire. On the advice of a ranger, they consider an alternative, less taken path. This less taken path is of course not the greatest choice to make, but they nevertheless embark on what will end up being a perilous journey. All at first seems to be going well, but then they come upon a patch of marijuana, which is being policed by an individual who might be a henchman for a Mexican cartel. Miraculously, they are saved when a random sharpshooter kills the henchman, but the four are freed only to realize that they have a new captor: a white supremacist by the name of A.J., who is not so keen on the fact that this ragtag band of adventurers only has one blonde individual in its party. Complicating matters is the fact that A.J. may have an accomplice who will soon be joining him. The four have to hatch a quick plan to escape and realize that they must cross over a distant mountain ridge, if they are to make it to safety. Thus begins a longer cat and mouse narrative as the four characters struggle with the elements and with armed adversaries who are seemingly out to hunt them. Revoyr’s fifth novel is driven by a mix of plot and naturalistic descriptions. Indeed, the novel works best when considered from the frame of writers such as Jack London and even John Steinbeck. The environment is both cruel and beautiful and becomes a character in its own right. Certain to polarize readers, the open-ended conclusion will leave all wondering about the fate of one character in particular and this lack of resolution places this novel on a somewhat surrealistic ground. The novel additionally opens up a larger discourse concerning race wars that are being conducted in non-urban areas. Fans of Revoyr will appreciate her keen and meticulous eye toward the depiction of the mountainous landscapes and topographical features; this skill has been especially evident throughout her oeuvre, especially in her ability to render space in its myriad forms and scales (the city, farmland, etc) with such wonderful and rich detail. Perhaps, the greatest achievement in this novel is the realistic transformations that each character undergoes due to the traumatic and pivotal events that occur.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/lost-canyon/
Happy Labor Day weekend!
AALF uses “maximal ideological inclusiveness” to define Asian American literature. Thus, we review any writers working in the English language of Asian descent. We also review titles related to Asian American contexts without regard to authorial descent. We also consider titles in translation pending their relationship to America, broadly defined. Our point is precisely to cast the widest net possible.
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide-ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
In this post, reviews of I.W. Gregorio’s None of the Above (Balzer + Bray, 2015); Mike Wu’s Ellie (Disney-Hyperion, 2015); Karl Taro Greenfield’s Subprimes (Harper, 2015); Anita Kushwaha’s The Escape Artist (Quattro Books, 2015); Griffin Ondaatje’s The Mosquito Brothers (House of Anansi, 2015); Mia Alvar’s In the Country (Knopf, 2015); Taran Matharu’s Novice (Feiwel & Friends, 2015); Nina Revoyr’s Lost Canyon (Akashic, 2015).
A Review of I.W. Gregorio’s None of the Above (Balzer + Bray, 2015).
I knew that the basic premise of I.W. Gregorio’s None of the Above concerned an intersex protagonist, so I was pretty jazzed to read this debut novel, which is firmly couched in the young adult fictional realms. Our first person storyteller and featured heroine is Kristin Lattimer. Upon losing her virginity to her boyfriend Sam, Kristin experiences serious pain during/ after intercourse, so much so that she sets up a doctor’s appointment with her OBGYN. Once there, it becomes apparent that there may be some anatomical issues, as her vagina is deemed to be unnaturally short. Upon further tests, Kristin discovers that she’s biologically intersex, as she still possesses some rudimentary gonads, which she may elect to remove (though there are risks associated with the surgery). Indeed, as she is informed, a gonadectomy will necessarily force her to take hormone pills for the rest of her life, and there is the possibility of other side effects as well. She is also diagnosed with AIS, which is androgen insensitivity syndrome. Though biologically intersex, Kristin identifies as female in terms of her gender and heterosexual in terms of her sexuality, but these identifications don’t mean much to many of her classmates who soon find out about her medical diagnosis when one of her close friends becomes a little loose-lipped about what Kristin’s diagnoses. Sam soon dumps her, while Kristin is the subject of cyberbullying, especially as she is repeatedly called a hermaphrodite. Thus, Kristin faces intense shame in the face of the fact that so many of her schoolmates know about her intersexuality and are being outwardly prejudiced toward her. Fortunately, a friend from an earlier period, the class nerd Darren Kowalski, is there to help her out. Additionally, Kristin volunteers her time at a clinic and learns to look beyond her own issues to see that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. For a young adult novel, Gregorio has tackled a very difficult topic; she does so with a strong understanding of the medical background of AIS, which increases the texture and impact of this novel. Though Gregorio does not identify as intersex herself, the author’s note details the impact that one former patient of hers had on her. Once the controversy concerning the middle distance runner Caster Semenya hit the news, Gregorio knew she had to write on this topic. Gregorio’s choice to address this issue in the young adult arena has its advantages and its drawbacks. Certainly, the novel will appeal to a younger audience and even influence a more liberal attitude to develop amongst the target audience, many of whom will be under normalizing scrutiny as high school students. At the same time, the novel’s more limited focus on romance and the travails of high school can at times overshadow fact that Kristin’s experience is of course more largely part of a huge discourse on queerness that needs to be understood as having a longer historical and contextual trajectory. Fortunately, Kristin does have a network of AIS supporters to draw from, including an understanding father and great doctor, but her experience is not necessarily the most common one, and in this sense, we must attend to the fact of the novel’s fictionality and perhaps its optimistic exceptionality.
Buy the book here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062335319/none-of-the-above
A Review of Mike Wu’s Ellie (Disney-Hyperion, 2015).
It’s been AGES since I’ve reviewed any picture and board books, but I’ve had more motivation to read them ever since one of my nieces who is autistic just learned to read, and we’ve been celebrating that event with the purchase of a number of different cultural productions so that she can explore the wonderful wide world of literature. Mike Wu’s Ellie is a spirited story of the titular elephant who attempts to save a financially beleaguered zoo through her unique talent: she uses her trunk to paint. Ellie’s talents obviously draw wide interest, and soon the numbers of visitors coming to the park soars, thereby ensuring the survival of the zoo. I agree with the sentiment provided by Publishers Weekly stated here: “Wu is a literal writer, but his visual storytelling, rendered in sweet, throwback-style watercolors, shows creativity and poise.” There is little that breaks this work out of the mold of many other outstanding coloring books, but Wu’s visuals are sure to capture the attentions of its youthful target audience. Of course, those who oppose the zoo as an institution and site for the displaying of animals will want to steer clear of this book. Despite possible political misgivings, the picture book is an important metaphorical exploration of the power of art to inspire and to save a larger community.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ellie-mike-wu/1120332648?ean=9781484712399
A Review of Karl Taro Greenfield’s Subprimes (Harper, 2015)
In the not too distant future, there exists a world that might look like the one depicted in Subprimes, which is Karl Taro Greenfield’s second novel after Triburbia. Greenfield is also the author of numerous other nonfiction books, including the memoir Boy Alone and the more anthropological, creative nonfictional works Speed Tribes and Standard Deviations. Subprimes might be seen as a natural follow-up to Triburbia, if we were to imagine an increasingly gentrifying world in which class disparity results in extreme forms of urban dislocation and segregation. In the fictional world of Subprimes, there are those who are at the lowest rung of the economic ladder, which is the majority of people living in the United States, and then there is the 1%. The title invokes the 99% who must live in subprime areas, houses given up due to mass foreclosures and areas that ended up becoming ghost towns due to rampant speculation. These individuals basically squat on properties that have become abandoned, hoping that they will never be pushed out due to redevelopment or revitalization. Greenfield’s version of the United States might not seem that far out of reality, except he dials up the class disparity factor by giving it an Octavia Butler-style postapocalyptic feel. As the 99% seek to find homes, they must continually move from one place to another as their itinerant status is regulated, policed, and marked as unwelcome. Greenfield fragments narrative perspective amongst a group of core characters, including Sargam, a mixed race and charismatic leader of the 99% who begins to foment a revolution against those who continually seek the displace the homeless wanderers; Arthur Mack, a man who seeks to make a new life in the wake of having been prosecuted for securities fraud; Arthur’s estranged wife, Gemma, who attempts to find her independence from her husband while raising her daughters; and a first person narrator, a journalist, who makes a connection with Gemma and later must go on the run with his children. Ultimately, it is the class warfare emblematized by Sargam’s makeshift community in Valence that leads all of the characters together. Greenfield’s novel is best understood as a biting satire of the current neoliberal economic model and deregulation of financial institutions, which is seeing most of the wealth in the world retained by a select few. In this sense, Subprimes may be an unfortunate harbinger of an actual future. The novel is most successful when it turns up the satirical impulses. For instance, Greenfield makes the most of the Inland Empire by transforming its value. Whereas places like Riverside have often been seen as one of the most undesirable Southern California locations, for Greenfield’s fictional world, Riverside is practically a mecca. Such is the nature of social inequality as it has become hyperformulated in Subprimes. Certainly, this novel is of interest to any scholar and fan of speculative fiction and satirical treatises.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-subprimes-karl-taro-greenfeld/1120425304
A Review of Anita Kushwaha’s The Escape Artist (Quattro Books, 2015).
After reading a book the length of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, you need something like Anita Kushwaha’s novella The Escape Artist. This slim fictional work gives you a chance to breathe a little bit and enjoy something much more compact in its form. The plot summary is given here: “The Escape Artist is the story of Nisha, a nine-year-old Indian-Canadian girl whose vivid imagination keeps her entertained in the loneliness she experiences as an only child and one of the few children in her neighbourhood. After her grandmother dies, her aunt Neela comes to live with Nisha and her parents. Neela suffers from severe post-traumatic stress disorder after having witnessed the death of her father when she was a girl. Neela and Nisha bond over their active imaginations, dreaming up adventures together in the room Neela all but refuses to leave - until an unexpected emergency.” Nisha is the narrator of this story, which is told retrospectively, though we’re unsure of how many years have passed since the events of the novel. The opening of the novel sets up Nisha’s general boredom, as she seeks to find a better playmate than the children who live closest to her. Neela’s presence thus offers Nisha a potential salve precisely because she has a more mature attitude, while still maintaining a kind of childlike wonder that allows her to connect more readily to Nisha. They spend many hours together, but at one point, Nisha discovers that she can say the wrong thing, leading Neela to shut down and to isolate herself. Indeed, as Nisha finds out, it is extremely difficult to get Neela out of the house. Thus, Nisha ends up pushing her mother to tell her the details surrounding her grandfather’s death, providing Nisha a better sense of why Neela might have been so traumatized and why, for instance, she does not want to leave the house. The concluding sequence details a kind of bildungsromanesque plot that forces Nisha to grow up, perhaps a little bit faster than she wants, but the brevity of this novella does have its drawbacks: we do wonder about the period following the concluding events and all the gritty details that come in the wake of her coming-of-age. The story also reminds me somewhat of the work of Jhumpa Lahiri and Rishi Reddi in the novella’s nuanced depictions of South Asian North American family lives and local communities and would pair well with any number of stories from Interpreter of Maladies, Unaccustomed Earth, and Karma and Other Stories. We’ll look forward to future works from Kushawa.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-escape-artist-anita-kushwaha/1120851612?ean=9781927443743
A Review of Griffin Ondaatje’s The Mosquito Brothers (House of Anansi, 2015).
So, there I was on a Friday night with writers’ block. I gave up on some of the revisions I was working on and picked a couple of different books out. The first was Griffin Ondaatje’s The Mosquito Brothers. I don’t read many books targeted for children in the mid to later elementary school years, so this book was a great one to remind myself of the different techniques that writers can take to engage their intended audience. As the official page notes, the story revolves around a young mosquito by the name of Dinnn (three “n’s” for those that are counting) Needles. The plot is described like so: “After he nearly drowns in a parking-lot puddle, Dinnn Needles is fearful of many things, including flying. When his four hundred siblings swarm off without him, he finds time to dream —about family stories, a lost brother, adventure in The Wild and, above all, how to be cool.” Dinnn is one of 401 children who are born in a mosquito “clutch,” so to speak, so he has to compete for the attention of his parents and his many classmates. As the runt of the litter, Dinnn attempts to carve out a sense of individuality by wearing a tiny leather jacket, which is later inscribed with the word “mosquito brothers,” which provides us with the origination of the title. In the latter half of the book, Dinnn goes on a country adventure with his family, manages to survive a harrowing encounter with predatory dragonflies and is even reunited with a long lost half-brother. Ondaatje’s choice to anthropomorphize an insect more commonly associated with pestilence and parasitic qualities is an intriguing one. Here, children will have to consider and perhaps even discard their presumptions about what animals deserve value and even human sympathy, but the novel does generate other questions, especially because the mosquitos in this narrative rarely if ever feed on the blood of animals directly. Ondaatje’s choice to elide this particular manner of consumption is one that is a gamble in some sense, especially as it undercuts some of the impact of his decision to recreate mosquitos with so many relatable and endearing qualities. The illustrations by Erica Salcedo are quite vital in establishing the amiable qualities of these mosquitos and Salcedo’s technique serves the general conceit and ambience that Ondaatje generates through the written word. Certainly, an inventive work, one that will impress young readers in the hybridity that Ondaatje creates between insects and alternative social formations.
Buy the Book Here:
http://houseofanansi.com/products/the-mosquito-brothers
A Review of Mia Alvar’s In the Country (Knopf, 2015).
It’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed a short story collection, or at least it seems to me. These days, I hear rumblings that it’s getting more and more difficult to publish a collection and that the big publishing houses are less likely to consider these kinds of manuscripts. Fortunately, Knopf didn’t pass on Mia Alvar’s In the Country, a wonderful meditation on the Filipino diaspora. Alvar takes inspiration from the fact that the Philippines has one of the biggest diasporic populations, in part spurred by governmental incentives to encourage laborers and corporate entities to work abroad. Thus, these stories take place (or mention) a number of countries beyond the Philippines, including most prominently United States and Bahrain. Most stories are told in the first person mode, though Alvar never operates from what might be called an “autobiographical” impulse, as the narrator may not be Filipina or may not even be a woman. The opening story, “Contrabida,” for instance, involves a pharmacist who travels home because his father is dying. He has also brought back some contraband, hence the title, which comes in the form of a very powerful painkiller, one apparently more effective than morphine. This story is representative of the many others that come afterword: characters generally come from modest or upper middle class backgrounds, but struggle to find connections to the people they hold most dear. Many of the stories thus come off as quietly pessimistic and exude a realist aesthetic that is important for the collection’s cohesion. In “Miracle Worker,” the narrator, a housewife in Bahrain, puts her skills to use in special education to help direct a child, who has a developmental disability, to show more awareness to external stimuli. Her conflict comes in the form having to tell the child’s parent, who believes that her young infant will somehow overcome the disability, that her improvements will always be limited. “Shadow Families” is perhaps my favorite story in Alvar’s collection. Alvar decides to use a first person plural narration, articulating the extensive reach of the Filipina diaspora as it connects housewives together, even as their families start to change and even to disintegrate due to transnational movements and cultural adjustments. “Esmerelda” was another sentimental favorite, as it follows as a domestic laborer and office cleaner who falls into an unconventional romance with the businessman she often sees while working her shift. The title story, “In the Country,” by far the longest of the collection, gives us a sense of Alvar’s potential as a novelist. The story employs anachronic sequencing to explore the lives of a given family under the Marcos regime, especially as they attempt to find a sense of justice amid corruption and Martial law. In many ways, this story reminded me of the work of a number of other Filipin@ writers such as Jessica Hagedorn, Gina Apostol, and Ninotchka Rosca in its obvious critique of a governmental regime that harmed so many. Alvar’s collection is a wide-ranging and epic in scale, surely a work that gestures to a bright literary future. In the Country would also be an excellent work to teach alongside others, especially Lysley Tenorio’s equally outstanding Monstress.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/in-the-country-mia-alvar/1120377330
A Review of Taran Matharu’s Novice (Feiwel & Friends, 2015).
Taran Matharu’s debut Novice (Feiwel & Friends, 2015), which is probably part of an intended trilogy called Summoner, is another addition to the paranormal young adult archive. In this work, our protagonist is an orphan named Fletcher Wulf, who is raised by a blacksmith in the provincial town of Pelt. Fletcher’s life is guided by the forge: he is being apprenticed and must learn the tools of his trade. Given his status as an orphan, his chances for upward mobility are limited, but by developing a skill, Fletcher will be able to secure future employment. At the same time, there are dangerous changes afoot: criminals are now being allowed to serve in the military due to the fact that humans are waging war with the orcs and the military is running low on options. Fletcher’s life goes into disarray when he comes upon a summoning book and uses it to summon a demon. After this summoning occurs, he engages in a fight with the local bully Didric and ends up seriously injuring and possibly even killing him. Fletcher realizes that he must leave Pelt behind and the secure the independent life that his adoptive father had helped make possible; he decides to head toward a major city and look for work there as a tradesman. Once landing in a more urban location, Fletcher not surprisingly gets into more trouble, but his demon and his summoning skills are noted by a battlemage known as Arcturus, and he is given a provisional acceptance into a local school where he will learn the magical arts. The schooling portion ends up being the strongest, as Matharu is able to weave in the complicated social dynamics that occur amongst teenagers while still keeping the readers interested through his worldbuilding. In this particular fictional world, demons come from different classes and different skill levels; the higher the skill level, the more rare the demon and the more difficult the demon will be able to control, but the more likely it will be powerful when it is more fully grown. Demons are captured in a space known as the ether, an alternate landscape that is as dangerous as it sounds and has rules all of its own. In the summoning world, there are class divisions. First, there are the nobles, who are usually gifted with their first demons from their parents. Then, some commoners are also able to summon, though they must be given demons from other mages who have been able to capture one for them. Complicating the social dynamics in this fictional world are the dwarves, who have long been subjected to “racist” policies handed down to them by humans. Additionally, the isolated elves have made a bid to re-align with humans, sending a chieftain’s daughter (named Silva) to train at the school. Not surprisingly, Fletcher, who is obviously a clear outcast, makes fast friends with his commoner classmates (Rory, Genevieve, Atlas, Seraph) and his dwarven classmate Othello. Silva’s position as the chieftain’s daughter is complicated, as she must attempt to establish more diplomatic alliances with the first year nobles, who include snobbish twins Tarquin and Isadora, while also realizing that her closest allies are actually the commoners. Matharu knows how to add some excitement into the plot by developing these class rivalries and building these competitive tensions into a final tournament that will be instrumental in deciding where the summoners will be posted for their military positions. The nobles obviously want nothing to do with the commoners, the dwarves, and even the elves, so they attempt to ensure that they will top the tournament standings, but Fletcher and his merry band have other ideas. I read Matharu’s debut in one sitting and look forward to the following installments. It’s clear that Matharu understands the fantasy-based lore that he draws from and the assuredness comes off in the evenly paced plotting and dynamic narrative momentum. Matharu does draw from one common genre conceit in which the protagonist is an ordinary but also extraordinary young individual from humble origins, but he does complicate other more established tropes. There is no clear romance plot in this first installment, and the narrative certainly does not suffer from this lack. An enterprising paranormal young adult fiction debut. As I told a friend of mine, this novel is like Pokemon, but with demons. Gotta read this novel and the following all.
Buy the book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-novice-taran-matharu/1120371435
A Review of Nina Revoyr’s Lost Canyon (Akashic, 2015).
Well, what a happy day! I get to review Nina Revoyr’s fifth novel, Lost Canyon, published after four outstanding works, including The Necessary Roughness, Southland, The Age of Dreaming, and Wingshooters. Lost Canyon returns Revoyr to the use of rotating third person narrative perspectives, an aesthetic she employed to great effect in Southland. That particular novel moved back and forth through different historical moments. Lost Canyon toggles between the perspectives of three characters but all in the contemporary moment: Gwen, an African American who engages in social advocacy for at-risk youth in Watts; Oscar, a Chicano real estate developer, whose fortunes have fallen on hard times after the global economic downturn and the subsequent impact on home buying; and Todd, a Caucasian financial executive from a humble background who finds his ascendancy into the white collar elite to be somewhat mystifying. These three characters are united by the fact that they all work out at SportZone with a woman named Tracy, a fitness instructor with the kind of zeal that pushes them to their physical limits. Tracy also is the nexus point for the plot because she’s leading the three characters on a challenging multi-day hike through the Sierras. Once the four characters finally make their intended destination, they discover that the trail that they wanted to hike has been closed due to a raging wildfire. On the advice of a ranger, they consider an alternative, less taken path. This less taken path is of course not the greatest choice to make, but they nevertheless embark on what will end up being a perilous journey. All at first seems to be going well, but then they come upon a patch of marijuana, which is being policed by an individual who might be a henchman for a Mexican cartel. Miraculously, they are saved when a random sharpshooter kills the henchman, but the four are freed only to realize that they have a new captor: a white supremacist by the name of A.J., who is not so keen on the fact that this ragtag band of adventurers only has one blonde individual in its party. Complicating matters is the fact that A.J. may have an accomplice who will soon be joining him. The four have to hatch a quick plan to escape and realize that they must cross over a distant mountain ridge, if they are to make it to safety. Thus begins a longer cat and mouse narrative as the four characters struggle with the elements and with armed adversaries who are seemingly out to hunt them. Revoyr’s fifth novel is driven by a mix of plot and naturalistic descriptions. Indeed, the novel works best when considered from the frame of writers such as Jack London and even John Steinbeck. The environment is both cruel and beautiful and becomes a character in its own right. Certain to polarize readers, the open-ended conclusion will leave all wondering about the fate of one character in particular and this lack of resolution places this novel on a somewhat surrealistic ground. The novel additionally opens up a larger discourse concerning race wars that are being conducted in non-urban areas. Fans of Revoyr will appreciate her keen and meticulous eye toward the depiction of the mountainous landscapes and topographical features; this skill has been especially evident throughout her oeuvre, especially in her ability to render space in its myriad forms and scales (the city, farmland, etc) with such wonderful and rich detail. Perhaps, the greatest achievement in this novel is the realistic transformations that each character undergoes due to the traumatic and pivotal events that occur.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/lost-canyon/
July 18, 2015
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for July 18, 2015
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for July 18, 2015
In that article, Celeste Ng (author of the super brilliant, one of the best reads of 2014, Everything I Never Told You) goes out and says: “Who says Asian American women aren't writing fiction? ‘We are everywhere if you only look!’” I agree, and want to add: get out from under that rock, and oh, haven’t you been reading this review zine blog thing called AALF? and to honor some of the fab Asian (North) American women writers of fiction, I’ve generated a post JUST for them =).
In this post, reviews of: Padma Viswanathan’s The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (Soft Skull Press, 2015); Jennifer Tseng’s Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (Europa Editions, 2015); Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (Doubleday, 2015); Patricia Park’s Re Jane (Pamela Dorman Books, 2015); Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes (Razorbill, 2015); Valynne Maetani’s Ink and Ashes (Tu Books, 2015); Kelly Loy Gilbert’s Conviction (Disney-Hyperion, 2015); Julie Kagawa’s Talon (Harlequin, 2014).
AALF uses “maximal ideological inclusiveness” to define Asian American literature. Thus, we review any writers working in the English language of Asian descent. We also review titles related to Asian American contexts without regard to authorial descent. We also consider titles in translation pending their relationship to America, broadly defined. Our point is precisely to cast the widest net possible.
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide-ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
A Review of Padma Viswanathan’s The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (Soft Skull Press, 2015).
Padma Viswanathan’s The Ever After of Ashwin Rao has been fortuitously published stateside with Soft Skull Press. Originally published in Canada, the novel is an intriguing addition to fictions that deal with traumatic incidences and their aftermaths. The titular protagonist Ashwin Rao, an occasional narrator as well, is a non-practicing clinical psychiatrist working on a book concerning comparative approaches to mass disaster. He is considering, for instance, the different reactions by national authorities with respect to traumas induced by airline terrorism. In the first case, he is considering how Canadian authorities had basically avoided any sort of identification with and support of the victims of the Air India Flight 182, which was the target of a terrorist attack. A bomb exploded on board the plane on June 23, 1985, killing everyone. The plane exploded in Irish airspace; most of the victims were Canadians of South Asian ancestry. Canadian authorities took a lengthy time to respond and to adjudicate this terrorist attack, a fact that Rao takes issue with. Rao decides to interview victims of that disaster in 2004, when court proceedings are occurring concerning some of those purportedly involved in the attacks. Rao’s motivations are in part personal; Rao’s sister and her children were killed in the crash. Rao’s work focuses on one specific family: a professor by the name of Venkat whose wife (Sita) and son (Sundar) were killed. In the wake of the disaster, Venkat is cared for by a colleague named Seth, and Seth’s family, which includes his wife Lakshmi, and their children Brinda and Ranjani. Rao gets pulled in by this alternative social formation and their complicated dynamics. Rao’s theory concerning victims of disaster is put to the test: he wonders, for instance, why Venkat manages to survive, especially given the fact that he seems to have no attachment and no way to commemorate those who he so dearly loved. As the novel moves toward its conclusion, Rao discovers some surprising secrets about Venkat. So, too, does Seth come to find out that survivorship is far more complicated than he or his family could have ever imagined. A very late stage reveal is truly unexpected and will surely polarize readers. Viswanathan’s choice to narrate this novel through such a complicated storytelling discourse has both its benefits and drawbacks. On one level, it’s unclear sometimes how Rao comes to discover the information he has come to possess. On the other, the novel marks how a mode of re-narrativization can at least lead traumatized individuals to see their lives in a new light and in the process, perhaps gain some insight on their losses. The novel is best then understood as its own theoretical apparatus, charging trauma theorists and readers with the possibility that storytelling is always its own form of working through. A compelling, thought-provoking work.
Buy the Book here:
A Review of Jennifer Tseng’s Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (Europa Editions, 2015).
Jennifer Tseng’s debut novel Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness is certainly one of the most intriguing reads of this year. It centers on our titular narrator, Mayumi, who is a librarian and lives on an island connected located not far off the Massachusetts mainland. She’s married to a man named Var and has one daughter named Maria. She’s of mixed race background (with a Japanese father). Her life is relatively staid, until the arrival of a teenager, 17 years old, who shows up at the library and begins checking out books and movies there regularly. He is the subject of gossip among the librarians, especially because he is attractive. Mayumi begins to obsess about this teenager, and soon develops a serious infatuation with him, but there’s something about this connection that goes beyond mere fantasy. Indeed, Mayumi begins to realize that there may be an actual erotic connection between the two of them. Eventually, Mayumi becomes emboldened by their increasingly charged encounters, and the two begin an affair. Though some may blanch at the Lolita-style plot—indeed the novel references many novels involving inappropriate, intergenerational relationships, including Marguerite Duras’s The Lover—Tseng’s work is all her own and certainly one that is painstakingly careful in its depiction of a love affair that some would consider to be socially unacceptable. Mayumi is a self-conscious narrator. At one point, she does wonder about whether or not she’s having an affair with a child and not surprisingly looks up the Massachusetts age of consent laws—she’s okay, you see, the age of consent is 16. But unlike Nabokov and Duras, Tseng is delving into a different intergenerational paradigm that is enirely unlike the “cougar” paradigm that has become part of our lingua franca. For Tseng, the novel becomes a way to consider a deeper philosophical issue of aging and the mid-life crisis that a woman in her forties might endure. Mayumi is seeking some sort of deeper fulfillment that she cannot find from her marriage, her motherhood, or even her status as a lover of a male teenager. The concluding arc is an intriguing one that may surprise, and a desire to connect more deeply to other island cultures comes off as an important developmental trajectory that firmly fleshes out a deeper subconscious at the heart of this novel concerning homeland and ethnic histories. Definitely, a recommended read. Oh, and just as a note: Tseng is also author of two other poetry collections (Red Flower, White Flower and The Man with My Face), so you might check those out as well.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.europaeditions.com/book.php?Id=305
A Review of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (Doubleday, 2015).
Hanya Yanagihara’s sophomore effort, A Little Life, is one of the best novels I’ve read in my entire life. I mentioned to someone that it takes a lot of courage to publish a novel of over 700 pages of length, with small type no less, in the age of twitter and instagram. As soon as I finished it, I went online to trove for other reviews. I stumbled upon the New York Times one, which provided quite a negative response to the work, which I was surprised by. Two readers apparently can have the opposite experience with the same novel. My experience is of course the right one. HAHA. I wondered though whether or not the reviewer had even finished the novel; it seemed devastatingly vague for a review, perhaps rendered like so because the lives being depicted didn’t quite capture her, and she stopped reading it. Whatever the case may be, the novel did capture me. I read it in a fever pitch, savoring every single sentence. Yanagihara’s two narrative perspectives are beautifully, exquisitely, and most of all, tragically rendered. The primary one is a third person perspective that mostly follows the lives of two characters: Jude, the amibiguously raced and incredibly tortured but gifted young man, and Wilhelm, his dear, dear friend. The other narrative perspective is a first person perspective that only crops up three times, which is given to Harold, an older gentleman who later adopts Jude when Jude is already an adult; Jude’s biological family origins are murky at best. It’s not overstating it to stay that I fell in love with these characters, so when bad things happened to them, I shed many tears. It’s a strange thing sometimes to think about how novels and their fictional personages create such deep meaning for readers. Jude, in particular, whose torturous experiences generate an adulthood filled with predatory memories, is someone who you desperately want a happy ending for. He continues to inflict forms of self-punishment (such as cutting and self-flagellation) in order to ameliorate a history of sexual and physical abuse at the hands of individuals who were entrusted to care for him. As an adult, he carries these scars (mental and physical) so deeply and with so much shame that none of his closest friends really know his personal history. The third person narrator patiently provides his backstory, letting it unfold over the course of Jude’s life, knowing that the reader almost always has more information than the other characters. The burden of this information and its effect upon the reader is of course profound: we want Jude to tell, we want him to find a way to heal, we want so many amazing things for him, and for awhile the third person narrator provides us with some wondrous possibilities. But, Yanagihara’s work is realist at least in the most literal sense: characters don’t often deserve the fates that they ultimately are given, so there will be a point where you will want the ending to be different, for both narrators to have lied to you, so that these fictional beings that you have come to cherish will have different fates. This novel stays with you. I woke up thinking: “oh, but they are still… and there’s nothing I can do about it.” A devastatingly stunning novel. I will probably hoard extra copies of this novel in my home and in my office LOL.
More About the Book Here:
http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/239717/a-little-life/
A Review of Patricia Park’s Re Jane (Pamela Dorman Books, 2015).
Patricia Park had me at “dear reader,” a phrase that she invokes occasionally in her riveting debut novel Re Jane. The novel is told from the first perspective of the titular mixed race Korean American protagonist Jane Re (the last name is apparently a spelling variation of the common Korean surname of Lee, which is sometimes seen also as Rhee). Billed as re-writing of Jane Eyre—a description I thought was fairly inaccurate—the novel is ultimately a bildungsroman, exploring Jane’s eventual development of her independent identity, a self that perhaps balances the nagging ways of her Korean family and the passionate, emotive natures of her closest American friends. Orphaned at a young age, Jane ends up living with her uncle Sang, a no-nonsense owner of a green grocery in Flushing. Jane’s life is in limbo. Just after the dot com crash, her job offer at a tech start-up is rescinded, and she is forced to subsist as a worker in her uncle’s bussiness. She doesn’t really know what to do with her life now that she has graduated with a degree in finance and accounting and with no jobs on the horizon. Fortunately for Jane, an au pair position opens up with a well-to-do Brooklyn couple (Ed Farley and Beth Mazer) who are raising a Chinese adoptee child named Devon. Jane is initially considered for the job because the couple thinks she is Chinese, but Jane wasn’t able to get the full job clipping and was under the impression that the au pair’s ethnic background didn’t matter. The Mazer-Farleys end up hiring her anyway, and Jane is able to get a brief reprieve from her desultory life by residing with the couple and their child. Jane gets to know the complicated interpersonal dynamics of the family. Beth Mazer is up for tenure and is working feverishly on a new book in feminist studies, while Ed struggles with the motivation to finish his dissertation. Beth’s over the top child-rearing techniques become a strong source of tension for the couple, and Jane naturally observes their relationship fraying at the seams. Perhaps we aren’t too surprised when Jane ends up falling in love with Ed, but Jane ends up making a critical decision to abdicate her position as the au pair on the very eve of 9/11. Indeed, she travels by plane to Seoul to attend the death of her grandfather rather than explore a relationship with Ed. Once in Seoul, Jane begins to realize that this homeland might offer something more than an escape from the Mazer-Farley family. Indeed, her Emo (the Korean word for aunt) ends up encouraging her to stay, and Jane gets a job as an English language instructor. Through that job, she makes a number of friends and even embarks on a romance with a co-worker named Chandler. She also gets a chance to visit her mother’s hometown and discovers more about her ethnic heritage and its importance to her identity. It is in Korea that she begins to blossom not only on an ethnic level, but also in relation to her overall life: she begins to wear more makeup and take more care in her appearance, she becomes more gregarious, and she realizes that her family, though sometimes a source of tension, is a social formation that she can embrace. But, when an old friend from her days as an au pair, a young woman named Nina, comes to visit, Jane must confront the fact that her relationship with Chandler may not actually be something all that significant. Further still, the possibility of an impending marriage to him signals that Jane must make a crucial decision about her future. Nina’s certainly on point: Jane finds herself thinking more about Ed, especially as she finds out that Ed has moved out of the Mazer-Farley home. What path will Jane take? Will she marry Chandler and stay in Korea? Will she return to the United States, seeking perhaps a chance to start anew with Ed, without their relationship having to be kept a secret? These questions push the reader frantically and happily to the finish, and Park’s Jane Re heralds the debut of a massively talented novelist. Alongside some of the other newcomers in the past year (namely Celeste Ng, Nayomi Munaweera, and Deepti Kapoor), we can say it’s an exciting time to be an Asian American literature (BROADLY DEFINED) fan.
As I’ve noted before, Penguin titles are available for exam copy review as a member of CFIS, so something to think about if you are a qualified instructor. More information here:
http://www.penguin.com/services-academic/cfis/
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/316866/re-jane-by-patricia-park/
A Review of Sabaa Tahir’s An Ember in the Ashes (Razorbill, 2015).
Apparently, this title garnered a ton of advanced interest, as evidenced by the fact that the film rights have already been acquired (see the link below);
http://www.ew.com/article/2015/03/03/exclusive-see-trailer-sabaa-tahirs-ember-ashes
As soon as I finished the novel, I couldn’t help but thinking that the novel could be adapted into a film, especially due to Hollywood’s embrace of the young adult genre (with an emphasis on the paranormal romance). In this novel’s case, Tahir creates a fictional world that is in part inspired by Ancient Rome, though the cultural signifiers are of course vague enough. Tahir creates a kind of Oriental/ Occidental potpourri. Alongside individuals who are not unlike gladiators (soldiers called masks), there are also mystical creatures called the fey, who are comprised of efrits, jinns, and ghuls. There are two narrators. One storytelling perspective is given to Laia, who is part of a group called the Scholars, who are now pretty much enslaved in the aptly named Empire. The beginning of the novel sees her grandparents killed off, her brother brutally taken captive, and her having to flee in order to find the Resistance. Laia desperately seeks to meet up with the Resistance leader (named Mazen) in order to find out if they will help break her brother out of jail. The other storytelling perspective is given to Elias, who is the son of a powerful woman, the Commandant of the Empire’s troops. Elias, who is one of the most gifted Empire “masks,” is planning to defect from the Empire, but when he is chosen as one of four possible aspirants by the Augurs, a mystical group of beings with the gift of foresight, he stays on with the intent that a prophecy will bear fruit: that he will one day be free (both in relation to his body and soul) from the Empire. Because Laia and Elias occupy very different narrative spaces at first, Tahir is able to create quite a bit of narrative momentum: when will these characters meet and under what circumstances, we wonder obsessively? When Laia agrees to become a spy for the Resistance through working for the Commandant, we know that Elias and Laia will eventually rendezvous, and when they do, Tahir knows to create the requisite sparks. In this sense, Tahir has masterfully constructed her novel through the tried-and-true formula involving the not-quite-so ordinary heroine who will eventually help defeat a big bad all the while snagging an appropriate romantic lead. The fictional world is a brutal one: people are enslaved, countless individuals die, and for much of the plot, the fates of both Laia and Elias seem star-crossed. But, an engaging conclusion leaves this reader impatient for the next installment, which I hope, will avoid the sophomore slump. Indeed, if this book is the first part of a trilogy, it is typically the second portion that seems to be weakest, a part of the inevitable fact that the middle section must somehow stand in its own, while still moving the work toward a climactic final act. Definitely, my favorite YA fiction in a long time and most deserving of the hype.
For more on the book go here:
http://anemberintheashesbook.com/
As a general note, this website is particularly impressive for the amount of detail and new content it provides concerning the novel.
As a reminder: Penguin titles are available for exam copy review as a member of CFIS, so something to think about if you are a qualified instructor. More information here:
http://www.penguin.com/services-academic/cfis/
A Review of Valynne Maetani’s Ink and Ashes (Tu Books, 2015).
Valynne Maetani’s Ink and Ashes adds to the ever-growing archive of Asian American young adult fictions. The summary of the book can be found here:
“Claire Takata has never known much about her father, who passed away ten years ago. But on the anniversary of his death, she finds a letter from her deceased father to her stepfather. Before now, Claire never had a reason to believe they even knew each other. Struggling to understand why her parents kept this surprising history hidden, Claire combs through anything that might give her information about her father . . . until she discovers that he was a member of the yakuza, a Japanese organized crime syndicate. The discovery opens a door that should have been left closed. The race to outrun her father’s legacy reveals secrets of his past that cast ominous shadows, threatening Claire, her friends and family, her newfound love, and ultimately her life. Winner of Tu Books’ New Visions Award, Ink and Ashes is a fascinating debut novel packed with romance, intrigue, and heart-stopping action.”
The reveal of Claire’s biological father, who was a member of the Yakuza, takes a good hundred pages or so to be unveiled. Unfortunately, I had read this description before starting on the novel and found myself impatiently waiting for what occurs past this point. Once Claire discovers this information about her biological father, she realizes her parents might be keeping far more from her than she could have ever imagined. And the process of her unofficial investigation begins to unearth and create other complications. For instance, it becomes evident that her father might had made many enemies during his time with the Yakuza; some such individuals continue to hold vendettas against Claire’s family, which now includes a stepfather (who was once the friend of Claire’s biological father), mother, and siblings. The problems related to her father’s history are of course matched by the social dynamics that make high school such a morass of alienation and cliquishness. Though some might question a self-orientalist impulse in Maetani’s choice to explore a plotline involving the Yakuza, the author clearly took the time to research some of the cultural elements that would make her work dovetail with existing conceptions of the organized crime organization. In any case, Maetani’s book finds an innovative way to echo many other Asian American texts in its exploration of transnational secrets that must be investigated in order for the protagonist to address a past injustice or problem. With an intriguing premise, Maetani’s debut is energized primarily by a lively plot and non-stop action. Fans of YA should be pleased with this debut.
Buy the Book Here:
https://www.leeandlow.com/books/2880
A Review of Kelly Loy Gilbert’s Conviction (Disney-Hyperion, 2015).
Kelly Loy Gilbert’s debut novel is an inventive amalgamation of various themes including: religious devotion, dysfunctional family dynamics, and courtroom drama. Our protagonist and narrator is Braden Raynor, the son of a baseball radio announcer. His father is imprisoned and awaiting trial for a hit and run that leaves a local police officer dead. Braden, being only sixteen, is left without a parental guardian, so he must rely on his estranged older half brother, Trey, who is living in New York City and has started a career as a restaurateur, to return to his hometown in Central Valley, California to take care of him. Trey does reluctantly return, and over the course of the narrative, we discover far more about the dysfunctional family dynamics that have long dominated this family. Braden’s father comes from a fractured family; his father had killed himself when he was just a child. The shadow of this death looms large over the way he treats his children. He commands unwavering filiality to the extent that this extreme measure of devotion drives Trey away, and it leaves Braden in an unhealthy co-dependent relationship in which he is constantly seeking his father’s approval. Gilbert’s novel is perhaps the class young adult bildungsroman: how will the teenager become an adult? The answer that this novel leaves is a hard one: sometimes, one must leave behind the very person who had made your existence possible because that person is himself a dangerous individual, who cannot control his emotions. There is also a lengthy subculture in Braden’s hometown related to Christian values. Much of Braden’s own philosophical inquiries and anxieties are connected to his sense of Christian ethics, what it means to do right and wrong in the eyes of God. A side plot involving Braden’s budding romance with an Asian American adoptee, Maddie Stern, keeps this novel juggling multiple character arcs. The seriousness of the topic matter that Gilbert covers makes this young adult debut rise above the often too neatly closed resolutions of so many other works in the genre. Another definite must read for YA fans.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/conviction-kelly-loy-gilbert/1120332633?ean=9781423197386
A Review of Julie Kagawa’s Talon (Harlequin, 2014).
The ever-prolific young adult/ paranormal romance fiction writer brings us a new series which debuts with Talon. Talon, as the title might imply, is about a group of dragons, who can shift into human form. Talon is also the name of the dragon-led corporate entity, which trains young “hatchlings” to become adept at fighting and surviving in a world in which fear and terror continue to plague this species. Indeed, dragons were once on the brink of extinction, but the formation of Talon enabled the dragons to come together and to proliferate once again. Dragons were being hunted by a knights Templar-ish group called the Order of St. George, who still exist and who are still hunting what dragons they can manage to find. The story is told from shifting first person perspectives, but our obvious protagonist is none other than Ember Hill (I swear that this name is also the name of a protagonist in another young adult series, perhaps Kristen Simmons?), a young dragon hatchling who, along with her twin brother Dante, is being trained for a path into one of the professional trajectories for Talon members. They are unsure of what they may be entered into, as they have no choice, but their options seem limited to becoming: (1) a viper, a trained assassin meant to hunt down “rogue” dragons or other enemies, such as those involved with the order of St. George; (2) a basilisk, a spy figure meant to infiltrate enemy societies and carry out the most dangerous missions; (3) a chameleon, a dragon meant to live at large in human society, fully assimilating while gathering whatever intelligence data that becomes readily available in their new lives. But, while Dante and Ember are training, they are also living in a beach town summer resort community and forced to assimilate with the locals as well as the out-of-towners. Thus, Dante and Ember must learn to work within their human forms, as part of their development as Talon members and operatives. The other first person perspectives are given to Garret, a member of the order of St. George; and Riley, a “rogue” Talon operative. Garret comes into the novel as the main antagonist; the first person perspectives alternate between Ember and Garret in the first half of the book. Garret has come to town with a fellow order of St. George member (Tristan) in order to find what they call a sleeper agent, a dragon who has taken form among the humans. Their mission is to find this sleeper dragon to execute it (her? ze? Trying to be better at inclusive pronoun usage). Of course, Kagawa knows what she is doing in this genre: the ordinary, but extraordinary teen girl named Ember is going to fall in love with the guy that she shouldn’t named Garret. A love triangle will correspondingly emerge when it becomes apparent that Ember also finds a romantic attraction to the bad boy dragon known as Riley. Both teenage boys are of course bad news for Ember, so we’re totally expecting them to find their way to each other and wreak havoc as the central love triangle. Certainly, an entertaining story, Kagawa finally finds time to stretch her wings as a writer. It’s the first novel in which Kagawa uses so many different narrative perspectives; by the conclusion, Dante is given his own viewpoint as well. The polyvocal nature of this work allows Kagawa the opportunity to inhabit different psychic interiors. Though the novel occasionally suffers from a too-narrow focus on Garret’s teen angst over his conflicted feelings over Ember (resulting in some perhaps unintentionally funny narrative sequences involving his vacillating emotions), fans of Kagawa are going to be enthused about the contextual shifts of her fictions, moving from fairies to vampires and now to dragons. Certainly, we’ll be prepared for yet another movement to a genre “monster” figure for the next series: mermaids perhaps? Other fans may be dismayed that Kagawa has chosen to start another series when the Iron Fey installments have slowed down. Kagawa’s most recent work in that series ended on an extreme cliffhanger that left many fans dying to know what would happen in the next book. So let’s hope she’ll give us not only more dragons, but fairies, too.
For more on the book, go here:
June 28, 2015
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for June 28, 2015
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for June 28, 2015
AALF uses “maximal ideological inclusiveness” to define Asian American literature. Thus, we review any writers working in the English language of Asian descent. We also review titles related to Asian American contexts without regard to authorial descent. We also consider titles in translation pending their relationship to America, broadly defined. Our point is precisely to cast the widest net possible.
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide-ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
In this post, reviews of Deepak Chopra’s The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure (HarperOne, 2015); Omar Shahid Hamid’s The Prisoner (Arcadia Publishing, 2015); Quanyu Huang’s The Hybrid Tiger: Secrets of the Extraordinary Success of Asian-American Kids (Prometheus Books, 2014); Marisa de Los Santos’s The Precious One (HarperCollins, 2015); Mala Kumar’s The Paths of Marriage (Bedazzled Ink, 2014); Nick Sumida’s Snackies (Youth In Decline, 2014); Jenny Han’s P.S. I Still Love You (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2015); Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (Knopf, 2015).
A Review of Deepak Chopra’s The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure (HarperOne, 2015).
Deepak Chopra is well known for his work as a kind of spiritual guru, having penned many dozens of publications on various topics related to wellness, religion, and associated ways of life. Chopra is perhaps less recognized for his work in fiction; he is the author of some works in this area (including The Return of Merlin and the Enlightenment series, which takes on fictionalizations of major spiritual figures including Buddha and Muhammad). Chopra might be described as a secular spiritualist: that is, he seeks to bring religion in its broadest forms to the masses, whether through nonfictional “how to” guides or through fanciful and imaginative fictional worlds. In The 13th Disciple, Chopra deviates from using well-known religious figures to ground his fictional world and instead focuses on the apocryphal possibility of the titular thirteenth disciple, an unknown woman who comes to exist in some form within a religious relic. Chopra opens the novel with a central mystery: a nun named Meg has gone missing, and her niece, a young woman named Mare, realizes that there may be more to the story concerning her disappearance. From there, Chopra shifts the narrative perspective among an array of characters, including Meg, who we discover suffered from stigmata at a young age. Meg’s time in the convent is a sort of therapy to manage the stigmata, though she becomes aware that she has been touched in some way by the light. The light, as Chopra generically deems it, is a kind of spiritual awakening involving the capacity for individuals of all stripes to do good, despite being in positions of disempowerment and general malaise. For Chopra, the path to the light is the grounding force behind this spiritual adventure, which is a kind of fictionalization of the ways that everyday individuals might be able to access their own abilities to change and become a positive force in the lives of others. The fictional story seems to be less compelling in many senses than Chopra’s epilogue, which lays out his religio-secular philosophy. Indeed, the story’s conceit is so reliant upon the central mystery and a cast of characters enigmatically brought together by the thirteenth discipline that many may be a little let down by the novel’s conclusion, which leaves behind numerous red herrings and subplots unclosed. Chopra’s choice to create a didactic spiritual tale in a fictional form is certainly an intriguing one and compels the cultural critics in all of us to consider the possibilities of religious formalisms in this contemporary moment.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062241306/the-13th-disciple
A Review of Omar Shahid Hamid’s The Prisoner (Arcadia Publishing, 2015).
One of the interesting marketing details of Omar Shahid Hamid’s The Prisoner is the book jacket biography, which details that the author “served with the Karachi police for twelve years, most recently as head of counterterrorism. During his service, he has been actively targeted by various terrorist groups and organizations. He was wounded in the line of duty, and his office was bombed by the Taliban in 2010. He has a master’s in criminal justice policy from the London School of Economics and a master’s in law from University College London.” Hamid’s experience in the Karachi police makes one wonder how much of the novel is fictionalized and how much is actually based in reality. The protagonist, Constantine, works as a superintendent of a prison located in Pakistan. The novel opens when he is visited by Major Rommel, who is looking to interview an important prisoner named Akbar. Akbar may have important information regarding an American of Jewish descent who has been kidnapped by some organization. It is unclear whether or not the American’s kidnapping is the work of jihadi extremists or not, but it is apparent that Akbar knows more about the situation than he is letting on. The novel is told anachronically and readers discover why Akbar, who was once working for the police, is now in prison. Indeed, Constantine and Akbar were once allies, and the complicated relationships between politics, organize crime rings, intelligence agencies, and terrorist organizations causes those who work in the police force to be caught up in dangerous power plays. It is clear that corruption is, in some sense, required by all entities simply to keep one’s head above water. For his part, Constantine begins to realize that the American’s kidnapping is part of a larger plot in which his own position is imperiled. With little agency to direct his actions, Constantine can only negotiate between the various figures who are attempting to wrest control of the situation. At one harrowing point, Constantine must call on an old lover to protect his wife and children. Though Hamid’s novel is uneven in its plotting—indeed, the anachronic storytelling technique sometimes undercuts the narrative pacing—his work does much to clarify the murky nature of governance in the post-9/11 period, especially in a place like Pakistan. The line between enemies and allies is never clear and in this sense, Hamid’s novel is more like a noir than anything else. The Prisoner also can be paired up against a number of other novels set in Pakistan (or thereabouts) that focus on corruption in government and associated organizations, such as Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.arcadepub.com/book/?GCOI=55970108764380
A Review of Quanyu Huang’s The Hybrid Tiger: Secrets of the Extraordinary Success of Asian-American Kids (Prometheus Books, 2014).
Quanyu Huang’s The Hybrid Tiger: Secrets of the Extraordinary Success of Asian-American Kids (uh oh, the hyphen reappears here) presents a more judicious approach to the issues related to the model minority stereotype than others, especially in contrast to Chua’s infamous The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, in its exploration of academic achievement. Underlying Huang’s thesis is the fact that the secret of the success behind educational attainment for Asian Americans is a blend of cultural approaches to learning emphasized by both China and the United States. Central to Huang’s thesis is the “hybrid” evoked in the title: to replicate the success of many Asian American parents, one must consider the benefits of each mode of education and seamlessly blend them. The balance between the two is essential to extract the most productivity out of the budding Asian American student and scholar. Huang’s book isn’t aimed at scholars of Asian American Studies or perhaps anyone with some baseline familiarity with the field, so there are limits to his arguments. Indeed, Huang never sets out to define who gets to be labeled as an American, and there is a strange elision between whiteness and American-ness that problematizes the place of the Asian in his argument. In some sense Huang’s work reifies the ever foreign nature of the Asian American simply by creating a binary between China and America and their educational policies. One element that could have used more nuancing is that Huang’s work is VERY specific to generational migrants. That is, he’s looking at Chinese American migrants and their children, especially those migrants who retain a strong connection to their homeland. His argument starts to already fray if you consider Asian Americans who have lived in the U.S. for more than one generation, and considering the fact that immigration opened up in 1965, this possibility is beginning to be more of an issue than ever before. Further still, Huang often has to conflate Chinese Americans with Asian Americans. He attempts to make broader claims for his work by introducing short anecdotes about other Asian groups who follow similar cultural models for education as the Chinese, but these are short and do not hold the same kind of weight as his very specific study of the Chinese. His title might have been better suited to the concerns of the success of “Chinese-American” kids rather than for Asian Americans more broadly. Fortunately, Huang’s main aim is to undermine much of the damage generated by Chua’s book. He looks as the cultural factors behind achievement rather than at any racial essence and dismisses any biological elements that would somehow mark Asian Americans as superior students. This goal alone gives us pause to reconsider the roar of the tiger mother and her model minority ways.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.prometheusbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2203&zenid=ff9onannvpqcm7i4f33rrt7fh3
A Review of Marisa de Los Santos’s The Precious One (HarperCollins, 2015).
Fans of the romantic comedy genre, the courtship and marriage plot, Jane Austen, and the Victorian novel will be utterly pleased by Marisa de Los Santos’s The Precious One, the latest effort from this prolific author (who has penned three novels for adults, a co-authored young adult fiction, and some poetry collections and who also boasts a PhD in literature no less). The novel is told in alternating first person perspectives. The first is given to Eustacia Cleary, otherwise known as Taisy, a 35 year old woman who was basically disowned by her father when she was just a teenager. She and her twin brother Marcus as well as their mother are all summarily cast out of his life once he decides that he loves someone else, a much younger woman named Caro. Together he and Caro have a newly born daughter named Willow, and there is apparently only room in his life for one family and one precious child, from whence the title comes. Flash forward about 15 years and Taisy’s father Wilson has a heart episode. That particular health issue pushes him to ask Taisy to come back into his life (he also asks Marcus to visit), though they haven’t been in contact for that entire time. Taisy agrees to the request, while Marcus, given his character and his own feelings about Wilson, declines. Taisy soon discovers that there is an important reason by her invitation: Wilson wants Taisy to help research and to write a biography of his life. Wilson, who is an incredibly intelligent academic and scholar, grants Taisy unprecedented access to his educational files as well as to the people he knows, but Taisy has other goals in mind. For instance, Taisy wants to know what Wilson was like prior to his ascent in academia, and her detective work uncovers some interesting facts, including the fact that he changed his name during high school and that his parents, who he had claimed were killed in a car accident, never died in that manner. Taisy has also returned to her childhood home in part because she herself has unfinished business with a man named Ben Ransom, a former love. The other narrative perspective is given to “the precious one,” Wilson’s daughter, Willow, who is smart just like her father, but lacking in social skills and knowledge of the world around her. The heart episode spurs Wilson to allow Willow to start going to regular high school, which as we all know, will never turn out well for someone who has been homeschooled forever. Willow finds herself adrift in a sea of hostile, cliquish teens, and finds solace in a too-friendly English teacher named Mr. Insley. Eventually, she also develops a tentative friendship with an attractive, star athlete named Luka. Life at home is similarly complicated: the arrival of Taisy and her stay in the guesthouse causes feelings of sibling rivalry to emerge. From what little Willow knows, Taisy is a loose woman, who Wilson had disparaged at every turn because she presumably had had a teen pregnancy (or something along those lines). But Willow’s knowledge of Taisy is obviously colored by Wilson’s aggressively hostile stance, so we know that de Los Santos has other plans for this sisterhood. Inasmuch as de los Santos is juggling two separate romance plots, she knows that the kinship plot is equally important and perhaps more important to the novel’s final arc. In this sense, de Los Santos’s eventual bringing together of the sisters is a satisfying triumph that becomes all the more poignant in light of the father who had worked so hard to keep them apart. Though the novel suffers from a generally ahistorical viewpoint (with probably the big exception of the references to smartphones and applications), it is an incredibly entertaining read that you will keep you up far past your bedtime.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780061670893/the-precious-one
A Review of Mala Kumar’s The Paths of Marriage (Bedazzled Ink, 2014)
Well, perhaps we’re entering a new age. With Mala Kumar’s The Paths of Marriage, we have certainly one of the most socially conscious works delving into a fictional world involving in part a major arc with a queer Asian American female character. On this level alone, Kumar’s work enters a very select and limited set of archives. With the exception of the publications offered by Nina Revoyr, queer Asian American female characters have been largely absent from the fictional terrain. Queer identified Asian American writers have tended to publish poetry, a fact that is probably related to the issues of access to routes of publication. In Kumar’s debut, The Paths of Marriage, we have essentially four different narrators. Three appear in the first person and track the intergenerational contexts of South Asian and South Asian American women. Lakshmi grows up poor, part of the Shudra caste of the Hindu faith. Though she aggressively pursues her educational options, eventually she butts up against the higher castes and higher classes, who seek to limit her trajectory. Lakshmi sees an arranged marriage as perhaps the only viable option once her educational opportunities come to an end, especially after her family is targeted because of her educational achievements. Lakshmi ends up marrying an individual who moves her to the United States. Lakshmi bears two daughters. The older is named Pooja. In the second part of the novel, Pooja gets a turn as our storyteller. Her section opens with her parents pressuring her into an arranged marriage. Growing up in West Virginia, Pooja experiences racial prejudice and finds the expectations of her parents to be oppressive. Pooja at first attempts to rebel, but eventually assents to the arranged marriage, as she couples up with a determined ambitious man named Anand. Anand and Pooja eventually settle in Florida; Pooja is determined to get an education, but this drive creates tension with Anand, who is pursuing a career of his own. Eventually, their marriage crumbles under these divergent expectations, but just before they are divorced, Pooja realizes that she is pregnant with a daughter. The third section opens with Deepa’s perspective, who is struggling with the process of coming out to her mother. Deepa identifies as a lesbian, and when she begins a long-term relationship with a French national named Audrey, who is residing in the U.S. for her professional education, she realizes that she must come out to her mother in order to honor a promise she made to Audrey. Deepa eventually comes out to her mother, but only after breaking a vow she made to Audrey. In the ensuing period, Pooja breaks ties with Deepa, while Audrey feels betrayed by Deepa’s delay in telling her mother. Thus, Deepa ends up losing both her mother and Audrey for a time. The narration eventually shifts again to a third person perspective. This choice was an interesting one made by Kumar, perhaps as a way to get at the process of recovery that is required of multiple characters, as they must each reconcile certain expectations that they have had of people they love. The final section sees Kumar provide an actual marriage plot type conclusion, so rare given the fact that same-sex marriage is only recognized in particular states (I originally wrote the draft of this review prior to the Supreme Court ruling, so forgive its out-of-datedness). Fortunately for Deepa and Audrey, as they reside in New York, they are able to get married. Kumar should be applauded for courageously taking on a subject matter of great interest not only to queer Asian Americans, but anyone invested in familial and social recognition of non-normative sexualities. Though the plot sometimes suffers from uneven pacing, the social impact of Kumar’s novel cannot be understated. A truly trailblazing work that links women’s oppressions in transnational and U.S. domestic contexts.
Buy the Book Here:
http://pathsofmarriage.com/purchase/
A Review of Nick Sumida’s Snackies (Youth In Decline, 2014).
Nick Sumida’s Snackies comes out of a cool indie press based out of San Francisco, California. The comics that comprise Snackies seem to be at least semi-autobiographical and follow the misadventures of the protagonist, especially as he seeks to find love, go on dates, and survive in the city. The comics are episodic, so the laughs come at uneven fits and bursts; readers of all stripes are certain to find something to chuckle at. For me, one of the best sections involved a parody of the craigslist missed connections. Here, Sumida pokes fun at the narcissism inherent in same sex desire, as the protagonist is unable to realize that the people he thinks he is connecting with (but only ever anonymously) are actually reflections in various surfaces, such as in shop windows and water surfaces. Another hilarious bit involves the protagonist traveling by bus and noticing an attractive man, only to realize that when the attractive man turns around, there is something that makes him repulsive (such as the fact that he might sport strange braids) or is in actuality an alien. Another excerpt involves the protagonist giving advice about how to lose weight and get him shape, but these self-help bits are obviously tinged with his cynical wit. Snackies shows a lot of promise, so we’ll hope that Sumida ventures into full-fledged graphic novel territory. Certainly, this collection is groundbreaking for the simple fact that it focuses on queer contexts, though the question of race is an intriguing one, as it does seem as if the protagonist could be Asian American (though is never identified as such).
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Snackies-Nick-Sumida/dp/B00ROG73SA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1432617376&sr=8-1&keywords=nick+sumida
http://www.youthindecline.com/product/snackies-by-nick-sumida
A Review of Jenny Han’s P.S. I Still Love You (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2015).
In P.S. I Still Love You, Jenny Han’s sequel to To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before reunites us with Lara Jean Song, the spirited, mixed race Korean American protagonist (and our first person narrator). For those that forgot (and I’m included in this list), the first book saw Lara Jean Song choose between her high school classmate and childhood crush Peter and her next door neighbor Josh, who also happened to be the ex-boyfriend of her older sister Margot. Lara Jean ends up choosing Peter, the Lacrosse jock and generally popular high school everybro, which brings us to the opening of the sequel, in which Lara Jean must somehow confess her feelings to Peter. Eventually, these feelings are revealed and thus ensues their fledgling romance. Of course, given the cesspool that is high school, you can be sure that someone will attempt to sabotage their bliss and in the process jumpstart our young adult fictional plot. In this case, a video of Lara Jean and Peter engaging in a make out session in an a hot tub serves to destabilize the security of their relationship. Especially problematic is Peter’s ex Genevieve, who is also Lara Jean’s former best friend from the seventh grade. Genevieve continually calls on Peter in times of trouble and because they are navigating the waters of post-breakup platonic friendship, Lara Jean can only watch while she feels sidelined by their continuing connection. While one romantic triangle blooms (or festers), Han of course wants to keep up with the conceit from the first novel—that is, the five letters that ended up going out to Lara Jean’s various crushes—and thus creates another triangle through the eventual receipt of a letter from one of these previous five crushes, John Ambrose McLaren. While John and Lara Jean grow closer, it becomes apparent that Lara Jean has feelings for John, thus complicating the various romantic plots further. As always, Han is at her best in depicting plot-driven romantic entanglements, and you’ll certainly be left wondering who Lara Jean should choose. I certainly had my opinions about the eventual result, and I’m sure some of the readers will agree with me that Lara Jean made the wrong choice. In any case, Han continues to develop the contours of the Song family in a more grounded exploration of race and ethnicity, as it functions in Lara Jean’s life. The extra texture of this kind of background serves as an intriguing apparatus to consider the mixed race, Asian American protagonist in the young adult fictional world. Here, despite the more universal themes of high school angst and frustrated desires, Han gamely engages how Lara Jean finds some solace in her ethnic minority background, especially as it provides her with a stronger cultural attachment to her father and his family. But let’s be clear: Han’s work remains on the lighter side of the young adult spectrum. You won’t find the cataclysmic, post-apocalyptic worlds so popular in the paranormal subgenre, but for those looking for high school hijinks and associated malcontents, you’ll definitely find it in Han’s latest. The conclusion seems to suggest that there might be a third installment in this series. Will it be titled P.P.S. I Still Love You Too? Only time will tell.
Buy the Book Here:
http://books.simonandschuster.com/P-S-I-Still-Love-You/Jenny-Han/9781442426733
A Review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (Knopf, 2015).
(an appropriate looking Arthurian-like goblet thingee no?)
It’s been about a decade since Kazuo Ishiguro published Never Let Me Go, a novel I found to be somewhat uneven, but nevertheless compelling on the level of ethics. Ishiguro dares to venture again into genre fictions to explore a rather philosophical inquiry concerning the adage that ignorance is bliss. While Never Let Me Go drew on the genre of science fiction, Ishiguro ventures into fantasy and Arthurian romance with The Buried Giant. Ishiguro moves out of the first person narration that has long been a hallmark of his work to employ (primarily) a third person perspective that follows a band of adventurers and questers. The primary protagonists are the older couple Beatrice and Axl, who live in some unnamed village in the age of King Arthur. They are Britons, who, for some reason or another, are haunted by a kind of fog of amnesia. They decide that they must visit their son in a neighboring village, but their journey is a long and arduous one. In one of their first encounters with other villagers, Beatrice and Axl come upon a scene in which a young boy has been kidnapped by a band of ogres. This boy, Edwin, is eventually saved by a brave warrior named Wistan, of Saxon background. Because Edwin suffers a wound (the origin of which becomes a source of debate), he becomes the subject of much consternation, and Wistan realizes that Edwin must be smuggled out of the village and raised somewhere else if he is to have any chance at a normal life. Wistan thus charges Beatrice and Axl with the task of helping him locate a new home for Edwin, even as they journey in search of their son’s village. Other matters complicate these varying quests: Beatrice, for instance, seems to be harboring a kind of injury, and the chance of finding out more about her ailment leads the group to a monastery with a figure (Father Jonus) who may be able to diagnose the problem. As the novel moves forward, it becomes evident that Ishiguro is playing upon a larger issue concerning racial and ethnic relations: the Britons and Saxons were once at war with each other, but somehow the fog of amnesia has made it so that they do not understand what such tensions were about. As Beatrice, Axl, Wistan, and Edwin all come to grips with the potential possibility that they can end this fog and restore the memory of all villagers, a larger dilemma arises concerning whether or not such actions would be of benefit to all. Indeed, wouldn’t the restoration of memory simply reconstruct the tensions that left so many dead due to endless campaigns for vengeance and retribution? Ishiguro’s answer to the question is so ambivalent that the novel may not satisfy readers, who have journeyed with such unintentionally forgetful characters. A late stage introduction of Sir Gawain proves to be a fascinating gambit, one that pays off through a vital plot element. The mystical aspect of the novel seems at times simply a dressing for other more compelling issues. The dragon-villain, Querig, for instance, is a huge disappointment. Interestingly enough, where Ishiguro eventually leads us is to the kind of mystical conclusion undergirded by the conclusion and resolution of the romance plot. In this sense, even as the novel engages the larger scale issues of racial and ethnic tensions, the readers remain burdened most by the question of the afterlife, another layer of philosophical inquiry that remains finally and frustratingly unanswered. My favorite of Ishiguro’s work still remains A Pale View of Hills. The uninitiated to Ishiguro must also read The Remains of the Day.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-buried-giant-kazuo-ishiguro/1119702748?ean=9780307271037
AALF uses “maximal ideological inclusiveness” to define Asian American literature. Thus, we review any writers working in the English language of Asian descent. We also review titles related to Asian American contexts without regard to authorial descent. We also consider titles in translation pending their relationship to America, broadly defined. Our point is precisely to cast the widest net possible.
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide-ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
In this post, reviews of Deepak Chopra’s The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure (HarperOne, 2015); Omar Shahid Hamid’s The Prisoner (Arcadia Publishing, 2015); Quanyu Huang’s The Hybrid Tiger: Secrets of the Extraordinary Success of Asian-American Kids (Prometheus Books, 2014); Marisa de Los Santos’s The Precious One (HarperCollins, 2015); Mala Kumar’s The Paths of Marriage (Bedazzled Ink, 2014); Nick Sumida’s Snackies (Youth In Decline, 2014); Jenny Han’s P.S. I Still Love You (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2015); Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (Knopf, 2015).
A Review of Deepak Chopra’s The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure (HarperOne, 2015).
Deepak Chopra is well known for his work as a kind of spiritual guru, having penned many dozens of publications on various topics related to wellness, religion, and associated ways of life. Chopra is perhaps less recognized for his work in fiction; he is the author of some works in this area (including The Return of Merlin and the Enlightenment series, which takes on fictionalizations of major spiritual figures including Buddha and Muhammad). Chopra might be described as a secular spiritualist: that is, he seeks to bring religion in its broadest forms to the masses, whether through nonfictional “how to” guides or through fanciful and imaginative fictional worlds. In The 13th Disciple, Chopra deviates from using well-known religious figures to ground his fictional world and instead focuses on the apocryphal possibility of the titular thirteenth disciple, an unknown woman who comes to exist in some form within a religious relic. Chopra opens the novel with a central mystery: a nun named Meg has gone missing, and her niece, a young woman named Mare, realizes that there may be more to the story concerning her disappearance. From there, Chopra shifts the narrative perspective among an array of characters, including Meg, who we discover suffered from stigmata at a young age. Meg’s time in the convent is a sort of therapy to manage the stigmata, though she becomes aware that she has been touched in some way by the light. The light, as Chopra generically deems it, is a kind of spiritual awakening involving the capacity for individuals of all stripes to do good, despite being in positions of disempowerment and general malaise. For Chopra, the path to the light is the grounding force behind this spiritual adventure, which is a kind of fictionalization of the ways that everyday individuals might be able to access their own abilities to change and become a positive force in the lives of others. The fictional story seems to be less compelling in many senses than Chopra’s epilogue, which lays out his religio-secular philosophy. Indeed, the story’s conceit is so reliant upon the central mystery and a cast of characters enigmatically brought together by the thirteenth discipline that many may be a little let down by the novel’s conclusion, which leaves behind numerous red herrings and subplots unclosed. Chopra’s choice to create a didactic spiritual tale in a fictional form is certainly an intriguing one and compels the cultural critics in all of us to consider the possibilities of religious formalisms in this contemporary moment.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062241306/the-13th-disciple
A Review of Omar Shahid Hamid’s The Prisoner (Arcadia Publishing, 2015).
One of the interesting marketing details of Omar Shahid Hamid’s The Prisoner is the book jacket biography, which details that the author “served with the Karachi police for twelve years, most recently as head of counterterrorism. During his service, he has been actively targeted by various terrorist groups and organizations. He was wounded in the line of duty, and his office was bombed by the Taliban in 2010. He has a master’s in criminal justice policy from the London School of Economics and a master’s in law from University College London.” Hamid’s experience in the Karachi police makes one wonder how much of the novel is fictionalized and how much is actually based in reality. The protagonist, Constantine, works as a superintendent of a prison located in Pakistan. The novel opens when he is visited by Major Rommel, who is looking to interview an important prisoner named Akbar. Akbar may have important information regarding an American of Jewish descent who has been kidnapped by some organization. It is unclear whether or not the American’s kidnapping is the work of jihadi extremists or not, but it is apparent that Akbar knows more about the situation than he is letting on. The novel is told anachronically and readers discover why Akbar, who was once working for the police, is now in prison. Indeed, Constantine and Akbar were once allies, and the complicated relationships between politics, organize crime rings, intelligence agencies, and terrorist organizations causes those who work in the police force to be caught up in dangerous power plays. It is clear that corruption is, in some sense, required by all entities simply to keep one’s head above water. For his part, Constantine begins to realize that the American’s kidnapping is part of a larger plot in which his own position is imperiled. With little agency to direct his actions, Constantine can only negotiate between the various figures who are attempting to wrest control of the situation. At one harrowing point, Constantine must call on an old lover to protect his wife and children. Though Hamid’s novel is uneven in its plotting—indeed, the anachronic storytelling technique sometimes undercuts the narrative pacing—his work does much to clarify the murky nature of governance in the post-9/11 period, especially in a place like Pakistan. The line between enemies and allies is never clear and in this sense, Hamid’s novel is more like a noir than anything else. The Prisoner also can be paired up against a number of other novels set in Pakistan (or thereabouts) that focus on corruption in government and associated organizations, such as Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and Daniyal Mueenuddin’s In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.arcadepub.com/book/?GCOI=55970108764380
A Review of Quanyu Huang’s The Hybrid Tiger: Secrets of the Extraordinary Success of Asian-American Kids (Prometheus Books, 2014).
Quanyu Huang’s The Hybrid Tiger: Secrets of the Extraordinary Success of Asian-American Kids (uh oh, the hyphen reappears here) presents a more judicious approach to the issues related to the model minority stereotype than others, especially in contrast to Chua’s infamous The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, in its exploration of academic achievement. Underlying Huang’s thesis is the fact that the secret of the success behind educational attainment for Asian Americans is a blend of cultural approaches to learning emphasized by both China and the United States. Central to Huang’s thesis is the “hybrid” evoked in the title: to replicate the success of many Asian American parents, one must consider the benefits of each mode of education and seamlessly blend them. The balance between the two is essential to extract the most productivity out of the budding Asian American student and scholar. Huang’s book isn’t aimed at scholars of Asian American Studies or perhaps anyone with some baseline familiarity with the field, so there are limits to his arguments. Indeed, Huang never sets out to define who gets to be labeled as an American, and there is a strange elision between whiteness and American-ness that problematizes the place of the Asian in his argument. In some sense Huang’s work reifies the ever foreign nature of the Asian American simply by creating a binary between China and America and their educational policies. One element that could have used more nuancing is that Huang’s work is VERY specific to generational migrants. That is, he’s looking at Chinese American migrants and their children, especially those migrants who retain a strong connection to their homeland. His argument starts to already fray if you consider Asian Americans who have lived in the U.S. for more than one generation, and considering the fact that immigration opened up in 1965, this possibility is beginning to be more of an issue than ever before. Further still, Huang often has to conflate Chinese Americans with Asian Americans. He attempts to make broader claims for his work by introducing short anecdotes about other Asian groups who follow similar cultural models for education as the Chinese, but these are short and do not hold the same kind of weight as his very specific study of the Chinese. His title might have been better suited to the concerns of the success of “Chinese-American” kids rather than for Asian Americans more broadly. Fortunately, Huang’s main aim is to undermine much of the damage generated by Chua’s book. He looks as the cultural factors behind achievement rather than at any racial essence and dismisses any biological elements that would somehow mark Asian Americans as superior students. This goal alone gives us pause to reconsider the roar of the tiger mother and her model minority ways.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.prometheusbooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2203&zenid=ff9onannvpqcm7i4f33rrt7fh3
A Review of Marisa de Los Santos’s The Precious One (HarperCollins, 2015).
Fans of the romantic comedy genre, the courtship and marriage plot, Jane Austen, and the Victorian novel will be utterly pleased by Marisa de Los Santos’s The Precious One, the latest effort from this prolific author (who has penned three novels for adults, a co-authored young adult fiction, and some poetry collections and who also boasts a PhD in literature no less). The novel is told in alternating first person perspectives. The first is given to Eustacia Cleary, otherwise known as Taisy, a 35 year old woman who was basically disowned by her father when she was just a teenager. She and her twin brother Marcus as well as their mother are all summarily cast out of his life once he decides that he loves someone else, a much younger woman named Caro. Together he and Caro have a newly born daughter named Willow, and there is apparently only room in his life for one family and one precious child, from whence the title comes. Flash forward about 15 years and Taisy’s father Wilson has a heart episode. That particular health issue pushes him to ask Taisy to come back into his life (he also asks Marcus to visit), though they haven’t been in contact for that entire time. Taisy agrees to the request, while Marcus, given his character and his own feelings about Wilson, declines. Taisy soon discovers that there is an important reason by her invitation: Wilson wants Taisy to help research and to write a biography of his life. Wilson, who is an incredibly intelligent academic and scholar, grants Taisy unprecedented access to his educational files as well as to the people he knows, but Taisy has other goals in mind. For instance, Taisy wants to know what Wilson was like prior to his ascent in academia, and her detective work uncovers some interesting facts, including the fact that he changed his name during high school and that his parents, who he had claimed were killed in a car accident, never died in that manner. Taisy has also returned to her childhood home in part because she herself has unfinished business with a man named Ben Ransom, a former love. The other narrative perspective is given to “the precious one,” Wilson’s daughter, Willow, who is smart just like her father, but lacking in social skills and knowledge of the world around her. The heart episode spurs Wilson to allow Willow to start going to regular high school, which as we all know, will never turn out well for someone who has been homeschooled forever. Willow finds herself adrift in a sea of hostile, cliquish teens, and finds solace in a too-friendly English teacher named Mr. Insley. Eventually, she also develops a tentative friendship with an attractive, star athlete named Luka. Life at home is similarly complicated: the arrival of Taisy and her stay in the guesthouse causes feelings of sibling rivalry to emerge. From what little Willow knows, Taisy is a loose woman, who Wilson had disparaged at every turn because she presumably had had a teen pregnancy (or something along those lines). But Willow’s knowledge of Taisy is obviously colored by Wilson’s aggressively hostile stance, so we know that de Los Santos has other plans for this sisterhood. Inasmuch as de los Santos is juggling two separate romance plots, she knows that the kinship plot is equally important and perhaps more important to the novel’s final arc. In this sense, de Los Santos’s eventual bringing together of the sisters is a satisfying triumph that becomes all the more poignant in light of the father who had worked so hard to keep them apart. Though the novel suffers from a generally ahistorical viewpoint (with probably the big exception of the references to smartphones and applications), it is an incredibly entertaining read that you will keep you up far past your bedtime.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780061670893/the-precious-one
A Review of Mala Kumar’s The Paths of Marriage (Bedazzled Ink, 2014)
Well, perhaps we’re entering a new age. With Mala Kumar’s The Paths of Marriage, we have certainly one of the most socially conscious works delving into a fictional world involving in part a major arc with a queer Asian American female character. On this level alone, Kumar’s work enters a very select and limited set of archives. With the exception of the publications offered by Nina Revoyr, queer Asian American female characters have been largely absent from the fictional terrain. Queer identified Asian American writers have tended to publish poetry, a fact that is probably related to the issues of access to routes of publication. In Kumar’s debut, The Paths of Marriage, we have essentially four different narrators. Three appear in the first person and track the intergenerational contexts of South Asian and South Asian American women. Lakshmi grows up poor, part of the Shudra caste of the Hindu faith. Though she aggressively pursues her educational options, eventually she butts up against the higher castes and higher classes, who seek to limit her trajectory. Lakshmi sees an arranged marriage as perhaps the only viable option once her educational opportunities come to an end, especially after her family is targeted because of her educational achievements. Lakshmi ends up marrying an individual who moves her to the United States. Lakshmi bears two daughters. The older is named Pooja. In the second part of the novel, Pooja gets a turn as our storyteller. Her section opens with her parents pressuring her into an arranged marriage. Growing up in West Virginia, Pooja experiences racial prejudice and finds the expectations of her parents to be oppressive. Pooja at first attempts to rebel, but eventually assents to the arranged marriage, as she couples up with a determined ambitious man named Anand. Anand and Pooja eventually settle in Florida; Pooja is determined to get an education, but this drive creates tension with Anand, who is pursuing a career of his own. Eventually, their marriage crumbles under these divergent expectations, but just before they are divorced, Pooja realizes that she is pregnant with a daughter. The third section opens with Deepa’s perspective, who is struggling with the process of coming out to her mother. Deepa identifies as a lesbian, and when she begins a long-term relationship with a French national named Audrey, who is residing in the U.S. for her professional education, she realizes that she must come out to her mother in order to honor a promise she made to Audrey. Deepa eventually comes out to her mother, but only after breaking a vow she made to Audrey. In the ensuing period, Pooja breaks ties with Deepa, while Audrey feels betrayed by Deepa’s delay in telling her mother. Thus, Deepa ends up losing both her mother and Audrey for a time. The narration eventually shifts again to a third person perspective. This choice was an interesting one made by Kumar, perhaps as a way to get at the process of recovery that is required of multiple characters, as they must each reconcile certain expectations that they have had of people they love. The final section sees Kumar provide an actual marriage plot type conclusion, so rare given the fact that same-sex marriage is only recognized in particular states (I originally wrote the draft of this review prior to the Supreme Court ruling, so forgive its out-of-datedness). Fortunately for Deepa and Audrey, as they reside in New York, they are able to get married. Kumar should be applauded for courageously taking on a subject matter of great interest not only to queer Asian Americans, but anyone invested in familial and social recognition of non-normative sexualities. Though the plot sometimes suffers from uneven pacing, the social impact of Kumar’s novel cannot be understated. A truly trailblazing work that links women’s oppressions in transnational and U.S. domestic contexts.
Buy the Book Here:
http://pathsofmarriage.com/purchase/
A Review of Nick Sumida’s Snackies (Youth In Decline, 2014).
Nick Sumida’s Snackies comes out of a cool indie press based out of San Francisco, California. The comics that comprise Snackies seem to be at least semi-autobiographical and follow the misadventures of the protagonist, especially as he seeks to find love, go on dates, and survive in the city. The comics are episodic, so the laughs come at uneven fits and bursts; readers of all stripes are certain to find something to chuckle at. For me, one of the best sections involved a parody of the craigslist missed connections. Here, Sumida pokes fun at the narcissism inherent in same sex desire, as the protagonist is unable to realize that the people he thinks he is connecting with (but only ever anonymously) are actually reflections in various surfaces, such as in shop windows and water surfaces. Another hilarious bit involves the protagonist traveling by bus and noticing an attractive man, only to realize that when the attractive man turns around, there is something that makes him repulsive (such as the fact that he might sport strange braids) or is in actuality an alien. Another excerpt involves the protagonist giving advice about how to lose weight and get him shape, but these self-help bits are obviously tinged with his cynical wit. Snackies shows a lot of promise, so we’ll hope that Sumida ventures into full-fledged graphic novel territory. Certainly, this collection is groundbreaking for the simple fact that it focuses on queer contexts, though the question of race is an intriguing one, as it does seem as if the protagonist could be Asian American (though is never identified as such).
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Snackies-Nick-Sumida/dp/B00ROG73SA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1432617376&sr=8-1&keywords=nick+sumida
http://www.youthindecline.com/product/snackies-by-nick-sumida
A Review of Jenny Han’s P.S. I Still Love You (Simon & Schuster for Young Readers, 2015).
In P.S. I Still Love You, Jenny Han’s sequel to To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before reunites us with Lara Jean Song, the spirited, mixed race Korean American protagonist (and our first person narrator). For those that forgot (and I’m included in this list), the first book saw Lara Jean Song choose between her high school classmate and childhood crush Peter and her next door neighbor Josh, who also happened to be the ex-boyfriend of her older sister Margot. Lara Jean ends up choosing Peter, the Lacrosse jock and generally popular high school everybro, which brings us to the opening of the sequel, in which Lara Jean must somehow confess her feelings to Peter. Eventually, these feelings are revealed and thus ensues their fledgling romance. Of course, given the cesspool that is high school, you can be sure that someone will attempt to sabotage their bliss and in the process jumpstart our young adult fictional plot. In this case, a video of Lara Jean and Peter engaging in a make out session in an a hot tub serves to destabilize the security of their relationship. Especially problematic is Peter’s ex Genevieve, who is also Lara Jean’s former best friend from the seventh grade. Genevieve continually calls on Peter in times of trouble and because they are navigating the waters of post-breakup platonic friendship, Lara Jean can only watch while she feels sidelined by their continuing connection. While one romantic triangle blooms (or festers), Han of course wants to keep up with the conceit from the first novel—that is, the five letters that ended up going out to Lara Jean’s various crushes—and thus creates another triangle through the eventual receipt of a letter from one of these previous five crushes, John Ambrose McLaren. While John and Lara Jean grow closer, it becomes apparent that Lara Jean has feelings for John, thus complicating the various romantic plots further. As always, Han is at her best in depicting plot-driven romantic entanglements, and you’ll certainly be left wondering who Lara Jean should choose. I certainly had my opinions about the eventual result, and I’m sure some of the readers will agree with me that Lara Jean made the wrong choice. In any case, Han continues to develop the contours of the Song family in a more grounded exploration of race and ethnicity, as it functions in Lara Jean’s life. The extra texture of this kind of background serves as an intriguing apparatus to consider the mixed race, Asian American protagonist in the young adult fictional world. Here, despite the more universal themes of high school angst and frustrated desires, Han gamely engages how Lara Jean finds some solace in her ethnic minority background, especially as it provides her with a stronger cultural attachment to her father and his family. But let’s be clear: Han’s work remains on the lighter side of the young adult spectrum. You won’t find the cataclysmic, post-apocalyptic worlds so popular in the paranormal subgenre, but for those looking for high school hijinks and associated malcontents, you’ll definitely find it in Han’s latest. The conclusion seems to suggest that there might be a third installment in this series. Will it be titled P.P.S. I Still Love You Too? Only time will tell.
Buy the Book Here:
http://books.simonandschuster.com/P-S-I-Still-Love-You/Jenny-Han/9781442426733
A Review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (Knopf, 2015).
(an appropriate looking Arthurian-like goblet thingee no?)
It’s been about a decade since Kazuo Ishiguro published Never Let Me Go, a novel I found to be somewhat uneven, but nevertheless compelling on the level of ethics. Ishiguro dares to venture again into genre fictions to explore a rather philosophical inquiry concerning the adage that ignorance is bliss. While Never Let Me Go drew on the genre of science fiction, Ishiguro ventures into fantasy and Arthurian romance with The Buried Giant. Ishiguro moves out of the first person narration that has long been a hallmark of his work to employ (primarily) a third person perspective that follows a band of adventurers and questers. The primary protagonists are the older couple Beatrice and Axl, who live in some unnamed village in the age of King Arthur. They are Britons, who, for some reason or another, are haunted by a kind of fog of amnesia. They decide that they must visit their son in a neighboring village, but their journey is a long and arduous one. In one of their first encounters with other villagers, Beatrice and Axl come upon a scene in which a young boy has been kidnapped by a band of ogres. This boy, Edwin, is eventually saved by a brave warrior named Wistan, of Saxon background. Because Edwin suffers a wound (the origin of which becomes a source of debate), he becomes the subject of much consternation, and Wistan realizes that Edwin must be smuggled out of the village and raised somewhere else if he is to have any chance at a normal life. Wistan thus charges Beatrice and Axl with the task of helping him locate a new home for Edwin, even as they journey in search of their son’s village. Other matters complicate these varying quests: Beatrice, for instance, seems to be harboring a kind of injury, and the chance of finding out more about her ailment leads the group to a monastery with a figure (Father Jonus) who may be able to diagnose the problem. As the novel moves forward, it becomes evident that Ishiguro is playing upon a larger issue concerning racial and ethnic relations: the Britons and Saxons were once at war with each other, but somehow the fog of amnesia has made it so that they do not understand what such tensions were about. As Beatrice, Axl, Wistan, and Edwin all come to grips with the potential possibility that they can end this fog and restore the memory of all villagers, a larger dilemma arises concerning whether or not such actions would be of benefit to all. Indeed, wouldn’t the restoration of memory simply reconstruct the tensions that left so many dead due to endless campaigns for vengeance and retribution? Ishiguro’s answer to the question is so ambivalent that the novel may not satisfy readers, who have journeyed with such unintentionally forgetful characters. A late stage introduction of Sir Gawain proves to be a fascinating gambit, one that pays off through a vital plot element. The mystical aspect of the novel seems at times simply a dressing for other more compelling issues. The dragon-villain, Querig, for instance, is a huge disappointment. Interestingly enough, where Ishiguro eventually leads us is to the kind of mystical conclusion undergirded by the conclusion and resolution of the romance plot. In this sense, even as the novel engages the larger scale issues of racial and ethnic tensions, the readers remain burdened most by the question of the afterlife, another layer of philosophical inquiry that remains finally and frustratingly unanswered. My favorite of Ishiguro’s work still remains A Pale View of Hills. The uninitiated to Ishiguro must also read The Remains of the Day.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-buried-giant-kazuo-ishiguro/1119702748?ean=9780307271037
May 24, 2015
asianamlitfans @ 2015-05-24T10:40:00
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for May 24, 2015
AALF uses “maximal ideological inclusiveness” to define Asian American literature. Thus, we review any writers working in the English language of Asian descent. We also review titles related to Asian American contexts without regard to authorial descent. We also consider titles in translation pending their relationship to America, broadly defined. Our point is precisely to cast the widest net possible.
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
In this post, reviews of Saroo Brierley’s A Long Way Home (Penguin, 2014); Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom (Penguin Books, 2014); Rinsai Rossetti’s The Girl With Borrowed Wings (Dial Press, 2012); Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s Pastors’ Wives (Plume, 2013); Radhika Sanghani’s Virgin (Berkley Trade, 2014); Karen Bao’s Dove Arising (Penguin Young Readers, 2015); Lydia Kang’s Catalyst (Kathy Dawson Books, 2015).
Though Penguin Random house recently engaged in a merger, the new company has retained an academic division for Penguin titles and the CFIS program. Whew!
Since many readers of AALF are also qualified instructors who regularly teach Asian American literary titles, I sometimes create a Penguin-only book review to cast attention on their titles and to remind people about CFIS.
http://www.penguin.com/services-academic/cfis/
One of the big perks of CFIS is that you can get five free examination copies each year. At the same time, the program allows qualified instructors a chance to diversify their curricula. Through this program, I have gotten new titles by Chang-rae Lee, Jessica Hagedorn, and other writers who have been directly incorporated into my classes.
Without further ado:
A Review of Saroo Brierley’s A Long Way Home (Penguin, 2014); Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom (Penguin Books, 2014);
I first got wind of this memoir once it became headline news because it was being adapted into a movie. So, I naturally wanted to read the book that was apparently attracting Nicole Kidman to play one of the lead roles. Saroo Brierley’s A Long Way Home is part of the growing archive of transracial/ transnational adoption memoirs; his story is pretty unique in some ways because of the way he ends up getting placed into an adoption agency. Accompanying his 14 year old brother by train to a neighboring town, Saroo gets trapped inside one of the box cars, not realizing that he is basically being transported across the entire nation of India, moving from the Western side all the way to Calcutta (Kolkata). Once in the mega-city, he stays relatively close to the railway station, living off scraps of food, while trying to find the right train to take him back home. Eventually, he begins to see the vast majority of the trains he gets on return back to the railway station in a loop, and he’s forced to consider the possibility that he is stuck there. Eventually, some run-ins with some unsavory types push Saroo to leave the area, and he bumps into some strangers who route him into a local police lock-up, which then leads him into an orphanage system. He is fortunately paired up with a woman, Ms. Sood, who takes good care of him and who is able to fast track him into adoption with an Australian couple. Once in Australia, Saroo can’t believe his new found “glamorous” life. Sure, there are some bumps in the road—such as the period in which Saroo gets a brother, Mantosh, who is also Indian and also adopted and whose acclimation to Australian is far less seamless—but overall, Saroo notes that his new home beats the abject poverty and constant fear that he had experienced as a child in India. Saroo’s Australian parents are sensitive enough to give him a wide berth when it comes to his homeland and provide him with the support he needs when he decides to try to figure out where his home actually is based upon memories and the frequent refrain he gave as a child that he is from a place called “Ginestlay.” It is not surprising in some sense that Brierley’s story has been chosen for Hollywood-ization, as it provides the kind of uplift narrative and concluding arc that will be sure to produce some tears in the audience. Brierley’s prose is straightforward and spare; you’ll read the memoir quite quickly, but perhaps the more intriguing question for me as a reader are the marginal social contexts that are alluded to, but not fully engaged. Indeed, Brierley does decide to give back to the orphanage that was instrumental in his having been adopted at all, but the process of international adoption and child trafficking in India remains a topic that has, on some level, not been as visible in cultural studies as of late (in contrast to adoption studies in China and Korea). There’s something about Brierley’s adoptive parents, their unassuming style of childrearing that doesn’t presuppose the “savoir” status, that makes this particular story different from some of the other adoption narratives I’ve read and perhaps keys us into the importance of the unmapped futures that the adoptive parent must maintain in order for any possible alternative kinship to form.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.penguin.com/book/a-long-way-home-by-saroo-brierley/9780425276198
A Review of Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom (Penguin Books, 2014).
Originally published in 2012 under the David Davidar-led Aleph Publishing Company in India, Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom finds itself stateside, as it has been brought out by Penguin Books. The novel is an anachronically plotted novel concerning an unnamed narrator and his exploration of his parents’ lives: their courtship, their marriage, and their later struggles over the mental illness of the wife. The novel is set in India, though the setting is so subtly interwoven into many of the chapters that we can sometimes forget where we are. Indeed, Pinto’s work finds a kind of cosmopolitan applicability that speaks perhaps to the growing modernization and global character of India’s biggest cities (like Goa and New Delhi for example). The title refers to the nicknames of the narrator’s parents: Augustine, or the Big Hoom, and Em, or Imelda, who find their fledgling romance growing amid an office work environment in India. They bond over their mutual love of bookstores (and books) and movies, but underlying their feelings for each other is the sleeping monster that becomes Em’s mental illness. Later diagnosed as a manic-depressive, Em comes to be figured as an unstable and disruptive force in the lives of her children, especially when suicide becomes an ever-present concern. The unnamed narrator plows through the letters written by Em that detail her life and in so doing comes to understand the challenges she has had and provides a deeper context to her mental illness. The larger point is of course the need to develop the proper form of empathy for Em, who initially comes off to the children as a chaotic and irrational individual. From the lens of her letters, the children can begin to see her from a different light. The naturalistic arc of the novel ends with a disruptive and therefore surprising closing chapter which works to showcase Pinto’s nuance: these characters reveal how mental illness functions to affect an entire family and the arc of their lives beyond that shadow of psychological instability is unscripted. Nevertheless, at the core of this family remains the support they have given to each other even when it has seemed to be a burden. Pinto’s use of dialogue and anachrony can serve to undercut his dynamic depictions, marking this novel as highly uneven, yet nevertheless compelling. An understated and poignant work, reminiscent of some of other recent publications, especially Danielle Lim’s The Sound of Sch (Ethos Books) and Akhil Sharma’s Family Life (W.W. Norton).
For more on the book go here:
http://www.penguin.com/read/book-clubs/em-and-the-big-hoom/9780143124764
A Review of Rinsai Rossetti’s The Girl With Borrowed Wings (Dial Press, 2012)
This book has set on my shelf for awhile, and I think I was simply “saving” it for a night when I was craving another young adult fiction. I’ve tended to lay waste to my young adult fiction reading by devouring anything I get immediately, but occasionally I like to browse my bookshelves to see what’s left unread. These days, my choices are getting limited; many seem to be Asian Anglophone fictions that don’t tend to be as pressing to get to simply because they are further outside my scholarly wheelhouse (still need to read some Meira Chand, for instance). But I digress: Rinsai Rossetti’s The Girl with Borrowed Wings was purchased in manuscript form when the author was just 19 and only came out when she had completed about two years of university schooling. This background seems quite common in the YA world, where publishing houses seem to be open and to even embrace the youthful backgrounds of the writers themselves (see Nancy Yi Fan and Kat Zhang for some other examples). There are obvious advantages to the youthful age of the author, especially in the realm of marketing and the fit of the audience. Readers can quickly identify not only with the heroine of the novel, but the writer as well: the writer, reader, and protagonist all might be seen as rough mirrors for each other. In the case of this novel, our narrator and heroine is Frenenqer, who apparently resides in some Middle Eastern nation that remains unnamed and is simply called an oasis. The use of an unnamed location that still likely has a real world analogue is a writerly choice I’ve seen too many times at this point and am beginning to wonder about writing a paper on the topic. Rossetti (who is of Thai and Italian descent) engages this fictive location as a kind of metaphor for the expat who is at once everywhere and nowhere. Frenenqer is the “nowhere” side of the equation, as her father imposes a strict regime over her life that does not allow her to do much except follow his austere rules of etiquette. This mode of living leads Frenenqer into a kind of emotional isolation, which begins to be undone one day when a magical being (who Frenenqer nicknames Sangris) begins to take her out at night. He is apparently a “Free” person, a being who can go anywhere and everywhere, but belongs to no one and has no family. At the end of the day, the “Free” person is not so different than Frenenqer, as both individuals finally feel alone, withdrawn, away from everything. The two, in other words, make the perfect couple. So begins the possible courtship plot, but of course, Rossetti is not going to let that happen so easily. Frenenqer’s isolation under her father also causes her to close off any feelings she might be developing for Sangris, even as he falls desperately and madly in love with her. There was a point where I found Sangris to be a questionable love choice, but I suppose those details are for the readers to determine on her own. After all, he’s violent, seems unaware of boundaries, and in some cases, some of his advances might tend toward an unwelcome sexual aggression, but Rossetti sees these two as two sides of the same coin, and so, readers will have to wade through about a hundred pages to see how it will all turn out. A late stage character development regarding Frenenqer’s best school friend Anju is a very welcome addition; her rise in the importance of plot practically saves the conclusion from being too straightforward. Indeed, Anju’s friendship with Frenenqer grounds the novel in one of its most interesting elements: that of expat teenage children who subsist in American language schools, while they attempt to grapple with the international lives they are forced to lead. The fictional conceit of the imagined place—the oasis—gives his novel an air of the Oriental tale. The limit of this approach, though, is that we sometimes want more specificity to the cultural registers of the life there, something that the novel almost demands once Frenenqer makes her break from her father and comes to realize that she’s not nowhere, she’s somewhere and that she actually has feelings.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/girl-with-borrowed-wings-rinsai-rossetti/1103286755?ean=9780803735668
A Review of Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s Pastors’ Wives (Plume, 2013)
I think every novel should come with an author’s note like the one presented in Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s Pastors’ Wives (Plume 2013), which explains the sometimes long road to a book’s publication. Cullen comes from a journalistic background and previously produced a book on the culture around funerals and dying (Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death). This novel comes out as a result of a complicated process concerning the desire to write a television series. That series, Ordained, was never given a full pick-up, though it did film a pilot episode that included some big time actors, including Sam Neill (of The Jurassic Park fame). Cullen’s Pastors’ Wives reminds me a little bit of the short-lived television show GCB. Though more dramatic than GCB, which was more of a religious dramedy, Pastors’ Wives focuses on three characters who are of course all married to pastors. There is Ruthie Matters—given the only first person perspective—who is married to Jerry, who has recently changed his life and decided that he must heed his calling to become a pastor. He gets hired as an associate pastor at Greenleaf, a megachurch located in the South. They must make a huge move that promises to create marital instability, especially as Ruthie is what we might call a reluctant Christian. She essentially leaves behind her own career in journalism and public relations to follow him. Then, there’s Candace Green, who is married to the Aaron Green, who is pretty much the head of Greenleaf. Candace is given the second narrative perspective and she’s perhaps the most powerful character in the entire novel: she seems to know everything that’s going on behind the scenes and attempts to defray any complications regarding the church before they become major issues. Finally, there’s Ginger Green, who is the daughter-in-law to Candace and married to Timothy Green, the son of both Aaron and Candace. Timothy has gone off to create his own branch of Greenleaf and also becomes heavily involved with an overseas ministry, which creates its own form of marital instability as Ginger begins to find his absences to be troubling, especially when she finds out she is pregnant with a third child. Each pastor’s wife has their own character arc, and the plots are generally intertwined because Candace Green must ultimately know what is going on with all in the flock. Cullen’s work is fascinating and is not surprisingly the result of much anthropological and sociological-type fieldwork, so the novel comes off as a richly textured exploration of religion, marriage, and the culture of the mega-church. If there’s a hiccup in the structure or the execution of the novel, it’s the mixture of third and first person perspectives. My own penchant for the first person narrative voice had me gravitating toward any sections involving Ruthie, and early on, I occasionally found myself flagging in my attention to Candace or Ginger, but as the various plots become fleshed out, their interconnectedness makes the shifting narrative perspectives less of an issue. Just as a sidenote: I found it interesting how Cullen occasionally included what seemed to be a minor Asian American character in novel; these figures most often signified through a last name (though not always, especially in the case of Kristin Chaudry). Though Cullen seems to have wanted to break into the television industry, we’ll continue to hope she does not leave behind the traditional novel, especially with such an assured and unique debut.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pastors-wives-lisa-takeuchi-cullen/1113557299?ean=9780452298828
A Review of Radhika Sanghani’s Virgin (Berkley Trade, 2014)
Well! I’m not quite sure how to review this book. I’m definitely not the target audience for the narrative, which is told from the perspective of the young twenty-something Greek British character named Ellie Kostakis and who we learn at the beginning of the novel is the titular virgin. The novel opens with Ellie at the doctor’s office, horrified that the doctor she’s seeing has inputted the fact that she is a virgin into her computerized medical chart. After Ellie’s admission of her sexual status, a conversation concerning the need for tests regarding sexual transmitted infections ensues, which only exacerbates her sense of shame. Sanghani’s Virgin is a college sex comedy that seems to draw from a chicklit lineage that has gone a little bit raunchy. Flashbacks and memories reveal that Ellie has only made it as far as hot make-out sessions, while her numerous hijinks include an accidental cutting of her clitoris occurring when she attempts to trim her pubic hair (yes, you read that right). At some point, the misadventures regarding Ellie’s vagina encourages her and her friend Emma to start a vlog, which is a blog devoted to issues arising out of sex and their genitals. Sanghani goes all in for this book, which is courageous given the risk she takes on certain sequences. One of the most successful is the laugh out loud moment when Ellie and her new gay bestie Paul, a fellow Greek British character and the brother of her Greek British rival, watch a video purporting to educate the audience on how to give the perfect blow job (yes, you read that right). The step-by-step instructions are of course created in a hyperbolic way, and in this sense, Sanghani absolutely gets the tonality situated with respect to the ways that these video manuals can come off as ridiculous and outright inaccurate. Ellie is drawn as a relatively superficial character and part of the problem is that Sanghani doesn’t give enough time to narrate her other pursuits, including her academic interests in literature (she’s apparently writing her dissertation and even manages to get magna cum laude). Ellie’s so driven by losing her v-card that it seems unbelievable she has any time to read, to write, or to think deeply about cultural criticism when she spends most of her time wondering about when she’s going to be receiving a text from Jack Brown, the twentysomething with whom she believes she will lose her virginity. The concluding sequences almost redeem the novel for me (at least on the level of the time spend reading it), as Sanghani provides us with an arc that is both funny and evades the typical courtship plot, but at the end of the day: Virgin is suited best for those looking for a relatively apolitical romp in the land of sexual absurdity. For those already salivating at the prospect of starting this novel, take heart: Sanghani has a sequel set to come out later this year!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/virgin-radhika-sanghani/1119619519?ean=9780425276310
A Review of Karen Bao’s Dove Arising (Penguin Young Readers, 2015).
Karen Bao’s debut novel is Dove Arising, which is intended as part of a trilogy called the Dove Chronicles. Our young adult paranormal romance heroine is none other than Phaet Theta, a young girl of 15 who is growing up on a lunar colony. Things immediately go from bad to worse once her mother is arrested and put into prison. Without the funds to bail her out, Phaet, and her two younger siblings, Anka and Cygnus, realize that they might have to move to a ghetto-ized area. Phaet believes her only option is to join the militia, the moon’s elite military division, even though it means that she might get maimed, injured, or even killed. By joining the militia, Phaet might earn the money to keep them where they are living. At 15, if Phaet was able to survive her training, she’d be one of the youngest ever to get through the program. What ensues is a rather long and, in my opinion, plodding training sequence in which Phaet is put through various tests and evaluated in many ways. She soon makes a tentative ally in a talented recruit named Wes, but their pairing invites its own unwanted attention and the rival militia-in-training characters soon target Phaet, as she somehow manages to make it through one test after another. Phaet eventually succeeds in this program and, if you can believe, manages to score in the first place, which provides her with the rare opportunity of becoming one of the youngest captains ever. Ranking aside, Phaet has bigger worries once it becomes evident that her mother, though now freed due to the money (a currency ingeniously called Sputniks) that Phaet managed to raise as part of her new salary, is being tried in a court of law due to claims that she has engaged in subversive journalism. As we discover, the real meat of the novel appears here and—much too late I might add—as readers realize that there is a rebel organization afoot that is looking to bring light to the oligarchy’s problematic ruling policies. Though Bao has an intriguing premise in this novel, it takes much too long to take off and the impact of later stage reveals are continually undercut by the lengthy exposition. By the time the novel generates enough tension for the readers to understand what is actually at stake, it’s over and you can’t help but feel a little bit cheated. One of the most intriguing elements that Bao does provide is elliptical references to race and ethnicity. Phaet is targeted occasionally due to her Chinese ethnic background, which must basically be forgotten in order to assimilate fully into lunar culture. Phaet’s mother eschews this hard line in her journalism reporting, and we begin to see that the lunar colony’s attempt at homogenizing their citizens is really a rendition of a postracial future that no one would ever want. New social inequalities merely replace the old ones, and what we have is not really quite different than what came before, at least with respect to the fact that the powerful will exploit the weak and corruption is the true currency of the day. With the set-up out of the way, let’s hope that Bao’s next installments rise to the level of the dynamic premise and promising world building offered in Dove Arising.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dove-arising-karen-bao/1118663145?ean=9780451469014
A Review of Lydia Kang’s Catalyst (Kathy Dawson Books, 2015).
So, Catalyst is Lydia Kang’s sequel to Control. In Catalyst, which seems end the series and thus marking this novel and its predecessor as a duology, is narrated again from the first person perspective of Zelia Benton, a teenager who discovers that she carries the genetic trait of extended life (longevity). Spoiler Warning appears here as always.
The novel’s opening sees her at the Carus House, where she is still reeling from the events that unfolded in Control: the ending saw her teenage beloved, Cy, sacrificing himself by becoming a prisoner of the mutant factory called Aureus. This novel kicks into high gear when one of the henchmen from Aureus arrives on the doorstep of Carus, having been injured and proclaiming that she is there with the blessing of Cy. Though Zelia and her allies (other “traited” mutants and associated individuals such as Marka, the den mother of the group; Hex; Vera; Ana; and Dyl, who is Zelia’s sister) are at first suspicious, it is clear that this mutant, Caligula, needs their help. Further still, they realize that they are all in danger and must leave Carus house altogether. When a raid arrives on their doorstep before they are prepared to leave, the group must splinter off and agree to meet in a location in Chicago in twelve days. Caligula and Zelia are paired together, but get sidetracked when Zelia is able to locate Cy, who has been in hiding with another mutant from Aureus named Blink. The four attempt to make it to Chicago, but a last minute complication forces them to take shelter in another state, a place called Inky, in which they effectively become prisoners at a resort designed for mutants called Avida. Avida is run by a maniacal leader named Julian, a man who wants to exploit their traits for political and capital gain. Zelia, Cy, Blink, and Caligula are reunited with another mutant (Micah) from the first novel who had betrayed them. They realize they must all work together if they are to find a way out of Avida. Thus, the novel’s major middle arc is devoted to the escape plan. When they are finally able to make their hasty exit, they arrive in Chicago only to discover that their trials are not yet over. Though Zelia discovers her mother may actually be alive, there may be a traitor still among them who is acting as an informant and who ultimately wants all mutants destroyed. Kang’s second novel is certainly action-packed, and I’m sure I mentioned in my review of Control that fans of the X-Men series are sure to find much to love about this duology, which follows a similar mythology and is based in a similar storyworld. The conclusion manages to tie up most loose ends, which makes it likely that Catalyst is the final installment in the series. Of course, the political texture of Kang’s novel is what makes it rise above many others in a similar genre: the harvesting of DNA for profit is no doubt an issue that will be increasingly relevant as biotechnology continues to make large advances. The fate of Zelia and her mutant friends make us realize how humans continue to be not only a site of exploitation due to labor demands, but that their very bodies also become targeted for other commodities as well, calling attention to black market organ harvesting and the debates over stem cell usage. The trick with novels like this one is to keep our critical reading lenses attuned to the allegorical and refractive quality of such works, while still finding a measure of entertainment in the action-packed, ethically complex storyline that Kang has constructed for us.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/catalyst-lydia-kang/1119671453?ean=9780803740938
AALF uses “maximal ideological inclusiveness” to define Asian American literature. Thus, we review any writers working in the English language of Asian descent. We also review titles related to Asian American contexts without regard to authorial descent. We also consider titles in translation pending their relationship to America, broadly defined. Our point is precisely to cast the widest net possible.
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
In this post, reviews of Saroo Brierley’s A Long Way Home (Penguin, 2014); Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom (Penguin Books, 2014); Rinsai Rossetti’s The Girl With Borrowed Wings (Dial Press, 2012); Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s Pastors’ Wives (Plume, 2013); Radhika Sanghani’s Virgin (Berkley Trade, 2014); Karen Bao’s Dove Arising (Penguin Young Readers, 2015); Lydia Kang’s Catalyst (Kathy Dawson Books, 2015).
Though Penguin Random house recently engaged in a merger, the new company has retained an academic division for Penguin titles and the CFIS program. Whew!
Since many readers of AALF are also qualified instructors who regularly teach Asian American literary titles, I sometimes create a Penguin-only book review to cast attention on their titles and to remind people about CFIS.
http://www.penguin.com/services-academic/cfis/
One of the big perks of CFIS is that you can get five free examination copies each year. At the same time, the program allows qualified instructors a chance to diversify their curricula. Through this program, I have gotten new titles by Chang-rae Lee, Jessica Hagedorn, and other writers who have been directly incorporated into my classes.
Without further ado:
A Review of Saroo Brierley’s A Long Way Home (Penguin, 2014); Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom (Penguin Books, 2014);
I first got wind of this memoir once it became headline news because it was being adapted into a movie. So, I naturally wanted to read the book that was apparently attracting Nicole Kidman to play one of the lead roles. Saroo Brierley’s A Long Way Home is part of the growing archive of transracial/ transnational adoption memoirs; his story is pretty unique in some ways because of the way he ends up getting placed into an adoption agency. Accompanying his 14 year old brother by train to a neighboring town, Saroo gets trapped inside one of the box cars, not realizing that he is basically being transported across the entire nation of India, moving from the Western side all the way to Calcutta (Kolkata). Once in the mega-city, he stays relatively close to the railway station, living off scraps of food, while trying to find the right train to take him back home. Eventually, he begins to see the vast majority of the trains he gets on return back to the railway station in a loop, and he’s forced to consider the possibility that he is stuck there. Eventually, some run-ins with some unsavory types push Saroo to leave the area, and he bumps into some strangers who route him into a local police lock-up, which then leads him into an orphanage system. He is fortunately paired up with a woman, Ms. Sood, who takes good care of him and who is able to fast track him into adoption with an Australian couple. Once in Australia, Saroo can’t believe his new found “glamorous” life. Sure, there are some bumps in the road—such as the period in which Saroo gets a brother, Mantosh, who is also Indian and also adopted and whose acclimation to Australian is far less seamless—but overall, Saroo notes that his new home beats the abject poverty and constant fear that he had experienced as a child in India. Saroo’s Australian parents are sensitive enough to give him a wide berth when it comes to his homeland and provide him with the support he needs when he decides to try to figure out where his home actually is based upon memories and the frequent refrain he gave as a child that he is from a place called “Ginestlay.” It is not surprising in some sense that Brierley’s story has been chosen for Hollywood-ization, as it provides the kind of uplift narrative and concluding arc that will be sure to produce some tears in the audience. Brierley’s prose is straightforward and spare; you’ll read the memoir quite quickly, but perhaps the more intriguing question for me as a reader are the marginal social contexts that are alluded to, but not fully engaged. Indeed, Brierley does decide to give back to the orphanage that was instrumental in his having been adopted at all, but the process of international adoption and child trafficking in India remains a topic that has, on some level, not been as visible in cultural studies as of late (in contrast to adoption studies in China and Korea). There’s something about Brierley’s adoptive parents, their unassuming style of childrearing that doesn’t presuppose the “savoir” status, that makes this particular story different from some of the other adoption narratives I’ve read and perhaps keys us into the importance of the unmapped futures that the adoptive parent must maintain in order for any possible alternative kinship to form.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.penguin.com/book/a-long-way-home-by-saroo-brierley/9780425276198
A Review of Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom (Penguin Books, 2014).
Originally published in 2012 under the David Davidar-led Aleph Publishing Company in India, Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom finds itself stateside, as it has been brought out by Penguin Books. The novel is an anachronically plotted novel concerning an unnamed narrator and his exploration of his parents’ lives: their courtship, their marriage, and their later struggles over the mental illness of the wife. The novel is set in India, though the setting is so subtly interwoven into many of the chapters that we can sometimes forget where we are. Indeed, Pinto’s work finds a kind of cosmopolitan applicability that speaks perhaps to the growing modernization and global character of India’s biggest cities (like Goa and New Delhi for example). The title refers to the nicknames of the narrator’s parents: Augustine, or the Big Hoom, and Em, or Imelda, who find their fledgling romance growing amid an office work environment in India. They bond over their mutual love of bookstores (and books) and movies, but underlying their feelings for each other is the sleeping monster that becomes Em’s mental illness. Later diagnosed as a manic-depressive, Em comes to be figured as an unstable and disruptive force in the lives of her children, especially when suicide becomes an ever-present concern. The unnamed narrator plows through the letters written by Em that detail her life and in so doing comes to understand the challenges she has had and provides a deeper context to her mental illness. The larger point is of course the need to develop the proper form of empathy for Em, who initially comes off to the children as a chaotic and irrational individual. From the lens of her letters, the children can begin to see her from a different light. The naturalistic arc of the novel ends with a disruptive and therefore surprising closing chapter which works to showcase Pinto’s nuance: these characters reveal how mental illness functions to affect an entire family and the arc of their lives beyond that shadow of psychological instability is unscripted. Nevertheless, at the core of this family remains the support they have given to each other even when it has seemed to be a burden. Pinto’s use of dialogue and anachrony can serve to undercut his dynamic depictions, marking this novel as highly uneven, yet nevertheless compelling. An understated and poignant work, reminiscent of some of other recent publications, especially Danielle Lim’s The Sound of Sch (Ethos Books) and Akhil Sharma’s Family Life (W.W. Norton).
For more on the book go here:
http://www.penguin.com/read/book-clubs/em-and-the-big-hoom/9780143124764
A Review of Rinsai Rossetti’s The Girl With Borrowed Wings (Dial Press, 2012)
This book has set on my shelf for awhile, and I think I was simply “saving” it for a night when I was craving another young adult fiction. I’ve tended to lay waste to my young adult fiction reading by devouring anything I get immediately, but occasionally I like to browse my bookshelves to see what’s left unread. These days, my choices are getting limited; many seem to be Asian Anglophone fictions that don’t tend to be as pressing to get to simply because they are further outside my scholarly wheelhouse (still need to read some Meira Chand, for instance). But I digress: Rinsai Rossetti’s The Girl with Borrowed Wings was purchased in manuscript form when the author was just 19 and only came out when she had completed about two years of university schooling. This background seems quite common in the YA world, where publishing houses seem to be open and to even embrace the youthful backgrounds of the writers themselves (see Nancy Yi Fan and Kat Zhang for some other examples). There are obvious advantages to the youthful age of the author, especially in the realm of marketing and the fit of the audience. Readers can quickly identify not only with the heroine of the novel, but the writer as well: the writer, reader, and protagonist all might be seen as rough mirrors for each other. In the case of this novel, our narrator and heroine is Frenenqer, who apparently resides in some Middle Eastern nation that remains unnamed and is simply called an oasis. The use of an unnamed location that still likely has a real world analogue is a writerly choice I’ve seen too many times at this point and am beginning to wonder about writing a paper on the topic. Rossetti (who is of Thai and Italian descent) engages this fictive location as a kind of metaphor for the expat who is at once everywhere and nowhere. Frenenqer is the “nowhere” side of the equation, as her father imposes a strict regime over her life that does not allow her to do much except follow his austere rules of etiquette. This mode of living leads Frenenqer into a kind of emotional isolation, which begins to be undone one day when a magical being (who Frenenqer nicknames Sangris) begins to take her out at night. He is apparently a “Free” person, a being who can go anywhere and everywhere, but belongs to no one and has no family. At the end of the day, the “Free” person is not so different than Frenenqer, as both individuals finally feel alone, withdrawn, away from everything. The two, in other words, make the perfect couple. So begins the possible courtship plot, but of course, Rossetti is not going to let that happen so easily. Frenenqer’s isolation under her father also causes her to close off any feelings she might be developing for Sangris, even as he falls desperately and madly in love with her. There was a point where I found Sangris to be a questionable love choice, but I suppose those details are for the readers to determine on her own. After all, he’s violent, seems unaware of boundaries, and in some cases, some of his advances might tend toward an unwelcome sexual aggression, but Rossetti sees these two as two sides of the same coin, and so, readers will have to wade through about a hundred pages to see how it will all turn out. A late stage character development regarding Frenenqer’s best school friend Anju is a very welcome addition; her rise in the importance of plot practically saves the conclusion from being too straightforward. Indeed, Anju’s friendship with Frenenqer grounds the novel in one of its most interesting elements: that of expat teenage children who subsist in American language schools, while they attempt to grapple with the international lives they are forced to lead. The fictional conceit of the imagined place—the oasis—gives his novel an air of the Oriental tale. The limit of this approach, though, is that we sometimes want more specificity to the cultural registers of the life there, something that the novel almost demands once Frenenqer makes her break from her father and comes to realize that she’s not nowhere, she’s somewhere and that she actually has feelings.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/girl-with-borrowed-wings-rinsai-rossetti/1103286755?ean=9780803735668
A Review of Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s Pastors’ Wives (Plume, 2013)
I think every novel should come with an author’s note like the one presented in Lisa Takeuchi Cullen’s Pastors’ Wives (Plume 2013), which explains the sometimes long road to a book’s publication. Cullen comes from a journalistic background and previously produced a book on the culture around funerals and dying (Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death). This novel comes out as a result of a complicated process concerning the desire to write a television series. That series, Ordained, was never given a full pick-up, though it did film a pilot episode that included some big time actors, including Sam Neill (of The Jurassic Park fame). Cullen’s Pastors’ Wives reminds me a little bit of the short-lived television show GCB. Though more dramatic than GCB, which was more of a religious dramedy, Pastors’ Wives focuses on three characters who are of course all married to pastors. There is Ruthie Matters—given the only first person perspective—who is married to Jerry, who has recently changed his life and decided that he must heed his calling to become a pastor. He gets hired as an associate pastor at Greenleaf, a megachurch located in the South. They must make a huge move that promises to create marital instability, especially as Ruthie is what we might call a reluctant Christian. She essentially leaves behind her own career in journalism and public relations to follow him. Then, there’s Candace Green, who is married to the Aaron Green, who is pretty much the head of Greenleaf. Candace is given the second narrative perspective and she’s perhaps the most powerful character in the entire novel: she seems to know everything that’s going on behind the scenes and attempts to defray any complications regarding the church before they become major issues. Finally, there’s Ginger Green, who is the daughter-in-law to Candace and married to Timothy Green, the son of both Aaron and Candace. Timothy has gone off to create his own branch of Greenleaf and also becomes heavily involved with an overseas ministry, which creates its own form of marital instability as Ginger begins to find his absences to be troubling, especially when she finds out she is pregnant with a third child. Each pastor’s wife has their own character arc, and the plots are generally intertwined because Candace Green must ultimately know what is going on with all in the flock. Cullen’s work is fascinating and is not surprisingly the result of much anthropological and sociological-type fieldwork, so the novel comes off as a richly textured exploration of religion, marriage, and the culture of the mega-church. If there’s a hiccup in the structure or the execution of the novel, it’s the mixture of third and first person perspectives. My own penchant for the first person narrative voice had me gravitating toward any sections involving Ruthie, and early on, I occasionally found myself flagging in my attention to Candace or Ginger, but as the various plots become fleshed out, their interconnectedness makes the shifting narrative perspectives less of an issue. Just as a sidenote: I found it interesting how Cullen occasionally included what seemed to be a minor Asian American character in novel; these figures most often signified through a last name (though not always, especially in the case of Kristin Chaudry). Though Cullen seems to have wanted to break into the television industry, we’ll continue to hope she does not leave behind the traditional novel, especially with such an assured and unique debut.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pastors-wives-lisa-takeuchi-cullen/1113557299?ean=9780452298828
A Review of Radhika Sanghani’s Virgin (Berkley Trade, 2014)
Well! I’m not quite sure how to review this book. I’m definitely not the target audience for the narrative, which is told from the perspective of the young twenty-something Greek British character named Ellie Kostakis and who we learn at the beginning of the novel is the titular virgin. The novel opens with Ellie at the doctor’s office, horrified that the doctor she’s seeing has inputted the fact that she is a virgin into her computerized medical chart. After Ellie’s admission of her sexual status, a conversation concerning the need for tests regarding sexual transmitted infections ensues, which only exacerbates her sense of shame. Sanghani’s Virgin is a college sex comedy that seems to draw from a chicklit lineage that has gone a little bit raunchy. Flashbacks and memories reveal that Ellie has only made it as far as hot make-out sessions, while her numerous hijinks include an accidental cutting of her clitoris occurring when she attempts to trim her pubic hair (yes, you read that right). At some point, the misadventures regarding Ellie’s vagina encourages her and her friend Emma to start a vlog, which is a blog devoted to issues arising out of sex and their genitals. Sanghani goes all in for this book, which is courageous given the risk she takes on certain sequences. One of the most successful is the laugh out loud moment when Ellie and her new gay bestie Paul, a fellow Greek British character and the brother of her Greek British rival, watch a video purporting to educate the audience on how to give the perfect blow job (yes, you read that right). The step-by-step instructions are of course created in a hyperbolic way, and in this sense, Sanghani absolutely gets the tonality situated with respect to the ways that these video manuals can come off as ridiculous and outright inaccurate. Ellie is drawn as a relatively superficial character and part of the problem is that Sanghani doesn’t give enough time to narrate her other pursuits, including her academic interests in literature (she’s apparently writing her dissertation and even manages to get magna cum laude). Ellie’s so driven by losing her v-card that it seems unbelievable she has any time to read, to write, or to think deeply about cultural criticism when she spends most of her time wondering about when she’s going to be receiving a text from Jack Brown, the twentysomething with whom she believes she will lose her virginity. The concluding sequences almost redeem the novel for me (at least on the level of the time spend reading it), as Sanghani provides us with an arc that is both funny and evades the typical courtship plot, but at the end of the day: Virgin is suited best for those looking for a relatively apolitical romp in the land of sexual absurdity. For those already salivating at the prospect of starting this novel, take heart: Sanghani has a sequel set to come out later this year!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/virgin-radhika-sanghani/1119619519?ean=9780425276310
A Review of Karen Bao’s Dove Arising (Penguin Young Readers, 2015).
Karen Bao’s debut novel is Dove Arising, which is intended as part of a trilogy called the Dove Chronicles. Our young adult paranormal romance heroine is none other than Phaet Theta, a young girl of 15 who is growing up on a lunar colony. Things immediately go from bad to worse once her mother is arrested and put into prison. Without the funds to bail her out, Phaet, and her two younger siblings, Anka and Cygnus, realize that they might have to move to a ghetto-ized area. Phaet believes her only option is to join the militia, the moon’s elite military division, even though it means that she might get maimed, injured, or even killed. By joining the militia, Phaet might earn the money to keep them where they are living. At 15, if Phaet was able to survive her training, she’d be one of the youngest ever to get through the program. What ensues is a rather long and, in my opinion, plodding training sequence in which Phaet is put through various tests and evaluated in many ways. She soon makes a tentative ally in a talented recruit named Wes, but their pairing invites its own unwanted attention and the rival militia-in-training characters soon target Phaet, as she somehow manages to make it through one test after another. Phaet eventually succeeds in this program and, if you can believe, manages to score in the first place, which provides her with the rare opportunity of becoming one of the youngest captains ever. Ranking aside, Phaet has bigger worries once it becomes evident that her mother, though now freed due to the money (a currency ingeniously called Sputniks) that Phaet managed to raise as part of her new salary, is being tried in a court of law due to claims that she has engaged in subversive journalism. As we discover, the real meat of the novel appears here and—much too late I might add—as readers realize that there is a rebel organization afoot that is looking to bring light to the oligarchy’s problematic ruling policies. Though Bao has an intriguing premise in this novel, it takes much too long to take off and the impact of later stage reveals are continually undercut by the lengthy exposition. By the time the novel generates enough tension for the readers to understand what is actually at stake, it’s over and you can’t help but feel a little bit cheated. One of the most intriguing elements that Bao does provide is elliptical references to race and ethnicity. Phaet is targeted occasionally due to her Chinese ethnic background, which must basically be forgotten in order to assimilate fully into lunar culture. Phaet’s mother eschews this hard line in her journalism reporting, and we begin to see that the lunar colony’s attempt at homogenizing their citizens is really a rendition of a postracial future that no one would ever want. New social inequalities merely replace the old ones, and what we have is not really quite different than what came before, at least with respect to the fact that the powerful will exploit the weak and corruption is the true currency of the day. With the set-up out of the way, let’s hope that Bao’s next installments rise to the level of the dynamic premise and promising world building offered in Dove Arising.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dove-arising-karen-bao/1118663145?ean=9780451469014
A Review of Lydia Kang’s Catalyst (Kathy Dawson Books, 2015).
So, Catalyst is Lydia Kang’s sequel to Control. In Catalyst, which seems end the series and thus marking this novel and its predecessor as a duology, is narrated again from the first person perspective of Zelia Benton, a teenager who discovers that she carries the genetic trait of extended life (longevity). Spoiler Warning appears here as always.
The novel’s opening sees her at the Carus House, where she is still reeling from the events that unfolded in Control: the ending saw her teenage beloved, Cy, sacrificing himself by becoming a prisoner of the mutant factory called Aureus. This novel kicks into high gear when one of the henchmen from Aureus arrives on the doorstep of Carus, having been injured and proclaiming that she is there with the blessing of Cy. Though Zelia and her allies (other “traited” mutants and associated individuals such as Marka, the den mother of the group; Hex; Vera; Ana; and Dyl, who is Zelia’s sister) are at first suspicious, it is clear that this mutant, Caligula, needs their help. Further still, they realize that they are all in danger and must leave Carus house altogether. When a raid arrives on their doorstep before they are prepared to leave, the group must splinter off and agree to meet in a location in Chicago in twelve days. Caligula and Zelia are paired together, but get sidetracked when Zelia is able to locate Cy, who has been in hiding with another mutant from Aureus named Blink. The four attempt to make it to Chicago, but a last minute complication forces them to take shelter in another state, a place called Inky, in which they effectively become prisoners at a resort designed for mutants called Avida. Avida is run by a maniacal leader named Julian, a man who wants to exploit their traits for political and capital gain. Zelia, Cy, Blink, and Caligula are reunited with another mutant (Micah) from the first novel who had betrayed them. They realize they must all work together if they are to find a way out of Avida. Thus, the novel’s major middle arc is devoted to the escape plan. When they are finally able to make their hasty exit, they arrive in Chicago only to discover that their trials are not yet over. Though Zelia discovers her mother may actually be alive, there may be a traitor still among them who is acting as an informant and who ultimately wants all mutants destroyed. Kang’s second novel is certainly action-packed, and I’m sure I mentioned in my review of Control that fans of the X-Men series are sure to find much to love about this duology, which follows a similar mythology and is based in a similar storyworld. The conclusion manages to tie up most loose ends, which makes it likely that Catalyst is the final installment in the series. Of course, the political texture of Kang’s novel is what makes it rise above many others in a similar genre: the harvesting of DNA for profit is no doubt an issue that will be increasingly relevant as biotechnology continues to make large advances. The fate of Zelia and her mutant friends make us realize how humans continue to be not only a site of exploitation due to labor demands, but that their very bodies also become targeted for other commodities as well, calling attention to black market organ harvesting and the debates over stem cell usage. The trick with novels like this one is to keep our critical reading lenses attuned to the allegorical and refractive quality of such works, while still finding a measure of entertainment in the action-packed, ethically complex storyline that Kang has constructed for us.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/catalyst-lydia-kang/1119671453?ean=9780803740938
May 15, 2015
Michael Golamco's Cowboy Versus Samurai
Michael Golamco's
Cowboy Versus Samurai
(Samuel French, 2011) is a modern retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac in the vein of early plays by Frank Chin and David Henry Hwang that circle around questions of racial desire and gender stereotypes of Asian Americans.
(Images from the author's website.)
The play is set in a small Wyoming town and features a small cast including Travis Park as a Korean American high school English teacher; his white friend Del, the part-time gym teacher; Chester, the other Asian American in town; and Veronica Lee, a Korean American woman who moves to town as a science teacher at the school. The characters are wonderfully drawn, and there is some funny dialogue throughout the play. Travis is a straight-laced man while Chester is a militant Asian activist who claims a panethnic Asian American identity (and specific, differing ethnicities whenever convenient). Del is a bumbling white guy who had exhibited a bit of anti-Asian racism when Travis first moved to town but now considers him his best friend. Veronica is perhaps the flattest character, serving as the catalyst for some changing dynamics among the three men in the play.
At the center of the play is of course a love triangle. Travis likes Veronica, but so does Del. Veronica befriends Travis but mentions that she has only dated white guys. As a result, Travis helps Del woo Veronica through letters that he writes for Del to sign and deliver to Veronica as his own.
I find myself wondering how white audiences might receive this play and its musings on racial desire. It definitely connects with discussions that Asian American artists often consider, and Asian American audiences might be familiar with these types of issues. The play definitely contests the idea or possibility of simply being color blind in love since there is the weight of historical injustice and of contemporaneous stereotypes that always color individuals' desires.
(Images from the author's website.)
The play is set in a small Wyoming town and features a small cast including Travis Park as a Korean American high school English teacher; his white friend Del, the part-time gym teacher; Chester, the other Asian American in town; and Veronica Lee, a Korean American woman who moves to town as a science teacher at the school. The characters are wonderfully drawn, and there is some funny dialogue throughout the play. Travis is a straight-laced man while Chester is a militant Asian activist who claims a panethnic Asian American identity (and specific, differing ethnicities whenever convenient). Del is a bumbling white guy who had exhibited a bit of anti-Asian racism when Travis first moved to town but now considers him his best friend. Veronica is perhaps the flattest character, serving as the catalyst for some changing dynamics among the three men in the play.
At the center of the play is of course a love triangle. Travis likes Veronica, but so does Del. Veronica befriends Travis but mentions that she has only dated white guys. As a result, Travis helps Del woo Veronica through letters that he writes for Del to sign and deliver to Veronica as his own.
I find myself wondering how white audiences might receive this play and its musings on racial desire. It definitely connects with discussions that Asian American artists often consider, and Asian American audiences might be familiar with these types of issues. The play definitely contests the idea or possibility of simply being color blind in love since there is the weight of historical injustice and of contemporaneous stereotypes that always color individuals' desires.
May 3, 2015
Elisha Lim's 100 Crushes
Elisha Lim's 100 Crushes (Koyama Press, 2014) is a collection of illustrated pieces previously published in periodicals and anthologies of queer writing.
I enjoyed reading this collection, but it also was kind of a slap in the face, reminding me how far adrift I am from the queer subcultures that I used to be much more connected to, either in community events or through my reading habits. Lim is a comic artist with an ethnographic bent, someone who chronicles the perspectives and lives of queer people with loving care. Lim is Chinese Canadian with some childhood time spent in Singapore as well, and their discussions often hinge on the changing expectations of sexual attractiveness across national and cultural borders.* As a butch lesbian, Lim nevertheless does not necessarily conform to expectations of white masculinity embodied by white North American butches; instead, they embrace greater gender fluidity and also Chinese, Korean, and other Asian masculinities, for example as represented by contemporary celebrities in Chinese movies and kpop. 100 Crushes includes selections from a illustrated pieces in series, beginning with 100 Butches, which consists of single-page illustrations and reminiscences of butches Lim has admired. These butches range from anonymous people they encountered out in the world to activists, artists, and other people in the queer subcultural world of Canada.
Another series is similarly set up--single-page illustrations with brief commentary of celebrity figures from the 1980s on whom Lim felt feeling of attraction. These portraits emphasized the deviancy of Lim's childhood desires, directed often at characters and individuals not meant to be seen as sexual object or at people for whom Lim's attraction exceeded the idea of lesbian desire.
Lim does an excellent job of capturing a sense of queer desires--ones that exceed both heteronormative and homonormative strictures. This tracing of crushes is an interesting approach for narrating identity, and it is something I'll keep thinking about for awhile. This book would be interesting to read alongside other queer texts of course and along with graphic novels/narratives.
* Lim uses the gender-neutral, plural pronoun they/their for self-reference. The editor in me balks at the mismatched noun and pronoun, but as Lim thoughtfully discusses in some of their illustrations, this embrace of a gender-neutral pronoun is an important part of many transpeople's identities.
I enjoyed reading this collection, but it also was kind of a slap in the face, reminding me how far adrift I am from the queer subcultures that I used to be much more connected to, either in community events or through my reading habits. Lim is a comic artist with an ethnographic bent, someone who chronicles the perspectives and lives of queer people with loving care. Lim is Chinese Canadian with some childhood time spent in Singapore as well, and their discussions often hinge on the changing expectations of sexual attractiveness across national and cultural borders.* As a butch lesbian, Lim nevertheless does not necessarily conform to expectations of white masculinity embodied by white North American butches; instead, they embrace greater gender fluidity and also Chinese, Korean, and other Asian masculinities, for example as represented by contemporary celebrities in Chinese movies and kpop. 100 Crushes includes selections from a illustrated pieces in series, beginning with 100 Butches, which consists of single-page illustrations and reminiscences of butches Lim has admired. These butches range from anonymous people they encountered out in the world to activists, artists, and other people in the queer subcultural world of Canada.
Another series is similarly set up--single-page illustrations with brief commentary of celebrity figures from the 1980s on whom Lim felt feeling of attraction. These portraits emphasized the deviancy of Lim's childhood desires, directed often at characters and individuals not meant to be seen as sexual object or at people for whom Lim's attraction exceeded the idea of lesbian desire.
Lim does an excellent job of capturing a sense of queer desires--ones that exceed both heteronormative and homonormative strictures. This tracing of crushes is an interesting approach for narrating identity, and it is something I'll keep thinking about for awhile. This book would be interesting to read alongside other queer texts of course and along with graphic novels/narratives.
* Lim uses the gender-neutral, plural pronoun they/their for self-reference. The editor in me balks at the mismatched noun and pronoun, but as Lim thoughtfully discusses in some of their illustrations, this embrace of a gender-neutral pronoun is an important part of many transpeople's identities.
April 19, 2015
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 19, 2015
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 19, 2015 (with a focus on romance, young adult, and children’s literatures).
AALF uses “maximal ideological inclusiveness” to define Asian American literature. Thus, we review any writers working in the English language of Asian descent. We also review titles related to Asian American contexts without regard to authorial descent. We also consider titles in translation pending their relationship to America, broadly defined. Our point is precisely to cast the widest net possible.
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
We are also looking for more reviewers and posters to join the collective to update regularly. Livejournal is an open access community, but a community only thrives so much as content is generally and consistently updated. As one of the primary sources of reviews here, though not “retiring” in any sense of the word, I’ve very much like to encourage others to get involved to post. Posts need not be related to reviews, but can be related to any issues (teaching, scholarship, community organization, creative writing, updates on events going on) connected to Asian American literature. I will continue to update the review copies list as well! Creating a livejournal account is free to any user. We continue to believe that a blogging apparatus such as LJ remains an egalitarian mode to allow users from a variety of backgrounds to contribute to AALF.
In this post, reviews of Neel Shah and Skye Chatham’s Bottom Up (Dey St., 2015); Kristen Simmons’s The Glass Arrow (TorTeen, 2015); Kristen Simmons’s Article 5 (TorTeen, 2012); Kristen Simmons’s Breaking Point (TorTeen, 2013); Kristen Simmons’s Three (TorTeen, 2013); Lori M. Lee’s The Infinite (Skyscape, 2015); Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Guardians (HarperTeen 2015); Erin Entrada Kelly’s Blackbird Fly (Greenwillow Books, 2015).
A Review of Neel Shah and Skye Chatham’s Bottom Up (Dey St., 2015).
So, there is an important authors’ note that begins the debut novel, Bottom Up, penned by romantic comedy team Neel Shah and Skye Chatham: “We wrote this novel because we were sick of the scenarios: Boy likes girl; girl goes on comically disastrous date with boy. Girl likes boy; boy thinks she hates him, but it turns out this is her way of expressing affection and now they’re married. Or girl likes boy; boy doesn’t like girl; boy sees a shooting star or a taco and comes to the realization that he has been in love with girl this whole time. We were fine with the novels and the movies and the songs about these stories when we were younger, when we didn’t realize how distant they were from our own romantic realities. But these dating trajectories all have one thing in common: They’re neat. Clean. Tidy. And therefore they bear little or no resemblance to our contemporary lives.” The ethos behind this effort is obvious in the plot: Elliot Rowe, a chef, meets Madeline Whittaker, who works for a publisher of cookbooks. Elliot has a bestie named David, Madeline has a bestie named Emily. Madeline and Elliot proceed to go on a couple of dates, some of which are better than others. They eventually find some chemistry, but Elliot gets cold feet: he’s not sure what Madeline means to him. Complicating matters is an impending wedding that Elliot is supposed to attend. His ex-girlfriend, who he still obviously harbors some feelings far, is also going, but without a date. Should Elliot bring Madeline, or should Elliot go on his own with the potential chance of course to rekindle something with his former flame? This question is the beginning of the end of this relationship and things go pretty much downhill from there. What Shah and Chatham’s novel has going for it is its fairly unique aesthetic conceit: the entire novel is written through e-mails, e-mails that have been forwarded, and text messages. These written materials are generally ephemera, so they are more impressionistic than realistic at any given point. Though Elliot and Madeline are questionable as a couple, they live in a world in which witty texts and e-mails are common parlance and knowledge of popular culture is a necessary evil to make any story or bad date that much more palatable or entertaining to retell. The novel has a little bit of The Break Up (starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn) and The Affair (starring Ruth Wilson and Dominic West) peppered into its influences. On the one hand, you’re essentially watching a promising relationship go down the drain. Two likeable leads who decide to part ways, but you also have many instances in which the same event is rendered in two completely different narratives. One person will say he is twenty minutes late, while another person will say that he is hours late. At the end of the day, the reader is often forced to choose who is the more accurate of the pair and perhaps the most sympathetic one of the duo. For this reader, I definitely sided with Madeline in those divergences. Even if Madeline was still likeable for me, the shortcomings of this kind of millennial text/ e-mail form is that it renders the dating experience above everything else. There is barely any semblance of any historical or social tapestry occurring beyond the world of bars, restaurants, and the late-night shag. These characters are clearly more complex than what the narrative conceit allows, and if there is one shortcoming then, it’s that Shah and Chatham might have experimented with other forms that might have added more textures to this romantic comedy world, one that would perhaps raise the stakes in other ways. Otherwise, this work can be read in one sitting, the perfect addition to a short vacation, a read by the pool, a brief escape from the often pedestrian tragedies of the everyday (like the car that won’t start and the leaky faucet that keeps you up at night). Finally, the novel will give ANYONE pause about considering whether or not their emails or texts are confidential. Not only to the readers receive the information perhaps meant only for one set of eyes in this novel, but other characters are also privy to such information as well. If you’re going on dates with someone new and telling someone about it over e-mail, you can be sure that the person you send it to may not be the only person reading it. Yikes. Bottom line for Bottom Up: I didn't absolutely adore it, but I can’t lie: I read this novel in one sitting, and I would say that the work is "unputdownable" as a reading experience about romantic relationships gone wrong.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062262134/read-bottom-up
A Review of Kristen Simmons’s The Glass Arrow (TorTeen, 2015); Article 5 (TorTeen, 2012); Breaking Point (TorTeen, 2013); Three (TorTeen, 2013).
Apologies in advance because I always end up spoiling parts of any YA fiction trilogy.
Kristen Simmons (hapa writer of part Japanese descent) was unknown to me until TorTeen publicists sent over a review copy of The Glass Arrow, which arrived on a rainy day with the book being damaged by rainwater. Though its arrival was inauspicious in this sense, it did provide the perfect antidote for some general malaise at a later point, when I was in bed, feeling a little bit bored and looking for something dynamic to read. Simmons is the author of a previous YA trilogy called Article 5 (which I will have to eventually peruse), so she’s well aware of the standard tropes and formulas. She doesn’t stray too far from the young adult paranormal romance: we have a spirited heroine Aya who lives in a particularly problematic world that seems to be based upon (or allegorizing) human trafficking and slavery. Women have been deemed a problem population and have been stamped out unless they are kept at a minimum basically to be baby-making machines. A fortunate few of these women live beyond the reach of cities and thus escape the chattel system, but Aya is captured by Trackers and sent to the city to be auctioned to the highest bidder. Aya does whatever she can to avoid being sold, even though it results in her solitary confinement at a place called the Garden, the detainment center for women before they are to be auctioned. In the Garden, she is overseen by grim, emotionless guards called Watchers and works with handlers called Pips. Aya strikes up a friendship with a strange individual associated with the Garden who hails from a people called Drivers. Drivers are mute, or at least they never speak, and Aya nicknames this Driver fellow Kiran. Kiran eventually becomes the route through which Aya can escape the city, even after she is auctioned off to the son of the mayor. The novel takes quite some time to move from Aya’s predicament as a human slave, eventually shifting to the woods where they must elude capture and find a way to Aya’s family. Aya and Kiran additionally end up bringing along Daphne, another woman who Aya had met in the Garden, but never liked. The early portions of the novel are not for the fainthearted; the first half is truly and relentlessly depressing. Aya, even given the extreme indoctrination of female subordination in the urban culture, never fails to uphold and to maintain her inner sense of justice. In this sense, readers will easily find a heroine in her, even if the fictional world that has been created seems to have so few ethically inclined people. The final narrative arc is certainly thrilling and action-packed, and you’ll be reading the last one hundred pages at a lightning speed. The conclusion doesn’t leave many threads open, so it’s unclear if The Glass Arrow is the start of an entirely new series or remain a standalone. Now it’s time for me to go back and read that Article 5 series! =)
So, about that Article 5 series: Kristen Smith’s debut is told from the perspective of Ember Miller, a teenager, who at the start of the novel is subsisting in an alternate version of the United States which is in dystopian ruins. The country is ruled by what is informally called the Moral Militia, otherwise known as the Federal Bureau of Reformation (FBR). This group is tracking down individuals assumed to be breaking the rules, or articles, which are essentially moral clauses. Trouble comes knocking on Ember’s door (literally) when her mother is arrested for violating Article 5—from whence the title springs and which refers to the fact that citizens cannot have children out of wedlock. Apparently, Ember’s mother had been in a series of bad relationships, which mark her in this negative fashion. Complicating matters is that the arrest was in part carried out by Ember’s former flame, Chase Jennings, who has become a soldier for the FBR. Ember protests so vehemently over her mother’s arrest that she too is detained, and she spends the rest of the novel either as a prisoner (in the first hundred or so pages) or on the run (away from the FBR and attempting to track down her mother). Ember escapes from the detainment facility, but only with the help of Chase, who miraculously appears at just the right moment. From this point forward, they must dodge the FBR who are on their tails and other malevolent entities residing in this messed up version of the United States, one filled with empty cities, red zones, and citizens willing to give each other up for the right amount of money. Along the way, Ember negotiates a careful truce with Chase. Of course, Simmons knows the rules of the genre here: she’s created a plucky heroine who with a sense of right and wrong (despite how challenging the circumstances), but whose movement through the plot is somehow intertwined with a central romance. A late stage surprise makes any headway between the two characters on the romantic level become questionable, but their love for each other is never really in doubt, and we know that Simmons has constructed a duo that can only succeed if their love remains bound to each other. Whereas Simmons’s The Glass Arrow is obviously referencing forms of human bondage and slavery, Article 5 seems to be much more interested in exploring forms of fascistic subject formation and the possibility of another holocaust. The gravity of the topic might strike some as being incommensurate for the genre of the young adult fiction paranormal romance, so you are definitely forewarned. The conclusion certainly sets up the following installments, as Ember and Chase must find their way amongst the resistance. Their position is not unlike many other YA counterparts in later installments of a series, as they might become the agents of revolution.
In the follow-up, Ember Miller and Chase Jennings have joined the resistance, which is apparently a ragtag group of rebels who are located at a place called the Waylaid Inn. Ember and Chase are begrudgingly accepted by the rebels, who include the grizzled veteran and leader, Wallace; a flirty and openly resentful young woman named Cara; Sean, the former FBR soldier that Ember had met while she was in detainment (Sean also happens to be the boyfriend of a girl named Becca that Ember had originally met in detainment); and Billy, a young 14 year old, with a chip on his shoulder to prove he’s useful despite his age. With the resistance, Ember and Chase go on a number of missions. At one point, Ember is used as a kind of pawn due to the fact that she’s been confused with a sniper who has been the target of the FBR and who has caused mass chaos in city areas. Ember’s presence in public, though certainly a risk since she has been named one of the most wanted fugitives on the run from the FBR, is also a stratagem used by the resistance to foment revolution. If they see her walking about the streets, there is a sense that the FBR doesn’t hold all the cards. Of course, at some point, the resistance begins to suffer some key setbacks, the highest of which occurs when they are forced to flee the Waylaid Inn, after it is torched and their hideout destroyed. Wallace presumably dies during that time, and by that point, the resistance has also accepted another former FBR soldier into their midst: Tucker Morris, one of the main villains from the debut. Chase and Ember almost leave the resistance, but when they realize that they have to go back to the Inn to help out those seeking to escape its destruction, they accept Tucker’s presence, while helping the resistance find a new home. Ember and Chase’s long term goals are to help Sean find Becca in a holding facility in Chicago. They are eventually able to make their way there, but not without losing Cara and being forced to work directly with Tucker just to survive. There’s a saying that the second installment in any trilogy is usually the darkest point and that’s certainly true for Simmons’s Breaking Point. Simmons only ever lets the reader get a short reprieve before pushing the weary band of survivors onward. Even toward the end, when there might be a chance for something more lasting for the maimed, injured, and just plain tired group of individuals who have managed to make it that far into the novel, Simmons throws another huge obstacle in their way. Of course, the conclusion to the second novel naturally flows into the set-up for the third. As it becomes evident that the resistance may not be as unified as everyone once thought, Chase and Ember must make difficult decisions about their place and responsibility to the movement, and how, of course, they will manage to make a life together in the shadow of the FBR. Certainly, a solid sequel, and one that stands out from many other YA titles already reviewed on this site based on the narrative’s bleak dystopian world, one in which the body count is high and “heroes” are never assured of a place in the next installment.
In the third, also confusingly or not so confusingly called Three, Chase and Ember move further into the resistance. While the safe house they were attempting to locate at the ending of book two ends up being a bust (and you’ll have to read the books to get at the pun there), Chase and Ember, as well as their ragtag group of survivors move onward and stumble onto the mythical, titular Three, the organization that is purportedly the leading the diffuse resistance against the FBR. Chase, Ember, along with Becca (rescued, though maimed, at the ending of book 2) and Sean, and Chase’s uncle Jesse, and the young Billy all have a short reprieve at the Sanctuary, which is Three’s super secret encampment. Individuals at this hideout are growing their own food; there are weapons available; and there is hope that the resistance can do something about the rampant social inequality. The ending of book two saw Tucker having to go off to find another safe house. Ember is naturally worried that those who had set off for that safe house have been captured or killed, but the leader of Three, a man by the name of Aiden DeWitt, convinces her that they need to put their attentions elsewhere. Indeed, Ember, along with Chase, decides that they have a larger plan that will ensure revolution, even as the numbers of the resistance might seem too few to enact any real change. All along the way, Simmons has been careful about creating this atmosphere of distrust. Ember and Chase cannot necessarily let their guard down, and they are naturally suspicious that those at the Sanctuary are not operating with full disclosure. Nevertheless, Simmons knows that Ember and Chase are our central heroes, so we never doubt where their hearts are, and perhaps that’s all that ultimately counts. Indeed, the question that comes toward the conclusion of this particular novel is whether or not the plot for overturning a brutal governmental regime is as important as making sure Ember and Chase manage to survive, so that they can explore their fledgling love. What Simmons’s work seems to diagnose is that the romance plot holds so much power not only because it is a fantasy (as much as the dystopian aspects of this particular work) but also because the romance is a localized phenomenon that ultimately assumes that the two involved are necessarily on the same team. This kind of alliance is especially pivotal in the kind of world Simmons has created because allies are few and subterfuge and espionage are the common vernacular. Ember and Chase’s relationship is perhaps the only stable footing that either of them have in a world in which allies can just as easily turn to enemies and vice versa. As with the Glass Arrow, this trilogy is pretty dark overall, and fans of YA should be ready for a series in which “being on the run” is the natural order of things. Simmons has a particularly funny acknowledgments page involving her admission that she completed the trilogy around the time she gave birth to a child, thus gesturing to the apocalyptic feelings of labor that befell her both literally and imaginatively.
For more on the books or to buy the book, go here:
http://us.macmillan.com/theglassarrow/kristensimmons
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/article-5-kristen-simmons/1104154962?ean=9780765329615
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/breaking-point-kristen-simmons/1111298334?ean=9780765329592
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/three-kristen-simmons/1115295526?ean=9780765329639
A Review of Lori M. Lee’s The Infinite (Skyscape, 2015).
The sequel to Lori M. Lee’s Gates of Thread and Stone is The Infinite, which follows Kai’s adventures, as she grows accustomed to her otherworldly status. For those of who you don’t mind being spoiled— and here is your spoiler warning —the last novel ended with readers discovering that Kai is part Infinite. In other words, her bloodline includes being part-God. Kai also discovers that her powers over time are in part due to her supernatural ancestry. Kai had grown up without knowledge of her genealogy. Indeed, her father, Kronos, a member of the Infinite, had given up her as a way to protect her from this other life, but Kai eventually must face the evil machinations of Ninu, another member of the Infinite who had been cruelly overseeing her home city of Ninurta. In The Infinite, Lee adds to the complex world building she began in the first novel by fleshing out the region’s geography. Although it would seem that Ninurta is separated from the rest of civilization by a barren wasteland known as The Void, the second novel sees a traveler come from another region only known from myth. This traveler from Lanathrill comes with bad news: fiendish creatures are overtaking their lands, and they seek help from neighboring Ninurta. Kai is sent as an emissary and to report back on her findings. Kai finds the traveler’s accounts to be more or less true, so she suggests that Ninurta send some reinforcements to battle the creatures. Of course, Lee has far more in store for the readers and Kai, and Kai will soon discover that she has been betrayed. This quest plot is rendered alongside the requisite romance plot. The ending of book one saw Kai’s primary love interest Avan become a member of the Infinite, while also losing his memories. Avan in part loses his hold on his humanity and much of this novel deals with whether or not Avan can retain a sense of empathy for humans. Lee adds another wrinkle into the romantic equation with Mason, a hollow (a kind of guardian-soldier) who is sent with Kai to Lanathrill to investigate the mysterious goings-on. Kai and Mason have long had a flirty connection to each other, which is more fully engaged once they are on their mission together. A sequence involving a fancy ball is course the perfect opportunity for Lee to engage her own version of the makeover montage, with Mason acting as the stand-in for the romantic lead. There is quite a bit of action to parse through in this novel and because Lee’s world is built from fantasy-inspired, but no less original systems of power and culture, I had to review the earlier novels to remind myself of terms like: sentinels, hollows, and grays. For fans of the paranormal romance and the young adult fiction, you won’t want to miss Lee’s latest.
Buy the Book here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-infinite-lori-m-lee/1120851105?ean=9781477828267
A Review of Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Guardians (HarperTeen 2015)
The Wasteland trilogy comes to an end with Guardians, which follows the bleak installments of the first two novels, as our protagonist, Esther, continues to forge a new life in a dystopian world. Esther’s world, for those that do not remember, is one in which the typical life span does not go above 19 years of age. Individuals couple early, while many die at a premature age due to a sickness thought to be caused by contaminated water sources. The first two novels see Esther and a band of her friends attempt to leave behind Prin to find a better life in a new town. Over the course of those novels, the body count rises, but Esther and a select few reach a place called Mundreel and settle in the District, a section of the city that is ruled by a controversial leader named Gideon. When the novel opens, Esther and the remaining survivors in her group—who include her partner, Aras; their child, Kai; Esther’s best friend, Skar, who also happens to be a mutant human called a variant who are apparently born but often discarded; Skar’s human partner Michal; the bookish Joseph—have taken to creating a garden and thus ensuring their utility in Gideon’s system of governance. Gideon is power hungry, though, and continues to look for ways to assert his dominance over Mundreel. Unbeknownst to Esther and influenced by her ideas, Gideon begins an economic system using a system of exchange: discarded pieces of glass can be traded in for items, such as food, clothing, and water. Gideon’s approach soon catches much interest in the remaining townsfolk including those not lucky enough to live in the district, but readers shouldn’t be surprised when the system soon creates more inequality. Indeed, Kim and Klavan are clearly analogizing the problems related to capitalism, when there is no system of regulation but the corrupted person at the top. Things can only go worse from here and they do. Eagle eyed readers will immediately notice that Joseph is reading Lord of the Flies at one point in this novel, and the power struggle between Gideon and Esther is no less a re-writing of this castaway narrative in which two youngsters battle each other for control in what is a essentially a “closed” system and exiled community. Kim and Klavan seem intent to explore different variations on leadership and governance. Esther attempts to find ways to provide food for all community members, and even sets up something akin to a hospital ward in her section of the District. Gideon, on the other hand, cares only about his power and how to generate more surplus for himself and those he deems most useful to this process. Given the genre of the paranormal young adult romance, you might expect good to triumph over evil, but Kim and Klavan’s taste for the “bleak” makes it so that any success is always a measured one. People die in this work, as they did in the past, and the depths of human depravity in this novel can truly be depressing to read, but the greater point seems to be Kim and Klavan’s referential intent: this fiction is relational to our own world, and what the characters decide to do and how they act is perhaps simply a refraction of the ways that actual humans can treat others. Thus, Esther’s ability to retain her moral compass in this chaotic and oppressive world is truly a feat of great inspiration (for actual readers), one necessary for the rapacious darkness that infects so many in Mundreel and perhaps also infects our own.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062118578/guardians
A Review of Erin Entrada Kelly’s Blackbird Fly (Greenwillow Books, 2015).
It is an ever-exciting time to be a children’s literature devotee, as there are more and more American writers of Asian descent working in this area. When I was growing up—and do I ever feel old making a statement like that—I still recall my favorite books: The Mixed of Files of Basil E. Frankweiler, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, Bunnicula, etc, but none of these books had much to do with Asian American characters or contexts. These days you can look to writers like Lisa Yee, Grace Lin, Cynthia Kadohata, Linda Sue Park, and others for some estimable entries in this area and that deal with what it means to be growing up as an Asian American. Erin Entrada Kelly’s Blackbird Fly adds to this corpus in its exploration of the youthful Filipina American protagonist Apple Yengko. Apple was born in the Philippines but she immigrates to the United States at an early age due to her mother’s decision to make a new life for her and her daughter in the wake of her husband’s death. A nursing shortage at that time allows her an opportunity to receive a treasured work visa via a family connection named Lita and the rest as they say is history. Apple’s real name is Analyn, but as with many Filipinos, she goes by a nickname. She’s made some tentative friends in her eighth grade class, but no one seems to understand her own predicament as a racial minority living in the South (Louisiana). Apple soon finds out through word of mouth that she’s been placed on the “Dog Log,” which is a list of the ten most unattractive female students in the class. Further still, racist comments made by some classmates regarding the fact that Asians purportedly eat dogs contributes further to her misery as a student associated with canines. Naturally, Apple’s response is to wish away her racial difference, which includes wishing away her mother’s Filipina-ness, but this mode of escape and self-effacement is only ever provisional. Enter Evan Temple. As a transplant from California, Evan is the right kind of stranger to Louisiana, one who is more keen to racial diversity due to his upbringing and who provides both a potential romantic foil for Apple as well as an individual more understanding of social difference. For those of you wondering about Kelly’s title: yes, it is a reference to the Beatles. In this regard, the other major element is Apple’s deep love for singing, songwriting, and the Beatles. She struggles to make the money needed to buy her own guitar, and this lack of funds leads to other rash decisions. Yet, the mystery behind her mother’s rather dour attitude toward Apple’s interest in the Beatles is perhaps something that moves this middle grade novel into a deeper register, as we come to see how the phantoms of the past can never be escaped. Kelly’s work is especially important given its regional texturization of Asian American literature; like Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again, the novel’s setting in the American South serves to remind us that we must always think beyond metropolitan centers in the East (New York City) and the West (Honolulu, Los Angeles, and San Francisco). A definite must read for children’s lit lovers!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062238610/blackbird-fly
AALF uses “maximal ideological inclusiveness” to define Asian American literature. Thus, we review any writers working in the English language of Asian descent. We also review titles related to Asian American contexts without regard to authorial descent. We also consider titles in translation pending their relationship to America, broadly defined. Our point is precisely to cast the widest net possible.
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
We are also looking for more reviewers and posters to join the collective to update regularly. Livejournal is an open access community, but a community only thrives so much as content is generally and consistently updated. As one of the primary sources of reviews here, though not “retiring” in any sense of the word, I’ve very much like to encourage others to get involved to post. Posts need not be related to reviews, but can be related to any issues (teaching, scholarship, community organization, creative writing, updates on events going on) connected to Asian American literature. I will continue to update the review copies list as well! Creating a livejournal account is free to any user. We continue to believe that a blogging apparatus such as LJ remains an egalitarian mode to allow users from a variety of backgrounds to contribute to AALF.
In this post, reviews of Neel Shah and Skye Chatham’s Bottom Up (Dey St., 2015); Kristen Simmons’s The Glass Arrow (TorTeen, 2015); Kristen Simmons’s Article 5 (TorTeen, 2012); Kristen Simmons’s Breaking Point (TorTeen, 2013); Kristen Simmons’s Three (TorTeen, 2013); Lori M. Lee’s The Infinite (Skyscape, 2015); Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Guardians (HarperTeen 2015); Erin Entrada Kelly’s Blackbird Fly (Greenwillow Books, 2015).
A Review of Neel Shah and Skye Chatham’s Bottom Up (Dey St., 2015).
So, there is an important authors’ note that begins the debut novel, Bottom Up, penned by romantic comedy team Neel Shah and Skye Chatham: “We wrote this novel because we were sick of the scenarios: Boy likes girl; girl goes on comically disastrous date with boy. Girl likes boy; boy thinks she hates him, but it turns out this is her way of expressing affection and now they’re married. Or girl likes boy; boy doesn’t like girl; boy sees a shooting star or a taco and comes to the realization that he has been in love with girl this whole time. We were fine with the novels and the movies and the songs about these stories when we were younger, when we didn’t realize how distant they were from our own romantic realities. But these dating trajectories all have one thing in common: They’re neat. Clean. Tidy. And therefore they bear little or no resemblance to our contemporary lives.” The ethos behind this effort is obvious in the plot: Elliot Rowe, a chef, meets Madeline Whittaker, who works for a publisher of cookbooks. Elliot has a bestie named David, Madeline has a bestie named Emily. Madeline and Elliot proceed to go on a couple of dates, some of which are better than others. They eventually find some chemistry, but Elliot gets cold feet: he’s not sure what Madeline means to him. Complicating matters is an impending wedding that Elliot is supposed to attend. His ex-girlfriend, who he still obviously harbors some feelings far, is also going, but without a date. Should Elliot bring Madeline, or should Elliot go on his own with the potential chance of course to rekindle something with his former flame? This question is the beginning of the end of this relationship and things go pretty much downhill from there. What Shah and Chatham’s novel has going for it is its fairly unique aesthetic conceit: the entire novel is written through e-mails, e-mails that have been forwarded, and text messages. These written materials are generally ephemera, so they are more impressionistic than realistic at any given point. Though Elliot and Madeline are questionable as a couple, they live in a world in which witty texts and e-mails are common parlance and knowledge of popular culture is a necessary evil to make any story or bad date that much more palatable or entertaining to retell. The novel has a little bit of The Break Up (starring Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn) and The Affair (starring Ruth Wilson and Dominic West) peppered into its influences. On the one hand, you’re essentially watching a promising relationship go down the drain. Two likeable leads who decide to part ways, but you also have many instances in which the same event is rendered in two completely different narratives. One person will say he is twenty minutes late, while another person will say that he is hours late. At the end of the day, the reader is often forced to choose who is the more accurate of the pair and perhaps the most sympathetic one of the duo. For this reader, I definitely sided with Madeline in those divergences. Even if Madeline was still likeable for me, the shortcomings of this kind of millennial text/ e-mail form is that it renders the dating experience above everything else. There is barely any semblance of any historical or social tapestry occurring beyond the world of bars, restaurants, and the late-night shag. These characters are clearly more complex than what the narrative conceit allows, and if there is one shortcoming then, it’s that Shah and Chatham might have experimented with other forms that might have added more textures to this romantic comedy world, one that would perhaps raise the stakes in other ways. Otherwise, this work can be read in one sitting, the perfect addition to a short vacation, a read by the pool, a brief escape from the often pedestrian tragedies of the everyday (like the car that won’t start and the leaky faucet that keeps you up at night). Finally, the novel will give ANYONE pause about considering whether or not their emails or texts are confidential. Not only to the readers receive the information perhaps meant only for one set of eyes in this novel, but other characters are also privy to such information as well. If you’re going on dates with someone new and telling someone about it over e-mail, you can be sure that the person you send it to may not be the only person reading it. Yikes. Bottom line for Bottom Up: I didn't absolutely adore it, but I can’t lie: I read this novel in one sitting, and I would say that the work is "unputdownable" as a reading experience about romantic relationships gone wrong.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062262134/read-bottom-up
A Review of Kristen Simmons’s The Glass Arrow (TorTeen, 2015); Article 5 (TorTeen, 2012); Breaking Point (TorTeen, 2013); Three (TorTeen, 2013).
Apologies in advance because I always end up spoiling parts of any YA fiction trilogy.
Kristen Simmons (hapa writer of part Japanese descent) was unknown to me until TorTeen publicists sent over a review copy of The Glass Arrow, which arrived on a rainy day with the book being damaged by rainwater. Though its arrival was inauspicious in this sense, it did provide the perfect antidote for some general malaise at a later point, when I was in bed, feeling a little bit bored and looking for something dynamic to read. Simmons is the author of a previous YA trilogy called Article 5 (which I will have to eventually peruse), so she’s well aware of the standard tropes and formulas. She doesn’t stray too far from the young adult paranormal romance: we have a spirited heroine Aya who lives in a particularly problematic world that seems to be based upon (or allegorizing) human trafficking and slavery. Women have been deemed a problem population and have been stamped out unless they are kept at a minimum basically to be baby-making machines. A fortunate few of these women live beyond the reach of cities and thus escape the chattel system, but Aya is captured by Trackers and sent to the city to be auctioned to the highest bidder. Aya does whatever she can to avoid being sold, even though it results in her solitary confinement at a place called the Garden, the detainment center for women before they are to be auctioned. In the Garden, she is overseen by grim, emotionless guards called Watchers and works with handlers called Pips. Aya strikes up a friendship with a strange individual associated with the Garden who hails from a people called Drivers. Drivers are mute, or at least they never speak, and Aya nicknames this Driver fellow Kiran. Kiran eventually becomes the route through which Aya can escape the city, even after she is auctioned off to the son of the mayor. The novel takes quite some time to move from Aya’s predicament as a human slave, eventually shifting to the woods where they must elude capture and find a way to Aya’s family. Aya and Kiran additionally end up bringing along Daphne, another woman who Aya had met in the Garden, but never liked. The early portions of the novel are not for the fainthearted; the first half is truly and relentlessly depressing. Aya, even given the extreme indoctrination of female subordination in the urban culture, never fails to uphold and to maintain her inner sense of justice. In this sense, readers will easily find a heroine in her, even if the fictional world that has been created seems to have so few ethically inclined people. The final narrative arc is certainly thrilling and action-packed, and you’ll be reading the last one hundred pages at a lightning speed. The conclusion doesn’t leave many threads open, so it’s unclear if The Glass Arrow is the start of an entirely new series or remain a standalone. Now it’s time for me to go back and read that Article 5 series! =)
So, about that Article 5 series: Kristen Smith’s debut is told from the perspective of Ember Miller, a teenager, who at the start of the novel is subsisting in an alternate version of the United States which is in dystopian ruins. The country is ruled by what is informally called the Moral Militia, otherwise known as the Federal Bureau of Reformation (FBR). This group is tracking down individuals assumed to be breaking the rules, or articles, which are essentially moral clauses. Trouble comes knocking on Ember’s door (literally) when her mother is arrested for violating Article 5—from whence the title springs and which refers to the fact that citizens cannot have children out of wedlock. Apparently, Ember’s mother had been in a series of bad relationships, which mark her in this negative fashion. Complicating matters is that the arrest was in part carried out by Ember’s former flame, Chase Jennings, who has become a soldier for the FBR. Ember protests so vehemently over her mother’s arrest that she too is detained, and she spends the rest of the novel either as a prisoner (in the first hundred or so pages) or on the run (away from the FBR and attempting to track down her mother). Ember escapes from the detainment facility, but only with the help of Chase, who miraculously appears at just the right moment. From this point forward, they must dodge the FBR who are on their tails and other malevolent entities residing in this messed up version of the United States, one filled with empty cities, red zones, and citizens willing to give each other up for the right amount of money. Along the way, Ember negotiates a careful truce with Chase. Of course, Simmons knows the rules of the genre here: she’s created a plucky heroine who with a sense of right and wrong (despite how challenging the circumstances), but whose movement through the plot is somehow intertwined with a central romance. A late stage surprise makes any headway between the two characters on the romantic level become questionable, but their love for each other is never really in doubt, and we know that Simmons has constructed a duo that can only succeed if their love remains bound to each other. Whereas Simmons’s The Glass Arrow is obviously referencing forms of human bondage and slavery, Article 5 seems to be much more interested in exploring forms of fascistic subject formation and the possibility of another holocaust. The gravity of the topic might strike some as being incommensurate for the genre of the young adult fiction paranormal romance, so you are definitely forewarned. The conclusion certainly sets up the following installments, as Ember and Chase must find their way amongst the resistance. Their position is not unlike many other YA counterparts in later installments of a series, as they might become the agents of revolution.
In the follow-up, Ember Miller and Chase Jennings have joined the resistance, which is apparently a ragtag group of rebels who are located at a place called the Waylaid Inn. Ember and Chase are begrudgingly accepted by the rebels, who include the grizzled veteran and leader, Wallace; a flirty and openly resentful young woman named Cara; Sean, the former FBR soldier that Ember had met while she was in detainment (Sean also happens to be the boyfriend of a girl named Becca that Ember had originally met in detainment); and Billy, a young 14 year old, with a chip on his shoulder to prove he’s useful despite his age. With the resistance, Ember and Chase go on a number of missions. At one point, Ember is used as a kind of pawn due to the fact that she’s been confused with a sniper who has been the target of the FBR and who has caused mass chaos in city areas. Ember’s presence in public, though certainly a risk since she has been named one of the most wanted fugitives on the run from the FBR, is also a stratagem used by the resistance to foment revolution. If they see her walking about the streets, there is a sense that the FBR doesn’t hold all the cards. Of course, at some point, the resistance begins to suffer some key setbacks, the highest of which occurs when they are forced to flee the Waylaid Inn, after it is torched and their hideout destroyed. Wallace presumably dies during that time, and by that point, the resistance has also accepted another former FBR soldier into their midst: Tucker Morris, one of the main villains from the debut. Chase and Ember almost leave the resistance, but when they realize that they have to go back to the Inn to help out those seeking to escape its destruction, they accept Tucker’s presence, while helping the resistance find a new home. Ember and Chase’s long term goals are to help Sean find Becca in a holding facility in Chicago. They are eventually able to make their way there, but not without losing Cara and being forced to work directly with Tucker just to survive. There’s a saying that the second installment in any trilogy is usually the darkest point and that’s certainly true for Simmons’s Breaking Point. Simmons only ever lets the reader get a short reprieve before pushing the weary band of survivors onward. Even toward the end, when there might be a chance for something more lasting for the maimed, injured, and just plain tired group of individuals who have managed to make it that far into the novel, Simmons throws another huge obstacle in their way. Of course, the conclusion to the second novel naturally flows into the set-up for the third. As it becomes evident that the resistance may not be as unified as everyone once thought, Chase and Ember must make difficult decisions about their place and responsibility to the movement, and how, of course, they will manage to make a life together in the shadow of the FBR. Certainly, a solid sequel, and one that stands out from many other YA titles already reviewed on this site based on the narrative’s bleak dystopian world, one in which the body count is high and “heroes” are never assured of a place in the next installment.
In the third, also confusingly or not so confusingly called Three, Chase and Ember move further into the resistance. While the safe house they were attempting to locate at the ending of book two ends up being a bust (and you’ll have to read the books to get at the pun there), Chase and Ember, as well as their ragtag group of survivors move onward and stumble onto the mythical, titular Three, the organization that is purportedly the leading the diffuse resistance against the FBR. Chase, Ember, along with Becca (rescued, though maimed, at the ending of book 2) and Sean, and Chase’s uncle Jesse, and the young Billy all have a short reprieve at the Sanctuary, which is Three’s super secret encampment. Individuals at this hideout are growing their own food; there are weapons available; and there is hope that the resistance can do something about the rampant social inequality. The ending of book two saw Tucker having to go off to find another safe house. Ember is naturally worried that those who had set off for that safe house have been captured or killed, but the leader of Three, a man by the name of Aiden DeWitt, convinces her that they need to put their attentions elsewhere. Indeed, Ember, along with Chase, decides that they have a larger plan that will ensure revolution, even as the numbers of the resistance might seem too few to enact any real change. All along the way, Simmons has been careful about creating this atmosphere of distrust. Ember and Chase cannot necessarily let their guard down, and they are naturally suspicious that those at the Sanctuary are not operating with full disclosure. Nevertheless, Simmons knows that Ember and Chase are our central heroes, so we never doubt where their hearts are, and perhaps that’s all that ultimately counts. Indeed, the question that comes toward the conclusion of this particular novel is whether or not the plot for overturning a brutal governmental regime is as important as making sure Ember and Chase manage to survive, so that they can explore their fledgling love. What Simmons’s work seems to diagnose is that the romance plot holds so much power not only because it is a fantasy (as much as the dystopian aspects of this particular work) but also because the romance is a localized phenomenon that ultimately assumes that the two involved are necessarily on the same team. This kind of alliance is especially pivotal in the kind of world Simmons has created because allies are few and subterfuge and espionage are the common vernacular. Ember and Chase’s relationship is perhaps the only stable footing that either of them have in a world in which allies can just as easily turn to enemies and vice versa. As with the Glass Arrow, this trilogy is pretty dark overall, and fans of YA should be ready for a series in which “being on the run” is the natural order of things. Simmons has a particularly funny acknowledgments page involving her admission that she completed the trilogy around the time she gave birth to a child, thus gesturing to the apocalyptic feelings of labor that befell her both literally and imaginatively.
For more on the books or to buy the book, go here:
http://us.macmillan.com/theglassarrow/kristensimmons
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/article-5-kristen-simmons/1104154962?ean=9780765329615
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/breaking-point-kristen-simmons/1111298334?ean=9780765329592
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/three-kristen-simmons/1115295526?ean=9780765329639
A Review of Lori M. Lee’s The Infinite (Skyscape, 2015).
The sequel to Lori M. Lee’s Gates of Thread and Stone is The Infinite, which follows Kai’s adventures, as she grows accustomed to her otherworldly status. For those of who you don’t mind being spoiled— and here is your spoiler warning —the last novel ended with readers discovering that Kai is part Infinite. In other words, her bloodline includes being part-God. Kai also discovers that her powers over time are in part due to her supernatural ancestry. Kai had grown up without knowledge of her genealogy. Indeed, her father, Kronos, a member of the Infinite, had given up her as a way to protect her from this other life, but Kai eventually must face the evil machinations of Ninu, another member of the Infinite who had been cruelly overseeing her home city of Ninurta. In The Infinite, Lee adds to the complex world building she began in the first novel by fleshing out the region’s geography. Although it would seem that Ninurta is separated from the rest of civilization by a barren wasteland known as The Void, the second novel sees a traveler come from another region only known from myth. This traveler from Lanathrill comes with bad news: fiendish creatures are overtaking their lands, and they seek help from neighboring Ninurta. Kai is sent as an emissary and to report back on her findings. Kai finds the traveler’s accounts to be more or less true, so she suggests that Ninurta send some reinforcements to battle the creatures. Of course, Lee has far more in store for the readers and Kai, and Kai will soon discover that she has been betrayed. This quest plot is rendered alongside the requisite romance plot. The ending of book one saw Kai’s primary love interest Avan become a member of the Infinite, while also losing his memories. Avan in part loses his hold on his humanity and much of this novel deals with whether or not Avan can retain a sense of empathy for humans. Lee adds another wrinkle into the romantic equation with Mason, a hollow (a kind of guardian-soldier) who is sent with Kai to Lanathrill to investigate the mysterious goings-on. Kai and Mason have long had a flirty connection to each other, which is more fully engaged once they are on their mission together. A sequence involving a fancy ball is course the perfect opportunity for Lee to engage her own version of the makeover montage, with Mason acting as the stand-in for the romantic lead. There is quite a bit of action to parse through in this novel and because Lee’s world is built from fantasy-inspired, but no less original systems of power and culture, I had to review the earlier novels to remind myself of terms like: sentinels, hollows, and grays. For fans of the paranormal romance and the young adult fiction, you won’t want to miss Lee’s latest.
Buy the Book here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-infinite-lori-m-lee/1120851105?ean=9781477828267
A Review of Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Guardians (HarperTeen 2015)
The Wasteland trilogy comes to an end with Guardians, which follows the bleak installments of the first two novels, as our protagonist, Esther, continues to forge a new life in a dystopian world. Esther’s world, for those that do not remember, is one in which the typical life span does not go above 19 years of age. Individuals couple early, while many die at a premature age due to a sickness thought to be caused by contaminated water sources. The first two novels see Esther and a band of her friends attempt to leave behind Prin to find a better life in a new town. Over the course of those novels, the body count rises, but Esther and a select few reach a place called Mundreel and settle in the District, a section of the city that is ruled by a controversial leader named Gideon. When the novel opens, Esther and the remaining survivors in her group—who include her partner, Aras; their child, Kai; Esther’s best friend, Skar, who also happens to be a mutant human called a variant who are apparently born but often discarded; Skar’s human partner Michal; the bookish Joseph—have taken to creating a garden and thus ensuring their utility in Gideon’s system of governance. Gideon is power hungry, though, and continues to look for ways to assert his dominance over Mundreel. Unbeknownst to Esther and influenced by her ideas, Gideon begins an economic system using a system of exchange: discarded pieces of glass can be traded in for items, such as food, clothing, and water. Gideon’s approach soon catches much interest in the remaining townsfolk including those not lucky enough to live in the district, but readers shouldn’t be surprised when the system soon creates more inequality. Indeed, Kim and Klavan are clearly analogizing the problems related to capitalism, when there is no system of regulation but the corrupted person at the top. Things can only go worse from here and they do. Eagle eyed readers will immediately notice that Joseph is reading Lord of the Flies at one point in this novel, and the power struggle between Gideon and Esther is no less a re-writing of this castaway narrative in which two youngsters battle each other for control in what is a essentially a “closed” system and exiled community. Kim and Klavan seem intent to explore different variations on leadership and governance. Esther attempts to find ways to provide food for all community members, and even sets up something akin to a hospital ward in her section of the District. Gideon, on the other hand, cares only about his power and how to generate more surplus for himself and those he deems most useful to this process. Given the genre of the paranormal young adult romance, you might expect good to triumph over evil, but Kim and Klavan’s taste for the “bleak” makes it so that any success is always a measured one. People die in this work, as they did in the past, and the depths of human depravity in this novel can truly be depressing to read, but the greater point seems to be Kim and Klavan’s referential intent: this fiction is relational to our own world, and what the characters decide to do and how they act is perhaps simply a refraction of the ways that actual humans can treat others. Thus, Esther’s ability to retain her moral compass in this chaotic and oppressive world is truly a feat of great inspiration (for actual readers), one necessary for the rapacious darkness that infects so many in Mundreel and perhaps also infects our own.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062118578/guardians
A Review of Erin Entrada Kelly’s Blackbird Fly (Greenwillow Books, 2015).
It is an ever-exciting time to be a children’s literature devotee, as there are more and more American writers of Asian descent working in this area. When I was growing up—and do I ever feel old making a statement like that—I still recall my favorite books: The Mixed of Files of Basil E. Frankweiler, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, Bunnicula, etc, but none of these books had much to do with Asian American characters or contexts. These days you can look to writers like Lisa Yee, Grace Lin, Cynthia Kadohata, Linda Sue Park, and others for some estimable entries in this area and that deal with what it means to be growing up as an Asian American. Erin Entrada Kelly’s Blackbird Fly adds to this corpus in its exploration of the youthful Filipina American protagonist Apple Yengko. Apple was born in the Philippines but she immigrates to the United States at an early age due to her mother’s decision to make a new life for her and her daughter in the wake of her husband’s death. A nursing shortage at that time allows her an opportunity to receive a treasured work visa via a family connection named Lita and the rest as they say is history. Apple’s real name is Analyn, but as with many Filipinos, she goes by a nickname. She’s made some tentative friends in her eighth grade class, but no one seems to understand her own predicament as a racial minority living in the South (Louisiana). Apple soon finds out through word of mouth that she’s been placed on the “Dog Log,” which is a list of the ten most unattractive female students in the class. Further still, racist comments made by some classmates regarding the fact that Asians purportedly eat dogs contributes further to her misery as a student associated with canines. Naturally, Apple’s response is to wish away her racial difference, which includes wishing away her mother’s Filipina-ness, but this mode of escape and self-effacement is only ever provisional. Enter Evan Temple. As a transplant from California, Evan is the right kind of stranger to Louisiana, one who is more keen to racial diversity due to his upbringing and who provides both a potential romantic foil for Apple as well as an individual more understanding of social difference. For those of you wondering about Kelly’s title: yes, it is a reference to the Beatles. In this regard, the other major element is Apple’s deep love for singing, songwriting, and the Beatles. She struggles to make the money needed to buy her own guitar, and this lack of funds leads to other rash decisions. Yet, the mystery behind her mother’s rather dour attitude toward Apple’s interest in the Beatles is perhaps something that moves this middle grade novel into a deeper register, as we come to see how the phantoms of the past can never be escaped. Kelly’s work is especially important given its regional texturization of Asian American literature; like Lai’s Inside Out & Back Again, the novel’s setting in the American South serves to remind us that we must always think beyond metropolitan centers in the East (New York City) and the West (Honolulu, Los Angeles, and San Francisco). A definite must read for children’s lit lovers!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062238610/blackbird-fly
April 7, 2015
Free! Amulya Malladi's Serving Crazy With Curry (Kindle edition)
It looks like Amulya Malladi's Serving Crazy With Curry is FREE as a Kindle edition. Might just be for today, so get it while you can!
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UEG4TZC/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UEG4TZC/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
April 2, 2015
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 2, 2015
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 2, 2015
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
In this post, reviews of Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014); David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face (Theatre Communications Group, 2009); Tania James’s The Tusk that Did the Damage (Knopf, 2015); Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character (Knopf, 2015); Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections (Graywolf, 2013); Gene Oishi’s Fox Drum Bebop (Kaya, 2014); Liana Liu’s The Memory Key (HarperTeen, 2015); Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know (Bloomsbury USA, 2015); Jo Whittemore’s Colonial Madness (Simon and Schuster Young Readers, 2015).
A Review of Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014).
Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014) is her follow-up to Seasonal Velocities. In He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song, Aoki fractures perspective amongst an expansive set of characters that reminds one of an Altman film if it was set in Hawai‘i and involved a plot concerning performance and the “true meaning” of an island identity. At its core, Aoki’s spirited, slightly surrealistic, and ultimately upbeat novel challenges settler colonialist rhetoric in its evocation of a pluralist ethos for Hawaiian identity. Indeed, the opening gambit is none other than the burden that one of the characters, Noelani Choi, feels concerning Hawaiian dance and whether or not she still feels rooted to this kind of performance. Though gifted with the ability to dance, Noelani is particularly ambivalent about her talents and much of the novel delves into her own spiritual and identity quest as it relates to hula and her halau (performance troupe). But there are a number of other quirky characters, including Kamakawiwo‘ole Shulman—Kam for short—a Jewish musician who relocates to the islands and fashions himself with an appropriate name for his new home. There is the friendship that develops over the course of the novel between Harry, a local man who is still recovering from the loss of his wife, and Steve Yates, a successful businessman, who relocates to the islands after it is discovered that his wife (Lisa) may be dying. Harry and Steve bond over their mutual love of fishing. There is Nona Watanabe, who holds a torch for Harry, but can’t seem to break past his melancholic subjectivity. Nona and Lisa become the natural opposing pair to Harry and Steve. One of the most hilarious and nefarious characters in the novel is Eva Matsuoka, owner of a successful plate lunch business, who is looking to steal the recipe for the super delicious chicken that Nona is somehow able to make. Though the narratives seem disparate at first, Aoki is patient and begins to gradually twine them, especially through the motif of the Hawaiian dance performance and what it means to be Hawaiian. Toward the conclusion, Noelani Choi contemplates: “But what is Hawaiian? Where you stay born? The color of your skin, hair? Your blood? Would be easy, yeah? Maybe if you eat opihi or kulolo?” (269). Noelani later decides: “It wasn’t always about blood or culture. It could be. Sometimes, the spirit gets passed on to someone born from the aina. But sometimes, it passes to someone without one speck of Hawaiian. And then what? You cannot just say no” (270). In this sense, Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song articulates an expansive and inspiring approach to the local and Hawaiian identities. Aoki’s novel would be productive to read alongside other writers already highlighted in AALF including Gary Park and Kristiana Kahahauwila; for reviews of their work, see:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6144763-asian-american-literature-fans-megareview-for-april-21st-2014
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/162971.html
For more on Topside Signature, go here:
http://www.topsidesignature.com/
For Ryka Aoki’s novel, go here:
http://store.topsidepress.com/shop/he-mele-a-hilo/
A Review of David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face (Theatre Communications Group, 2009).
I’m obviously underread in the area of Asian American drama, a fact that is made (alarmingly) apparent as I am catching up on David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face, perhaps one of the most innovative additions to the field in the last decade, given its emphasis on “meta-drama” (is that a word?) and Hwang’s self-conscious exploration of race and performance in this apparently post-Asian moment. For Hwang, the play gives him the opportunity to satirize the controversy over the casting of Jonathan Pryce in Miss Saigon. Though many years have past since that debacle, the reverberations of this event remain for Asian American Studies scholars, artists, actors, and activists, especially as elucidated by Hwang’s incendiary drama. Poking fun at himself, the producers of Miss Saigon, identity politics, all the while clarifying the necessity of sensitivity in racial casting, Hwang pulls off a rare feat that entertains, mocks, but still somehow manages to call attention to the white supremacist inclinations of performance fields. Hwang creates a lead role based upon himself and this “fictive” Hwang piece is working on the production called Face Value, which is in its casting phases. Eventually, Marcus Dahlman, who is apparently of Jewish descent (via Siberia), is cast in a lead role meant to be played by someone of Asian descent. Hwang, eventually realizing his error, tries to cover his tracks by proclaiming that Dalhman is indeed Asian, though by way of continentality—he comes from Russia after all, which is a country in Asia—rather than through racial difference and hypodescent. Marcus parlays mistaken identity into a full-fledged career as a so-called Asian American actor, changing his appellation to Gee, which is of course more appropriately Chinese than Siberian. Hwang is astute to play off the elision between continental and geographical definitions of Asia in contrast to racial formations of Asian groups, but he juxtaposes this main storyline alongside that of a conspiracy type plot related to his father who is caught up in an investigation of a Chinese corporation perhaps involved in fraud. This comparison point is meant to bring the satire back into the orbit of other rising anti-Asian sentiments in this contemporary moment, especially in relation to China as a major global power. In many respects, Hwang’s latest has much in line with the newest performances that Karen Tei Yamashita penned in Anime Wong—see especially the title work in that collection—concerning the rise of a new form of yellow peril in the 21st century. It is in this juxtaposition that Hwang reminds us that our work in race and ethnic studies is likely never to be finished so long as social difference, inequality and global capitalism remains embedded in our daily lives.
For more on the book and the production (as well as an interview) go here:
http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Edition-published-Theatre-Communications/dp/B00E31GPEW
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/02/22/bearing-the-yellow-face-qa-with-david-henry-hwang/
A Review of Tania James’s The Tusk that Did the Damage (Knopf, 2015).
Tania James’s third publication (after Atlas of Unknowns and Aerogramme: Stories) is The Tusk that Did the Damage. In this slim and naturalistic work, James takes on the subjects of animal studies, poaching, elephant subjectivity, and documentary filmmaking. There are roughly three narrative perspectives. One is given to an Indian man named Manu whose cousin is killed off by a violent elephant known only as the Gravedigger. Manu’s brother Jayan is already connected with the activity of poaching, but he is given pause when he is arrested in conjunction with his illicit hunting. The Gravedigger seems to have a larger vendetta against Manu and his family, and once the elephant comes a little bit too close to home, Manu and Jayan must make some difficult decisions about how they will protect themselves. A key figure in this subplot is Jayan’s wife who exerts a significant and almost romantic pull on Manu. The second perspective is given to a filmmaker named Emma, who has traveled to India to create a documentary film; she is working with a close friend and former lover named Teddy. The main “human contact” of their documentary is none other than a man named Ravi, a veterinarian who is well known for his championing of elephants and the protections he seeks for animals who are deemed to be targets for poachers. The third narrative perspective is completed in the third person and is more mythic: it follows the story of Gravedigger and his journey from being orphaned to his quest to exact a kind of revenge on those who have perpetrated brutalities against him and those that he loves. This third perspective is an interesting one because James chooses to provide readers only with a limited access to the animal’s subjectivity, an interesting move given the use of the first person for Emma and Manu. The toggling between these perspectives can sometimes result in uneven pacing, but James’s ultimate goal and message is obviously and strongly political: there are no winners in the industry of poaching. Elephants are targeted often for parts that become consumed only on an ornamental level, while lower caste and class individuals enter illegal trades simply to survive, while still others seek to shed light on difficult topics without falling subject to relativities and banal messages of hope and positive futures. Without a heroic center, some readers may find James’s novel too bleak, but the seriousness of the topic matter is appropriately matched by the author’s willingness to plumb the contradictory subjectivities of all the characters, human and otherwise. For another book on a similar topic and issue, please see Nikita Lalwani’s The Village, review on Asian American Literature Fans here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/163318.html
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-tusk-that-did-the-damage-tania-james/1119611919?ean=9780385354127
A Review of Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character (Knopf, 2015).
Well, this novel was a definite surprise. Deepti Kapoor’s debut novel A Bad Character is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who resides in Delhi. The novel is fairly anachronic, but the primary diegetic level appears set during a period when the protagonist is college age. She lives with her Aunt and Uncle because her mother has passed away, and her father has essentially abandoned her for a new life in Singapore. As a kind of dispossessed college aged orphan, it is really up to Aunty (as she is called) to marry the narrator off. The narrator, though, is quite resistant to all of the potential matches, especially because they are cloaked under the guise of propriety and decorum. The narrator realizes that her possible marriage matches are already limited by her tenuous socioeconomic status and the lack of support from her surviving parent. It becomes apparent, too, that the narrator is beautiful, an aspect that emerges most forcefully in the ongoing affair that she carries on with a young man, the titular “bad character,” who we discover at the start of the novel has been run over by a car and killed. We know that she and this young man have some sort of complicated romantic history, and it unfolds in fits and starts over a poetically written set of excerpts that move back and forth through time. Kapoor’s writing is raw and unflinching; the novel seems to be inspired in part by works such as Marguerite Duras’ The Lover and Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal. In terms of topic and approach, it also very much reminds me of Lawrence Chua’s Gold by the Inch, especially in the ways that the narrator and her lover spend the nights in wild abandon: driving through the streets of Delhi, snorting cocaine, or having sex. At some point, after the untimely death of her lover, the narrator discovers much of their relationship was a lie: his parents were never actually dead as he had stated, and he actually had a fiancé. These revelations spur the narrator further into a dark hole of romantic melancholy: she starts having casual sex and eventually becomes the kept woman for a successful transnational businessman. All throughout this indelicate disintegration, she waxes on and on about this love she cannot quit, this “bad character” who has infused her psyche so completely that he appears as ghostly presence no matter what she is doing, no matter who she is having sex with. This novel won’t be for everyone, but Kapoor’s talent cannot be denied. Her novel is daring, visceral, corporeal, and never shies away from the grittiness of modern Indian life, the desire for liberation amid still oppressive circumstances, urban ennui, and the romantic relationships that so often together become an unruly alchemical mixture so potent as to become the course for ruin.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/236878/a-bad-character-by-deepti-kapoor
A Review of Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections (Graywolf, 2013).
I’ve been consistently behind on my poetry reading; one of the big gaping examples is that I just recently got to Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections, which was notably the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He may have the distinction of being the only American writer of Asian descent to win the Pulitzer in poetry, but you can correct me if I’m wrong. I had to read 3 sections a couple of times to get a sense of its diverse topics and expansive scope. Seshadri is also quite interested in discourses of science and anthropology, as evidenced in poems like “The Descent of Man” in which the lyric speaker meditates on his physical decline through the extended metaphor of devolution. Certainly, Seshadri has mastered a certain kind of meditative, philosophical lyric (see the wonderful “Surveillance Report” for an example), but perhaps the most influential “section” from the collection appears late and takes the form of something more like a creative nonfiction short story. In “Pacific Fishes of Canada,” Seshadri explores the lives of fishermen on the Pacific Coast; this section is both harrowing and exquisitely wrought. Seshadri’s presumed autobiographical “I” is partly on a research mission, partly on a journey of exploration, as he sets sail with a group of seasoned fishermen. Seshadri is hardly prepared for the physical ailments brought on by rough waters and the constant storms, spending a number of early days on the cabin floor vomiting everything out. Once he gets his sea legs, he begins to get a glimpse of the parallax way of life for the fisherman, especially based upon the dichotomy of weather patterns that can befall a ship. One moment the seas may be calm and stunningly placid, while the next a storm may brew, bringing with it the portent of danger and death. Seshadri is also quite anthropological in his investigations, noting the high distrust that fisherman have for Russians, on the one hand, while much more latitude is given to the Japanese, on the other. There is a mutlifaceted culture out there at sea, and Seshadri’s foray into this prose section is evidence that we need to see a prose-based creative nonfiction from him in the future, to be sure. From that point forward, two poems remain. The notable “Personal Essay” is Seshadri at his most Whitmanesque: long free verse lines that give a sense again of the highly introspective lyric speaker. It is a fitting poem to follow “Pacific Fishes of Canada” and showcases the autobiographical speaker’s desire to find an intersubjective connection. The collection ends with “Light Verse,” a sense that Seshadri’s poetry project is now complete. We’re back at “standard time,” but everything’s a still a little bit off-kilter and we’re all a little bit better for it.
Buy the book Here:
https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/3-sections
A Review of Gene Oishi’s Fox Drum Bebop (Kaya, 2014).
So, I’ve been meaning to review titles from Kaya for a very long time, but I don’t think I’ve managed to do much of that here on Asian American Literature Fans. Most devotees of Asian American literature know that Kaya is one of the very few presses devoted to publishing within the general area. Kaya is well known for its innovative catalogue focusing not only on Asian American literature, but also Asian literatures in translation and the Asia-Pacific more broadly. Here’s a useful link:
http://kaya.com/
Obvious notable books in their catalogue include Younghill Kang’s East Goes West, Kimiko Hahn’s Unbearable Heart, and R. Zamora Linmark’s Rolling the R’s (which I am teaching this very quarter!). In this review, I focus on Gene Oishi’s novel Fox Drum Bebop. Oishi is actually the author of an earlier piece—something marketed as a docu-fiction—called In Search for Hiroshi, which was published in 1987. That docu-fiction is narrated in the first person and though both pieces have characters named Hiroshi, it’s clear that Fox Drum Bebop is a separate cultural production. Fox Drum Bebop might be called a novel in stories: each chapter seems to be a self-contained narrative that when linked together provide a multigenerational tapestry of one Japanese American family. At this point the internment has become something of an ur-narrative, but Oishi’s contribution is to look beyond the scope of this event to see how a family also evolves past that point. Though editorial and marketing blurbs seem to focus on Hiroshi Kono as the protagonist, he is part of a large family that includes a number of brothers (the all-American, but not so American Mickey, the tragic polio ridden Sammy, and Yukio), and one sister (Sachi). Hiroshi’s father, considered a Japanese patriot, is arrested alongside others in his community and is carted off to Montana, while Hiroshi, his mother Otsui, and his siblings must endure the desultory life of the internment camp (I believe they are held in Gila River). Sammy crumbles under the weight of interment and dies before their incarceration is over, but the other family members move on to construct their lives in the shadow of this event. Hiroshi learns to play various musical instruments, finds a great love of jazz, engages in an affair with an older piano teacher, travels to Europe, and eventually marries a Frenchwoman of Jewish background. The novel obviously comes off as largely episodic because of the way that it is structured in these self-contained chapters, but the mosaic is particularly affecting. Oishi is quite keen on elaborating upon not only the internment and its after effects, but the larger multicultural tensions that embroiled California throughout that period. Indeed, even as Hiroshi’s family eventually moves up the economic ladder, Oishi’s friendships and connections to other minorities reveal the schisms that push him to understand his asymmetrical foundations of racial difference and elucidate his privilege in certain circumstances. The payoff for the novel comes in many passages of quiet beauty and deep contemplation. As the novel comes to a close Hiroshi reflects, “The Nisei couldn’t talk about the camps, not only because it disturbed their self-image as Americans, but because it reminded them of a fear that ran too deep to probe. Somewhere at the core of their being, they were still terrified—afraid for themselves and afraid for their children. For all he or his family knew, they’d been brought to the desert to die, to starve in a barren wasteland crawling with snakes, lizards, scorpions, and other unknown dangers. Hiroshi recalled the propaganda: the Japanese were an evil race; they were subhuman, snarling apes, rats, vermin. Mother and many of the Issei had been convinced that they would [end of 271] all be killed out here in the wilderness. And though the site had been turned out not to be the extermination camp they had feared, the terror and the sense of their helplessness had remained. At its most primitive level, that terror had been the unspoken shame of being Japanese. But the real threat—the worst degradation, not existentially, but spiritually—was the shame itself” (272). Here, Hiroshi reveals the extent of his understanding of the traumas rooted in internment and how they come to bear upon his life even decades ever the event has concluded. This latency is of course mirrored in the act of so many Japanese American writers completing the kind of recovery work made almost impossible by the fact of this shame. It is in this sense that such publications are more than just fictions and constitute an archive of witnessing and of potential healing.
Buy the Book Here:
http://kaya.com/books/fox-drum-bebop/
A Review of Liana Liu’s The Memory Key (HarperTeen, 2015).
Liana Liu’s debut novel The Memory Key is part of the blob-like archive that has become young adult paranormal romance. The official HarperCollins site provides a useful plot summary here:
“Lora Mint is determined not to forget.
Though her mother's been dead for five years, Lora struggles to remember every detail about her—most important, the specific events that occurred the night she sped off in her car, never to return.
But in a world ravaged by Vergets disease, a viral form of Alzheimer's, that isn't easy. Usually Lora is aided by her memory key, a standard-issue chip embedded in her brain that preserves memories just the way a human brain would. Then a minor accident damages Lora's key, and her memories go haywire. Suddenly Lora remembers a moment from the night of her mother's disappearance that indicates her death was no accident. Can she trust these formerly forgotten memories? Or is her ability to remember every painful part of her past driving her slowly mad—burying the truth forever?
Lora's story of longing for her lost mother—and for the truth behind her broken memories—takes readers on a twisty ride. The authentic, emotional narrative sparks fascinating questions about memory and privacy in a world that increasingly relies on electronic recall.”
At its core, The Memory Key is also a mystery novel. Lora Mint’s malfunctioning memory key gives her the ability to recall past events with full clarity; she can remember minor details that give her reasonable cause to reconsider what happened to her mother. Lora Mint becomes our noir heroine in that respect, as she looks into her mother’s past, determined to find out if the circumstances behind her death were perpetrated by a malicious party intent on silencing research that might prove to undermine the virtual monopoly held by the makers of the memory key. Lora Mint’s mother, Jeanette (nee Lee) had worked for Keep Corp, as a kind of public relations scientist, but when her research indicates that there may be something wrong with the newest generation of memory keys, she is killed in a car accident. Lora’s investigation includes numerous trips to the library (where she also happens to work); she enlists the help of her best friend, Wendy, as well as Wendy’s brother Tim, while she conducts interviews with individuals related to Keep Corp and with Grand Gardens, the retirement home that seems to have a connection to all of the events that are unfolding. There are certain details of the plot that remain intriguing to consider from the level of social difference. Lora’s family background on her mother’s side is notably an immigrant one, but it’s never quite clear what that immigrant background is. Liu chooses to deracinate her fictional world in this way, though still referencing possible social difference in that immigrant background. It’s an interesting choice to make, one that didn’t make full sense to me, especially since the novel is so politically invested in its critique of governance and corporate interests. Liu’s novel is briskly paced, and most readers will find Lora to be a likable heroine, but the conclusion is surprisingly anti-climactic and undercuts the impact of an otherwise dynamic plot and narrative trajectory. The novel’s underwhelming conclusion nevertheless sets up the possibility of sequels, but one is uncertain at this time whether or not this work is a stand-alone novel or will see future installments. Certainly, fans of young adult fiction and paranormal romance will be pleased by this debut. It has all the requisite formula elements: the ordinary but not so ordinary young teen girl on a quest to defeat the big bad while snagging a potential paramour along the way.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062306647/the-memory-key
A Review of Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know (Bloomsbury USA, 2015).
Tautly written and perfectly understated in its impact, Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let him Know is a wonderful debut novel. Billed as a novel in stories, Don’t let him Know begins with an opening chapter involving a South Asian mother named Romola discovering that her adult son Amit has come upon a letter purportedly written by a former lover of Romola’s named Sumit. Romola immediately blanches at the letter, but Roy has us in his masterful hands. Indeed, though it seems as if Romola assents to the fact that she has been found out by her son, that she once had a love affair with this man before she had married the man who would come to be Amit’s father (Avinash), the second chapter reveals another secret entirely. The letter that was written was actually penned by a former lover of Avinash; Romola had come upon the letter by accident and realized what the letter had meant but never actually confronted her husband about it. Roy pens these stories in an anachronic order, so there is something of a palimpsestic experience to reading this novel. We discover things about characters that will then be contextualized in a new way by information brought up in the past. Roy’s opening gambit is somewhat of a risk because it holds our attention so acutely that when the novel starts moving to other characters and relational contexts, our attention is potentially challenged, and we wonder, for instance, whether or not the illicit romance between Sumit and Avinash will ever be fully explored. Roy frustrates readers in the best possible way. That is, the point seems to be about the elliptics of the immigration experience and that secrets remain buried instead of climactically revealed. The illict queer romance that opens the collection is of course directed at the many illicit variations on connections that appear in the novel, such as interracial/ interminority romance (between Amit and an African American woman) and the buddy love affair between Romola and a man who would later become a Bollywood Star. What is evident is that Roy is putting forth the asymmetrical, but interlinked ways in which characters act out on desires that can be labeled as deviant, and this central thematic provides the novel a solid enough foundation that we don’t mind how the plot will ultimately meander as a result of the formal conceit that Roy uses. Indeed, the final chapter’s minor triumph is a beautiful and fitting conclusion to a cultural production that revels in nuance rather than bombast and theatrics.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dont-let-him-know-sandip-roy/1119439494?ean=9781620408988
For a useful interview, go here!
http://www.npr.org/2015/02/24/383581229/family-secrets-and-mango-chutney-in-dont-let-him-know
A Review of Jo Whittemore’s Colonial Madness (Simon and Schuster Young Readers, 2015).
I’ve been meaning to read something by Jo Whittemore for a long time. She’s the author of two different series for young readers, one that is fantasy based and another that occurs in an educational setting (with titles like Front Page Face/Off). Whittemore’s latest, Colonial Madness, gave me an opportunity to engage a piece of her publication oeuvre. As the official site states, the book’s synopsis is roughly like so: “Tori Porter is best friends with her mom, and most of the time it’s awesome. Not many girls have a mom who’d take them to a graveyard for hide-and-seek or fill the bathtub with ice cream for the world’s biggest sundae. But as much as Tori loves having fun, she sometimes wishes her mom would act a little more her age. Like now. Thanks to her mom’s poor financial planning, they are in danger of losing their business and their home. But an unusual opportunity arises in the form of a bizarre type of contest put on by an eccentric relative: Whoever can survive two weeks in the Archibald Family’s colonial manor will inherit the property. The catch? Contestants have to live as in colonial times: no modern conveniences, no outside help, and daily tests of their abilities to survive challenges of the time period.” Pitched at reading audiences aged nine to thirteen, I seem to fall completely outside of that group, but this novel proved to be the right reading option after a long night of teaching, and I needed something perhaps a little bit more escapist in character. What the synopsis doesn’t mention is the fact that the eccentric relative (named Muriel Archibald) is purportedly dead (or so we’re made to think based upon an early missive that Tori and her mom receive), and she has a huge inheritance that she intended to give away, but it comes with strings: relatives must compete in a contest based upon colonial-era challenges in order to have a chance to win the property. Thus, the interested relatives, who include the family of Tori’s cousin Angel, who also happens to be her close friend, all gather on the property to begin the contest. Hijinks obviously ensue, especially when it becomes apparent that the frontrunners may do anything to win the contest. An early challenge involving the making of breakfast sees Tori and her Mom come in dead last, with her mother having fallen asleep while attending to a task required for the ingredients needed for the breakfast. Tori soon loses faith in her mother’s ability to help them win the competition and this crisis is the root of the novel’s tension: the mother-daughter bond will obviously be the way that the two will have any chance to survive the colonial times. Whittemore is of course not content to leave the plot solely to the mercurial balance of mother-daughter connections; she adds another wrinkle into the novelistic equation with a rather innocuous romance plot that begins to emerge after Tori shows some interest in one of the employees working as part of the colonial-era townsfolk who populate the property. Though eventually outlawed from meeting up with this boy, Caleb, due to the perceived unfair advantage she might be receiving from this budding romance, Tori nevertheless continues to meet with Caleb in secret, even defying her mother’s wishes. Whittemore’s novel is certainly on the frothy side. For those wondering about what happened to indigenous populations and genocidal depictions, you’ll want to look elsewhere. Colonial Madness stays stringently on the side of popcorn entertainment fare. For those looking for a different form of colonial or postcolonial madness (from Asian American writers) in which race and indigenous cultures are featured prominently as elements of the plot, see Sabina Murray’s A Carnivore’s Inquiry.
For more about the book, go here:
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Colonial-Madness/Jo-Whittemore/9781481405089
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
In this post, reviews of Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014); David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face (Theatre Communications Group, 2009); Tania James’s The Tusk that Did the Damage (Knopf, 2015); Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character (Knopf, 2015); Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections (Graywolf, 2013); Gene Oishi’s Fox Drum Bebop (Kaya, 2014); Liana Liu’s The Memory Key (HarperTeen, 2015); Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know (Bloomsbury USA, 2015); Jo Whittemore’s Colonial Madness (Simon and Schuster Young Readers, 2015).
A Review of Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014).
Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014) is her follow-up to Seasonal Velocities. In He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song, Aoki fractures perspective amongst an expansive set of characters that reminds one of an Altman film if it was set in Hawai‘i and involved a plot concerning performance and the “true meaning” of an island identity. At its core, Aoki’s spirited, slightly surrealistic, and ultimately upbeat novel challenges settler colonialist rhetoric in its evocation of a pluralist ethos for Hawaiian identity. Indeed, the opening gambit is none other than the burden that one of the characters, Noelani Choi, feels concerning Hawaiian dance and whether or not she still feels rooted to this kind of performance. Though gifted with the ability to dance, Noelani is particularly ambivalent about her talents and much of the novel delves into her own spiritual and identity quest as it relates to hula and her halau (performance troupe). But there are a number of other quirky characters, including Kamakawiwo‘ole Shulman—Kam for short—a Jewish musician who relocates to the islands and fashions himself with an appropriate name for his new home. There is the friendship that develops over the course of the novel between Harry, a local man who is still recovering from the loss of his wife, and Steve Yates, a successful businessman, who relocates to the islands after it is discovered that his wife (Lisa) may be dying. Harry and Steve bond over their mutual love of fishing. There is Nona Watanabe, who holds a torch for Harry, but can’t seem to break past his melancholic subjectivity. Nona and Lisa become the natural opposing pair to Harry and Steve. One of the most hilarious and nefarious characters in the novel is Eva Matsuoka, owner of a successful plate lunch business, who is looking to steal the recipe for the super delicious chicken that Nona is somehow able to make. Though the narratives seem disparate at first, Aoki is patient and begins to gradually twine them, especially through the motif of the Hawaiian dance performance and what it means to be Hawaiian. Toward the conclusion, Noelani Choi contemplates: “But what is Hawaiian? Where you stay born? The color of your skin, hair? Your blood? Would be easy, yeah? Maybe if you eat opihi or kulolo?” (269). Noelani later decides: “It wasn’t always about blood or culture. It could be. Sometimes, the spirit gets passed on to someone born from the aina. But sometimes, it passes to someone without one speck of Hawaiian. And then what? You cannot just say no” (270). In this sense, Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song articulates an expansive and inspiring approach to the local and Hawaiian identities. Aoki’s novel would be productive to read alongside other writers already highlighted in AALF including Gary Park and Kristiana Kahahauwila; for reviews of their work, see:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6144763-asian-american-literature-fans-megareview-for-april-21st-2014
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/162971.html
For more on Topside Signature, go here:
http://www.topsidesignature.com/
For Ryka Aoki’s novel, go here:
http://store.topsidepress.com/shop/he-mele-a-hilo/
A Review of David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face (Theatre Communications Group, 2009).
I’m obviously underread in the area of Asian American drama, a fact that is made (alarmingly) apparent as I am catching up on David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face, perhaps one of the most innovative additions to the field in the last decade, given its emphasis on “meta-drama” (is that a word?) and Hwang’s self-conscious exploration of race and performance in this apparently post-Asian moment. For Hwang, the play gives him the opportunity to satirize the controversy over the casting of Jonathan Pryce in Miss Saigon. Though many years have past since that debacle, the reverberations of this event remain for Asian American Studies scholars, artists, actors, and activists, especially as elucidated by Hwang’s incendiary drama. Poking fun at himself, the producers of Miss Saigon, identity politics, all the while clarifying the necessity of sensitivity in racial casting, Hwang pulls off a rare feat that entertains, mocks, but still somehow manages to call attention to the white supremacist inclinations of performance fields. Hwang creates a lead role based upon himself and this “fictive” Hwang piece is working on the production called Face Value, which is in its casting phases. Eventually, Marcus Dahlman, who is apparently of Jewish descent (via Siberia), is cast in a lead role meant to be played by someone of Asian descent. Hwang, eventually realizing his error, tries to cover his tracks by proclaiming that Dalhman is indeed Asian, though by way of continentality—he comes from Russia after all, which is a country in Asia—rather than through racial difference and hypodescent. Marcus parlays mistaken identity into a full-fledged career as a so-called Asian American actor, changing his appellation to Gee, which is of course more appropriately Chinese than Siberian. Hwang is astute to play off the elision between continental and geographical definitions of Asia in contrast to racial formations of Asian groups, but he juxtaposes this main storyline alongside that of a conspiracy type plot related to his father who is caught up in an investigation of a Chinese corporation perhaps involved in fraud. This comparison point is meant to bring the satire back into the orbit of other rising anti-Asian sentiments in this contemporary moment, especially in relation to China as a major global power. In many respects, Hwang’s latest has much in line with the newest performances that Karen Tei Yamashita penned in Anime Wong—see especially the title work in that collection—concerning the rise of a new form of yellow peril in the 21st century. It is in this juxtaposition that Hwang reminds us that our work in race and ethnic studies is likely never to be finished so long as social difference, inequality and global capitalism remains embedded in our daily lives.
For more on the book and the production (as well as an interview) go here:
http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Edition-published-Theatre-Communications/dp/B00E31GPEW
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/02/22/bearing-the-yellow-face-qa-with-david-henry-hwang/
A Review of Tania James’s The Tusk that Did the Damage (Knopf, 2015).
Tania James’s third publication (after Atlas of Unknowns and Aerogramme: Stories) is The Tusk that Did the Damage. In this slim and naturalistic work, James takes on the subjects of animal studies, poaching, elephant subjectivity, and documentary filmmaking. There are roughly three narrative perspectives. One is given to an Indian man named Manu whose cousin is killed off by a violent elephant known only as the Gravedigger. Manu’s brother Jayan is already connected with the activity of poaching, but he is given pause when he is arrested in conjunction with his illicit hunting. The Gravedigger seems to have a larger vendetta against Manu and his family, and once the elephant comes a little bit too close to home, Manu and Jayan must make some difficult decisions about how they will protect themselves. A key figure in this subplot is Jayan’s wife who exerts a significant and almost romantic pull on Manu. The second perspective is given to a filmmaker named Emma, who has traveled to India to create a documentary film; she is working with a close friend and former lover named Teddy. The main “human contact” of their documentary is none other than a man named Ravi, a veterinarian who is well known for his championing of elephants and the protections he seeks for animals who are deemed to be targets for poachers. The third narrative perspective is completed in the third person and is more mythic: it follows the story of Gravedigger and his journey from being orphaned to his quest to exact a kind of revenge on those who have perpetrated brutalities against him and those that he loves. This third perspective is an interesting one because James chooses to provide readers only with a limited access to the animal’s subjectivity, an interesting move given the use of the first person for Emma and Manu. The toggling between these perspectives can sometimes result in uneven pacing, but James’s ultimate goal and message is obviously and strongly political: there are no winners in the industry of poaching. Elephants are targeted often for parts that become consumed only on an ornamental level, while lower caste and class individuals enter illegal trades simply to survive, while still others seek to shed light on difficult topics without falling subject to relativities and banal messages of hope and positive futures. Without a heroic center, some readers may find James’s novel too bleak, but the seriousness of the topic matter is appropriately matched by the author’s willingness to plumb the contradictory subjectivities of all the characters, human and otherwise. For another book on a similar topic and issue, please see Nikita Lalwani’s The Village, review on Asian American Literature Fans here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/163318.html
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-tusk-that-did-the-damage-tania-james/1119611919?ean=9780385354127
A Review of Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character (Knopf, 2015).
Well, this novel was a definite surprise. Deepti Kapoor’s debut novel A Bad Character is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who resides in Delhi. The novel is fairly anachronic, but the primary diegetic level appears set during a period when the protagonist is college age. She lives with her Aunt and Uncle because her mother has passed away, and her father has essentially abandoned her for a new life in Singapore. As a kind of dispossessed college aged orphan, it is really up to Aunty (as she is called) to marry the narrator off. The narrator, though, is quite resistant to all of the potential matches, especially because they are cloaked under the guise of propriety and decorum. The narrator realizes that her possible marriage matches are already limited by her tenuous socioeconomic status and the lack of support from her surviving parent. It becomes apparent, too, that the narrator is beautiful, an aspect that emerges most forcefully in the ongoing affair that she carries on with a young man, the titular “bad character,” who we discover at the start of the novel has been run over by a car and killed. We know that she and this young man have some sort of complicated romantic history, and it unfolds in fits and starts over a poetically written set of excerpts that move back and forth through time. Kapoor’s writing is raw and unflinching; the novel seems to be inspired in part by works such as Marguerite Duras’ The Lover and Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal. In terms of topic and approach, it also very much reminds me of Lawrence Chua’s Gold by the Inch, especially in the ways that the narrator and her lover spend the nights in wild abandon: driving through the streets of Delhi, snorting cocaine, or having sex. At some point, after the untimely death of her lover, the narrator discovers much of their relationship was a lie: his parents were never actually dead as he had stated, and he actually had a fiancé. These revelations spur the narrator further into a dark hole of romantic melancholy: she starts having casual sex and eventually becomes the kept woman for a successful transnational businessman. All throughout this indelicate disintegration, she waxes on and on about this love she cannot quit, this “bad character” who has infused her psyche so completely that he appears as ghostly presence no matter what she is doing, no matter who she is having sex with. This novel won’t be for everyone, but Kapoor’s talent cannot be denied. Her novel is daring, visceral, corporeal, and never shies away from the grittiness of modern Indian life, the desire for liberation amid still oppressive circumstances, urban ennui, and the romantic relationships that so often together become an unruly alchemical mixture so potent as to become the course for ruin.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/236878/a-bad-character-by-deepti-kapoor
A Review of Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections (Graywolf, 2013).
I’ve been consistently behind on my poetry reading; one of the big gaping examples is that I just recently got to Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections, which was notably the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He may have the distinction of being the only American writer of Asian descent to win the Pulitzer in poetry, but you can correct me if I’m wrong. I had to read 3 sections a couple of times to get a sense of its diverse topics and expansive scope. Seshadri is also quite interested in discourses of science and anthropology, as evidenced in poems like “The Descent of Man” in which the lyric speaker meditates on his physical decline through the extended metaphor of devolution. Certainly, Seshadri has mastered a certain kind of meditative, philosophical lyric (see the wonderful “Surveillance Report” for an example), but perhaps the most influential “section” from the collection appears late and takes the form of something more like a creative nonfiction short story. In “Pacific Fishes of Canada,” Seshadri explores the lives of fishermen on the Pacific Coast; this section is both harrowing and exquisitely wrought. Seshadri’s presumed autobiographical “I” is partly on a research mission, partly on a journey of exploration, as he sets sail with a group of seasoned fishermen. Seshadri is hardly prepared for the physical ailments brought on by rough waters and the constant storms, spending a number of early days on the cabin floor vomiting everything out. Once he gets his sea legs, he begins to get a glimpse of the parallax way of life for the fisherman, especially based upon the dichotomy of weather patterns that can befall a ship. One moment the seas may be calm and stunningly placid, while the next a storm may brew, bringing with it the portent of danger and death. Seshadri is also quite anthropological in his investigations, noting the high distrust that fisherman have for Russians, on the one hand, while much more latitude is given to the Japanese, on the other. There is a mutlifaceted culture out there at sea, and Seshadri’s foray into this prose section is evidence that we need to see a prose-based creative nonfiction from him in the future, to be sure. From that point forward, two poems remain. The notable “Personal Essay” is Seshadri at his most Whitmanesque: long free verse lines that give a sense again of the highly introspective lyric speaker. It is a fitting poem to follow “Pacific Fishes of Canada” and showcases the autobiographical speaker’s desire to find an intersubjective connection. The collection ends with “Light Verse,” a sense that Seshadri’s poetry project is now complete. We’re back at “standard time,” but everything’s a still a little bit off-kilter and we’re all a little bit better for it.
Buy the book Here:
https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/3-sections
A Review of Gene Oishi’s Fox Drum Bebop (Kaya, 2014).
So, I’ve been meaning to review titles from Kaya for a very long time, but I don’t think I’ve managed to do much of that here on Asian American Literature Fans. Most devotees of Asian American literature know that Kaya is one of the very few presses devoted to publishing within the general area. Kaya is well known for its innovative catalogue focusing not only on Asian American literature, but also Asian literatures in translation and the Asia-Pacific more broadly. Here’s a useful link:
http://kaya.com/
Obvious notable books in their catalogue include Younghill Kang’s East Goes West, Kimiko Hahn’s Unbearable Heart, and R. Zamora Linmark’s Rolling the R’s (which I am teaching this very quarter!). In this review, I focus on Gene Oishi’s novel Fox Drum Bebop. Oishi is actually the author of an earlier piece—something marketed as a docu-fiction—called In Search for Hiroshi, which was published in 1987. That docu-fiction is narrated in the first person and though both pieces have characters named Hiroshi, it’s clear that Fox Drum Bebop is a separate cultural production. Fox Drum Bebop might be called a novel in stories: each chapter seems to be a self-contained narrative that when linked together provide a multigenerational tapestry of one Japanese American family. At this point the internment has become something of an ur-narrative, but Oishi’s contribution is to look beyond the scope of this event to see how a family also evolves past that point. Though editorial and marketing blurbs seem to focus on Hiroshi Kono as the protagonist, he is part of a large family that includes a number of brothers (the all-American, but not so American Mickey, the tragic polio ridden Sammy, and Yukio), and one sister (Sachi). Hiroshi’s father, considered a Japanese patriot, is arrested alongside others in his community and is carted off to Montana, while Hiroshi, his mother Otsui, and his siblings must endure the desultory life of the internment camp (I believe they are held in Gila River). Sammy crumbles under the weight of interment and dies before their incarceration is over, but the other family members move on to construct their lives in the shadow of this event. Hiroshi learns to play various musical instruments, finds a great love of jazz, engages in an affair with an older piano teacher, travels to Europe, and eventually marries a Frenchwoman of Jewish background. The novel obviously comes off as largely episodic because of the way that it is structured in these self-contained chapters, but the mosaic is particularly affecting. Oishi is quite keen on elaborating upon not only the internment and its after effects, but the larger multicultural tensions that embroiled California throughout that period. Indeed, even as Hiroshi’s family eventually moves up the economic ladder, Oishi’s friendships and connections to other minorities reveal the schisms that push him to understand his asymmetrical foundations of racial difference and elucidate his privilege in certain circumstances. The payoff for the novel comes in many passages of quiet beauty and deep contemplation. As the novel comes to a close Hiroshi reflects, “The Nisei couldn’t talk about the camps, not only because it disturbed their self-image as Americans, but because it reminded them of a fear that ran too deep to probe. Somewhere at the core of their being, they were still terrified—afraid for themselves and afraid for their children. For all he or his family knew, they’d been brought to the desert to die, to starve in a barren wasteland crawling with snakes, lizards, scorpions, and other unknown dangers. Hiroshi recalled the propaganda: the Japanese were an evil race; they were subhuman, snarling apes, rats, vermin. Mother and many of the Issei had been convinced that they would [end of 271] all be killed out here in the wilderness. And though the site had been turned out not to be the extermination camp they had feared, the terror and the sense of their helplessness had remained. At its most primitive level, that terror had been the unspoken shame of being Japanese. But the real threat—the worst degradation, not existentially, but spiritually—was the shame itself” (272). Here, Hiroshi reveals the extent of his understanding of the traumas rooted in internment and how they come to bear upon his life even decades ever the event has concluded. This latency is of course mirrored in the act of so many Japanese American writers completing the kind of recovery work made almost impossible by the fact of this shame. It is in this sense that such publications are more than just fictions and constitute an archive of witnessing and of potential healing.
Buy the Book Here:
http://kaya.com/books/fox-drum-bebop/
A Review of Liana Liu’s The Memory Key (HarperTeen, 2015).
Liana Liu’s debut novel The Memory Key is part of the blob-like archive that has become young adult paranormal romance. The official HarperCollins site provides a useful plot summary here:
“Lora Mint is determined not to forget.
Though her mother's been dead for five years, Lora struggles to remember every detail about her—most important, the specific events that occurred the night she sped off in her car, never to return.
But in a world ravaged by Vergets disease, a viral form of Alzheimer's, that isn't easy. Usually Lora is aided by her memory key, a standard-issue chip embedded in her brain that preserves memories just the way a human brain would. Then a minor accident damages Lora's key, and her memories go haywire. Suddenly Lora remembers a moment from the night of her mother's disappearance that indicates her death was no accident. Can she trust these formerly forgotten memories? Or is her ability to remember every painful part of her past driving her slowly mad—burying the truth forever?
Lora's story of longing for her lost mother—and for the truth behind her broken memories—takes readers on a twisty ride. The authentic, emotional narrative sparks fascinating questions about memory and privacy in a world that increasingly relies on electronic recall.”
At its core, The Memory Key is also a mystery novel. Lora Mint’s malfunctioning memory key gives her the ability to recall past events with full clarity; she can remember minor details that give her reasonable cause to reconsider what happened to her mother. Lora Mint becomes our noir heroine in that respect, as she looks into her mother’s past, determined to find out if the circumstances behind her death were perpetrated by a malicious party intent on silencing research that might prove to undermine the virtual monopoly held by the makers of the memory key. Lora Mint’s mother, Jeanette (nee Lee) had worked for Keep Corp, as a kind of public relations scientist, but when her research indicates that there may be something wrong with the newest generation of memory keys, she is killed in a car accident. Lora’s investigation includes numerous trips to the library (where she also happens to work); she enlists the help of her best friend, Wendy, as well as Wendy’s brother Tim, while she conducts interviews with individuals related to Keep Corp and with Grand Gardens, the retirement home that seems to have a connection to all of the events that are unfolding. There are certain details of the plot that remain intriguing to consider from the level of social difference. Lora’s family background on her mother’s side is notably an immigrant one, but it’s never quite clear what that immigrant background is. Liu chooses to deracinate her fictional world in this way, though still referencing possible social difference in that immigrant background. It’s an interesting choice to make, one that didn’t make full sense to me, especially since the novel is so politically invested in its critique of governance and corporate interests. Liu’s novel is briskly paced, and most readers will find Lora to be a likable heroine, but the conclusion is surprisingly anti-climactic and undercuts the impact of an otherwise dynamic plot and narrative trajectory. The novel’s underwhelming conclusion nevertheless sets up the possibility of sequels, but one is uncertain at this time whether or not this work is a stand-alone novel or will see future installments. Certainly, fans of young adult fiction and paranormal romance will be pleased by this debut. It has all the requisite formula elements: the ordinary but not so ordinary young teen girl on a quest to defeat the big bad while snagging a potential paramour along the way.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062306647/the-memory-key
A Review of Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know (Bloomsbury USA, 2015).
Tautly written and perfectly understated in its impact, Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let him Know is a wonderful debut novel. Billed as a novel in stories, Don’t let him Know begins with an opening chapter involving a South Asian mother named Romola discovering that her adult son Amit has come upon a letter purportedly written by a former lover of Romola’s named Sumit. Romola immediately blanches at the letter, but Roy has us in his masterful hands. Indeed, though it seems as if Romola assents to the fact that she has been found out by her son, that she once had a love affair with this man before she had married the man who would come to be Amit’s father (Avinash), the second chapter reveals another secret entirely. The letter that was written was actually penned by a former lover of Avinash; Romola had come upon the letter by accident and realized what the letter had meant but never actually confronted her husband about it. Roy pens these stories in an anachronic order, so there is something of a palimpsestic experience to reading this novel. We discover things about characters that will then be contextualized in a new way by information brought up in the past. Roy’s opening gambit is somewhat of a risk because it holds our attention so acutely that when the novel starts moving to other characters and relational contexts, our attention is potentially challenged, and we wonder, for instance, whether or not the illicit romance between Sumit and Avinash will ever be fully explored. Roy frustrates readers in the best possible way. That is, the point seems to be about the elliptics of the immigration experience and that secrets remain buried instead of climactically revealed. The illict queer romance that opens the collection is of course directed at the many illicit variations on connections that appear in the novel, such as interracial/ interminority romance (between Amit and an African American woman) and the buddy love affair between Romola and a man who would later become a Bollywood Star. What is evident is that Roy is putting forth the asymmetrical, but interlinked ways in which characters act out on desires that can be labeled as deviant, and this central thematic provides the novel a solid enough foundation that we don’t mind how the plot will ultimately meander as a result of the formal conceit that Roy uses. Indeed, the final chapter’s minor triumph is a beautiful and fitting conclusion to a cultural production that revels in nuance rather than bombast and theatrics.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dont-let-him-know-sandip-roy/1119439494?ean=9781620408988
For a useful interview, go here!
http://www.npr.org/2015/02/24/383581229/family-secrets-and-mango-chutney-in-dont-let-him-know
A Review of Jo Whittemore’s Colonial Madness (Simon and Schuster Young Readers, 2015).
I’ve been meaning to read something by Jo Whittemore for a long time. She’s the author of two different series for young readers, one that is fantasy based and another that occurs in an educational setting (with titles like Front Page Face/Off). Whittemore’s latest, Colonial Madness, gave me an opportunity to engage a piece of her publication oeuvre. As the official site states, the book’s synopsis is roughly like so: “Tori Porter is best friends with her mom, and most of the time it’s awesome. Not many girls have a mom who’d take them to a graveyard for hide-and-seek or fill the bathtub with ice cream for the world’s biggest sundae. But as much as Tori loves having fun, she sometimes wishes her mom would act a little more her age. Like now. Thanks to her mom’s poor financial planning, they are in danger of losing their business and their home. But an unusual opportunity arises in the form of a bizarre type of contest put on by an eccentric relative: Whoever can survive two weeks in the Archibald Family’s colonial manor will inherit the property. The catch? Contestants have to live as in colonial times: no modern conveniences, no outside help, and daily tests of their abilities to survive challenges of the time period.” Pitched at reading audiences aged nine to thirteen, I seem to fall completely outside of that group, but this novel proved to be the right reading option after a long night of teaching, and I needed something perhaps a little bit more escapist in character. What the synopsis doesn’t mention is the fact that the eccentric relative (named Muriel Archibald) is purportedly dead (or so we’re made to think based upon an early missive that Tori and her mom receive), and she has a huge inheritance that she intended to give away, but it comes with strings: relatives must compete in a contest based upon colonial-era challenges in order to have a chance to win the property. Thus, the interested relatives, who include the family of Tori’s cousin Angel, who also happens to be her close friend, all gather on the property to begin the contest. Hijinks obviously ensue, especially when it becomes apparent that the frontrunners may do anything to win the contest. An early challenge involving the making of breakfast sees Tori and her Mom come in dead last, with her mother having fallen asleep while attending to a task required for the ingredients needed for the breakfast. Tori soon loses faith in her mother’s ability to help them win the competition and this crisis is the root of the novel’s tension: the mother-daughter bond will obviously be the way that the two will have any chance to survive the colonial times. Whittemore is of course not content to leave the plot solely to the mercurial balance of mother-daughter connections; she adds another wrinkle into the novelistic equation with a rather innocuous romance plot that begins to emerge after Tori shows some interest in one of the employees working as part of the colonial-era townsfolk who populate the property. Though eventually outlawed from meeting up with this boy, Caleb, due to the perceived unfair advantage she might be receiving from this budding romance, Tori nevertheless continues to meet with Caleb in secret, even defying her mother’s wishes. Whittemore’s novel is certainly on the frothy side. For those wondering about what happened to indigenous populations and genocidal depictions, you’ll want to look elsewhere. Colonial Madness stays stringently on the side of popcorn entertainment fare. For those looking for a different form of colonial or postcolonial madness (from Asian American writers) in which race and indigenous cultures are featured prominently as elements of the plot, see Sabina Murray’s A Carnivore’s Inquiry.
For more about the book, go here:
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Colonial-Madness/Jo-Whittemore/9781481405089
asianamlitfans @ 2015-04-02T08:45:00
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 2, 2015
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
In this post, reviews of Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014); David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face (Theatre Communications Group, 2009); Tania James’s The Tusk that Did the Damage (Knopf, 2015); Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character (Knopf, 2015); Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections (Graywolf, 2013); Gene Oishi’s Fox Drum Bebop (Kaya, 2014); Liana Liu’s The Memory Key (HarperTeen, 2015); Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know (Bloomsbury USA, 2015); Jo Whittemore’s Colonial Madness (Simon and Schuster Young Readers, 2015).
A Review of Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014).
Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014) is her follow-up to Seasonal Velocities. In He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song, Aoki fractures perspective amongst an expansive set of characters that reminds one of an Altman film if it was set in Hawai‘i and involved a plot concerning performance and the “true meaning” of an island identity. At its core, Aoki’s spirited, slightly surrealistic, and ultimately upbeat novel challenges settler colonialist rhetoric in its evocation of a pluralist ethos for Hawaiian identity. Indeed, the opening gambit is none other than the burden that one of the characters, Noelani Choi, feels concerning Hawaiian dance and whether or not she still feels rooted to this kind of performance. Though gifted with the ability to dance, Noelani is particularly ambivalent about her talents and much of the novel delves into her own spiritual and identity quest as it relates to hula and her halau (performance troupe). But there are a number of other quirky characters, including Kamakawiwo‘ole Shulman—Kam for short—a Jewish musician who relocates to the islands and fashions himself with an appropriate name for his new home. There is the friendship that develops over the course of the novel between Harry, a local man who is still recovering from the loss of his wife, and Steve Yates, a successful businessman, who relocates to the islands after it is discovered that his wife (Lisa) may be dying. Harry and Steve bond over their mutual love of fishing. There is Nona Watanabe, who holds a torch for Harry, but can’t seem to break past his melancholic subjectivity. Nona and Lisa become the natural opposing pair to Harry and Steve. One of the most hilarious and nefarious characters in the novel is Eva Matsuoka, owner of a successful plate lunch business, who is looking to steal the recipe for the super delicious chicken that Nona is somehow able to make. Though the narratives seem disparate at first, Aoki is patient and begins to gradually twine them, especially through the motif of the Hawaiian dance performance and what it means to be Hawaiian. Toward the conclusion, Noelani Choi contemplates: “But what is Hawaiian? Where you stay born? The color of your skin, hair? Your blood? Would be easy, yeah? Maybe if you eat opihi or kulolo?” (269). Noelani later decides: “It wasn’t always about blood or culture. It could be. Sometimes, the spirit gets passed on to someone born from the aina. But sometimes, it passes to someone without one speck of Hawaiian. And then what? You cannot just say no” (270). In this sense, Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song articulates an expansive and inspiring approach to the local and Hawaiian identities. Aoki’s novel would be productive to read alongside other writers already highlighted in AALF including Gary Park and Kristiana Kahahauwila; for reviews of their work, see:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6144763-asian-american-literature-fans-megareview-for-april-21st-2014
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/162971.html
For more on Topside Signature, go here:
http://www.topsidesignature.com/
For Ryka Aoki’s novel, go here:
http://store.topsidepress.com/shop/he-mele-a-hilo/
A Review of David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face (Theatre Communications Group, 2009).
I’m obviously underread in the area of Asian American drama, a fact that is made (alarmingly) apparent as I am catching up on David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face, perhaps one of the most innovative additions to the field in the last decade, given its emphasis on “meta-drama” (is that a word?) and Hwang’s self-conscious exploration of race and performance in this apparently post-Asian moment. For Hwang, the play gives him the opportunity to satirize the controversy over the casting of Jonathan Pryce in Miss Saigon. Though many years have past since that debacle, the reverberations of this event remain for Asian American Studies scholars, artists, actors, and activists, especially as elucidated by Hwang’s incendiary drama. Poking fun at himself, the producers of Miss Saigon, identity politics, all the while clarifying the necessity of sensitivity in racial casting, Hwang pulls off a rare feat that entertains, mocks, but still somehow manages to call attention to the white supremacist inclinations of performance fields. Hwang creates a lead role based upon himself and this “fictive” Hwang piece is working on the production called Face Value, which is in its casting phases. Eventually, Marcus Dahlman, who is apparently of Jewish descent (via Siberia), is cast in a lead role meant to be played by someone of Asian descent. Hwang, eventually realizing his error, tries to cover his tracks by proclaiming that Dalhman is indeed Asian, though by way of continentality—he comes from Russia after all, which is a country in Asia—rather than through racial difference and hypodescent. Marcus parlays mistaken identity into a full-fledged career as a so-called Asian American actor, changing his appellation to Gee, which is of course more appropriately Chinese than Siberian. Hwang is astute to play off the elision between continental and geographical definitions of Asia in contrast to racial formations of Asian groups, but he juxtaposes this main storyline alongside that of a conspiracy type plot related to his father who is caught up in an investigation of a Chinese corporation perhaps involved in fraud. This comparison point is meant to bring the satire back into the orbit of other rising anti-Asian sentiments in this contemporary moment, especially in relation to China as a major global power. In many respects, Hwang’s latest has much in line with the newest performances that Karen Tei Yamashita penned in Anime Wong—see especially the title work in that collection—concerning the rise of a new form of yellow peril in the 21st century. It is in this juxtaposition that Hwang reminds us that our work in race and ethnic studies is likely never to be finished so long as social difference, inequality and global capitalism remains embedded in our daily lives.
For more on the book and the production (as well as an interview) go here:
http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Edition-published-Theatre-Communications/dp/B00E31GPEW
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/02/22/bearing-the-yellow-face-qa-with-david-henry-hwang/
A Review of Tania James’s The Tusk that Did the Damage (Knopf, 2015).
Tania James’s third publication (after Atlas of Unknowns and Aerogramme: Stories) is The Tusk that Did the Damage. In this slim and naturalistic work, James takes on the subjects of animal studies, poaching, elephant subjectivity, and documentary filmmaking. There are roughly three narrative perspectives. One is given to an Indian man named Manu whose cousin is killed off by a violent elephant known only as the Gravedigger. Manu’s brother Jayan is already connected with the activity of poaching, but he is given pause when he is arrested in conjunction with his illicit hunting. The Gravedigger seems to have a larger vendetta against Manu and his family, and once the elephant comes a little bit too close to home, Manu and Jayan must make some difficult decisions about how they will protect themselves. A key figure in this subplot is Jayan’s wife who exerts a significant and almost romantic pull on Manu. The second perspective is given to a filmmaker named Emma, who has traveled to India to create a documentary film; she is working with a close friend and former lover named Teddy. The main “human contact” of their documentary is none other than a man named Ravi, a veterinarian who is well known for his championing of elephants and the protections he seeks for animals who are deemed to be targets for poachers. The third narrative perspective is completed in the third person and is more mythic: it follows the story of Gravedigger and his journey from being orphaned to his quest to exact a kind of revenge on those who have perpetrated brutalities against him and those that he loves. This third perspective is an interesting one because James chooses to provide readers only with a limited access to the animal’s subjectivity, an interesting move given the use of the first person for Emma and Manu. The toggling between these perspectives can sometimes result in uneven pacing, but James’s ultimate goal and message is obviously and strongly political: there are no winners in the industry of poaching. Elephants are targeted often for parts that become consumed only on an ornamental level, while lower caste and class individuals enter illegal trades simply to survive, while still others seek to shed light on difficult topics without falling subject to relativities and banal messages of hope and positive futures. Without a heroic center, some readers may find James’s novel too bleak, but the seriousness of the topic matter is appropriately matched by the author’s willingness to plumb the contradictory subjectivities of all the characters, human and otherwise. For another book on a similar topic and issue, please see Nikita Lalwani’s The Village, review on Asian American Literature Fans here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/163318.html
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-tusk-that-did-the-damage-tania-james/1119611919?ean=9780385354127
A Review of Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character (Knopf, 2015).
Well, this novel was a definite surprise. Deepti Kapoor’s debut novel A Bad Character is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who resides in Delhi. The novel is fairly anachronic, but the primary diegetic level appears set during a period when the protagonist is college age. She lives with her Aunt and Uncle because her mother has passed away, and her father has essentially abandoned her for a new life in Singapore. As a kind of dispossessed college aged orphan, it is really up to Aunty (as she is called) to marry the narrator off. The narrator, though, is quite resistant to all of the potential matches, especially because they are cloaked under the guise of propriety and decorum. The narrator realizes that her possible marriage matches are already limited by her tenuous socioeconomic status and the lack of support from her surviving parent. It becomes apparent, too, that the narrator is beautiful, an aspect that emerges most forcefully in the ongoing affair that she carries on with a young man, the titular “bad character,” who we discover at the start of the novel has been run over by a car and killed. We know that she and this young man have some sort of complicated romantic history, and it unfolds in fits and starts over a poetically written set of excerpts that move back and forth through time. Kapoor’s writing is raw and unflinching; the novel seems to be inspired in part by works such as Marguerite Duras’ The Lover and Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal. In terms of topic and approach, it also very much reminds me of Lawrence Chua’s Gold by the Inch, especially in the ways that the narrator and her lover spend the nights in wild abandon: driving through the streets of Delhi, snorting cocaine, or having sex. At some point, after the untimely death of her lover, the narrator discovers much of their relationship was a lie: his parents were never actually dead as he had stated, and he actually had a fiancé. These revelations spur the narrator further into a dark hole of romantic melancholy: she starts having casual sex and eventually becomes the kept woman for a successful transnational businessman. All throughout this indelicate disintegration, she waxes on and on about this love she cannot quit, this “bad character” who has infused her psyche so completely that he appears as ghostly presence no matter what she is doing, no matter who she is having sex with. This novel won’t be for everyone, but Kapoor’s talent cannot be denied. Her novel is daring, visceral, corporeal, and never shies away from the grittiness of modern Indian life, the desire for liberation amid still oppressive circumstances, urban ennui, and the romantic relationships that so often together become an unruly alchemical mixture so potent as to become the course for ruin.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/236878/a-bad-character-by-deepti-kapoor
A Review of Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections (Graywolf, 2013).
I’ve been consistently behind on my poetry reading; one of the big gaping examples is that I just recently got to Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections, which was notably the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He may have the distinction of being the only American writer of Asian descent to win the Pulitzer in poetry, but you can correct me if I’m wrong. I had to read 3 sections a couple of times to get a sense of its diverse topics and expansive scope. Seshadri is also quite interested in discourses of science and anthropology, as evidenced in poems like “The Descent of Man” in which the lyric speaker meditates on his physical decline through the extended metaphor of devolution. Certainly, Seshadri has mastered a certain kind of meditative, philosophical lyric (see the wonderful “Surveillance Report” for an example), but perhaps the most influential “section” from the collection appears late and takes the form of something more like a creative nonfiction short story. In “Pacific Fishes of Canada,” Seshadri explores the lives of fishermen on the Pacific Coast; this section is both harrowing and exquisitely wrought. Seshadri’s presumed autobiographical “I” is partly on a research mission, partly on a journey of exploration, as he sets sail with a group of seasoned fishermen. Seshadri is hardly prepared for the physical ailments brought on by rough waters and the constant storms, spending a number of early days on the cabin floor vomiting everything out. Once he gets his sea legs, he begins to get a glimpse of the parallax way of life for the fisherman, especially based upon the dichotomy of weather patterns that can befall a ship. One moment the seas may be calm and stunningly placid, while the next a storm may brew, bringing with it the portent of danger and death. Seshadri is also quite anthropological in his investigations, noting the high distrust that fisherman have for Russians, on the one hand, while much more latitude is given to the Japanese, on the other. There is a mutlifaceted culture out there at sea, and Seshadri’s foray into this prose section is evidence that we need to see a prose-based creative nonfiction from him in the future, to be sure. From that point forward, two poems remain. The notable “Personal Essay” is Seshadri at his most Whitmanesque: long free verse lines that give a sense again of the highly introspective lyric speaker. It is a fitting poem to follow “Pacific Fishes of Canada” and showcases the autobiographical speaker’s desire to find an intersubjective connection. The collection ends with “Light Verse,” a sense that Seshadri’s poetry project is now complete. We’re back at “standard time,” but everything’s a still a little bit off-kilter and we’re all a little bit better for it.
Buy the book Here:
https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/3-sections
A Review of Gene Oishi’s Fox Drum Bebop (Kaya, 2014).
So, I’ve been meaning to review titles from Kaya for a very long time, but I don’t think I’ve managed to do much of that here on Asian American Literature Fans. Most devotees of Asian American literature know that Kaya is one of the very few presses devoted to publishing within the general area. Kaya is well known for its innovative catalogue focusing not only on Asian American literature, but also Asian literatures in translation and the Asia-Pacific more broadly. Here’s a useful link:
http://kaya.com/
Obvious notable books in their catalogue include Younghill Kang’s East Goes West, Kimiko Hahn’s Unbearable Heart, and R. Zamora Linmark’s Rolling the R’s (which I am teaching this very quarter!). In this review, I focus on Gene Oishi’s novel Fox Drum Bebop. Oishi is actually the author of an earlier piece—something marketed as a docu-fiction—called In Search for Hiroshi, which was published in 1987. That docu-fiction is narrated in the first person and though both piece have characters named Hiroshi, it’s clear that Fox Drum Bebop is a separate cultural production. Fox Drum Bebop might be called a novel in stories: each chapter seems to be a self-contained narrative that when linked together provide a multigenerational tapestry of one Japanese American family. Though at this point the internment has become something of an ur-narrative, Oishi’s contribution is to look beyond the scope of this event to see how a family also evolves past that point. Though editorial and marketing blurbs seem to focus on Hiroshi Kono as the protagonist, he is part of a large family that includes a number of brothers (the all-American, but not so American Mickey, the tragic polio ridden Sammy, and Yukio), and one sister (Sachi). Hiroshi’s father, considered a Japanese patriot, is arrested alongside others in his community and is carted off to Montana, while Hiroshi, his mother Otsui, and his siblings must endure the desultory life of the internment camp (I believe they are held in Gila River). Sammy crumbles under the weight of interment and dies before their incarceration is over, but the other family members move on to construct their lives in the shadow of this event. Hiroshi learns to play various musical instruments, finds a great love of jazz, engages in an affair with an older piano teacher, travels to Europe, and eventually marries a Frenchwoman of Jewish background. The novel obviously comes off as largely episodic because of the way that it is structured in these self-contained chapters, but the mosaic is particularly affecting. Oishi is quite keen on elaborating upon not only the internment and its after effects, but the larger multicultural tensions that embroiled California throughout that period. Indeed, even as Hiroshi’s family eventually moves up the economic ladder, Oishi’s friendships and connections to other minorities reveal the schisms that push him to understand his asymmetrical foundations of racial difference and elucidate his privilege in certain circumstances. The payoff for the novel comes in many passages of quiet beauty and deep contemplation. As the novel comes to a class Hiroshi reflects, “The Nisei couldn’t talk about the camps, not only because it disturbed their self-image as Americans, but because it reminded them of a fear that ran too deep to probe. Somewhere at the core of their being, they were still terrified—afraid for themselves and afraid for their children. For all he or his family knew, they’d been brought to the desert to die, to starve in a barren wasteland crawling with snakes, lizards, scorpions, and other unknown dangers. Hiroshi recalled the propaganda: the Japanese were an evil race; they were subhuman, snarling apes, rats vermin. Mother and many of the Issei had been convinced that they would [end of 271] all be killed out here in the wilderness. And though the site had been turned out not to be the extermination camp they had feared, the terror and the sense of their helplessness had remained. At its most primitive level, that terror had been the unspoken shame of being Japanese. But the real threat—the worst degradation, not existentially, but spiritually—was the shame itself” (272). Here, Hiroshi reveals the extent of his understanding of the traumas rooted in internment and how they come to bear upon his life even decades ever the event has concluded. This latency is of course mirrored in the act of so many Japanese American writers completing the kind of recovery work made impossible by the fact of this shame. It is in this sense that such publications are more than just fictions and constitute an archive of witnessing and of potential healing.
Buy the Book Here:
http://kaya.com/books/fox-drum-bebop/
A Review of Liana Liu’s The Memory Key (HarperTeen, 2015).
Liana Liu’s debut novel The Memory Key is part of the blob-like archive that has become young adult paranormal romance. The official HarperCollins site provides a useful plot summary here:
“Lora Mint is determined not to forget.
Though her mother's been dead for five years, Lora struggles to remember every detail about her—most important, the specific events that occurred the night she sped off in her car, never to return.
But in a world ravaged by Vergets disease, a viral form of Alzheimer's, that isn't easy. Usually Lora is aided by her memory key, a standard-issue chip embedded in her brain that preserves memories just the way a human brain would. Then a minor accident damages Lora's key, and her memories go haywire. Suddenly Lora remembers a moment from the night of her mother's disappearance that indicates her death was no accident. Can she trust these formerly forgotten memories? Or is her ability to remember every painful part of her past driving her slowly mad—burying the truth forever?
Lora's story of longing for her lost mother—and for the truth behind her broken memories—takes readers on a twisty ride. The authentic, emotional narrative sparks fascinating questions about memory and privacy in a world that increasingly relies on electronic recall.”
At its core, The Memory Key is also a mystery novel. Lora Mint’s malfunctioning memory key gives her the ability to recall past events with full clarity; she can remember minor details that give her reasonable cause to reconsider what happened to her mother. Lora Mint becomes our noir heroine in that respect, as she looks into her mother’s past, determined to find out if the circumstances behind her death were perpetrated by a malicious party intent on silencing research that might prove to undermine the virtual monopoly held by the makers of the memory key. Lora Mint’s mother, Jeanette (nee Lee) had worked for Keep Corp, as a kind of public relations scientist, but when her research indicates that there may be something wrong with the newest generation of memory keys, she is killed in a car accident. Lora’s investigation includes numerous trips to the library (where she also happens to work); she enlists the help of her best friend, Wendy, as well as Wendy’s brother Tim, while she conducts interviews with individuals related to Keep Corp and with Grand Gardens, the retirement home that seems to have a connection to all of the events that are unfolding. There are certain details of the plot that remain intriguing to consider from the level of social difference. Lora’s family background on her mother’s side is notably an immigrant one, but it’s never quite clear what that immigrant background is. Liu chooses to deracinate her fictional world in this way, though still referencing possible social difference in that immigrant background. It’s an interesting choice to make, one that didn’t make full sense to me, especially since the novel is so politically invested in its critique of governance and corporate interests. Liu’s novel is briskly paced, and most readers will find Lora to be a likable heroine, but the conclusion is surprisingly anti-climactic and undercuts the impact of an otherwise dynamic plot and narrative trajectory. The novel’s underwhelming conclusion nevertheless sets up the possibility of sequels, but one is uncertain at this time whether or not this work is a stand-alone novel or will see future installments. Certainly, fans of young adult fiction and paranormal romance will be pleased by this debut. It has all the requisite formula elements: the ordinary but not so ordinary young teen girl on a quest to defeat the big bad while snagging a potential paramour along the way.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062306647/the-memory-key
A Review of Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know (Bloomsbury USA, 2015).
Tautly written and perfectly understated in its impact, Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let him Know is a wonderful debut novel. Billed as a novel in stories, Don’t let him Know begins with an opening chapter involving a South Asian mother named Romola discovering that her adult son Amit has come upon a letter purportedly written by a former lover of Romola’s named Sumit. Romola immediately blanches at the letter, but Roy has us in his masterful hands. Indeed, though it seems as if Romola assents to the fact that she has been found out by her son, that she once had a love affair with this man before she had married the man who would come to be Amit’s father (Avinash), the second chapter reveals another secret entirely. The letter that was written was actually penned by a former lover of Avinash; Romola had come upon the letter by accident and realized what the letter had meant but never actually confronted her husband about it. Roy pens these stories in an anachronic order, so there is something of a palimpsestic experience to reading this novel. We discover things about characters that will then be contextualized in a new way by information brought up in the past. Roy’s opening gambit is somewhat of a risk because it holds our attention so acutely that when the novel starts moving to other characters and relational contexts, our attention is potentially challenged, and we wonder, for instance, whether or not the illicit romance between Sumit and Avinash will ever be fully explored. Roy frustrates readers in the best possible way. That is, the point seems to be about the elliptics of the immigration experience and that secrets remain buried instead of climactically revealed. The illict queer romance that opens the collection is of course directed at the many illicit variations on connections that appear in the novel, such as interracial/ interminority romance (between Amit and an African American woman) and the buddy love affair between Romola and a man who would later become a Bollywood Star. What is evident is that Roy is putting forth the asymmetrical, but interlinked ways in which characters act out on desires that can be labeled as deviant, and this central thematic provides the novel a solid enough foundation that we don’t mind how the plot will ultimately meander as a result of the formal conceit that Roy uses. Indeed, the final chapter’s minor triumph is a beautiful and fitting conclusion to a cultural production that revels in nuance rather than bombast and theatrics.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dont-let-him-know-sandip-roy/1119439494?ean=9781620408988
For a useful interview, go here!
http://www.npr.org/2015/02/24/383581229/family-secrets-and-mango-chutney-in-dont-let-him-know
A Review of Jo Whittemore’s Colonial Madness (Simon and Schuster Young Readers, 2015).
I’ve been meaning to read something by Jo Whittemore for a long time. She’s the author of two different series for young readers, one that is fantasy based and another that occurs in an educational setting (with titles like Front Page Face/Off). Whittemore’s latest, Colonial Madness, gave me an opportunity to engage a piece of her publication oeuvre. As the official site states, the book’s synopsis is roughly like so: “Tori Porter is best friends with her mom, and most of the time it’s awesome. Not many girls have a mom who’d take them to a graveyard for hide-and-seek or fill the bathtub with ice cream for the world’s biggest sundae. But as much as Tori loves having fun, she sometimes wishes her mom would act a little more her age. Like now. Thanks to her mom’s poor financial planning, they are in danger of losing their business and their home. But an unusual opportunity arises in the form of a bizarre type of contest put on by an eccentric relative: Whoever can survive two weeks in the Archibald Family’s colonial manor will inherit the property. The catch? Contestants have to live as in colonial times: no modern conveniences, no outside help, and daily tests of their abilities to survive challenges of the time period.” Pitched at reading audiences aged nine to thirteen, I seem to fall completely outside of that group, but this novel proved to be the right reading option after a long night of teaching, and I needed something perhaps a little bit more escapist in character. What the synopsis doesn’t mention is the fact that the eccentric relative (named Muriel Archibald) is purportedly dead (or so we’re made to think based upon an early missive that Tori and her mom receive), and she has a huge inheritance that she intended to give away, but it comes with strings: relatives must compete in a contest based upon colonial-era challenges in order to have a chance to win the property. Thus, the interested relatives, who include the family of Tori’s cousin Angel, who also happens to be her close friend, all gather on the property to begin the contest. Hijinks obviously ensue, especially when it becomes apparent that the frontrunners may do anything to win the contest. An early challenge involving the making of breakfast sees Tori and her Mom come in dead last, with her mother having fallen asleep while attending to a task required for the ingredients needed for the breakfast. Tori soon loses faith in her mother’s ability to help them win the competition and this crisis is the root of the novel’s tension: the mother-daughter bond will obviously be the way that the two will have any chance to survive the colonial times. Whittemore is of course not content to leave the plot solely to the mercurial balance of mother-daughter connections; she adds another wrinkle into the novelistic equation with a rather innocuous romance plot that begins to emerge after Tori shows some interest in one of the employees working as part of the colonial-era townsfolk who populate the property. Though eventually outlawed from meeting up with this boy, Caleb, due to the perceived unfair advantage she might be receiving from this budding romance, Tori nevertheless continues to meet with Caleb in secret, even defying her mother’s wishes. Whittemore’s novel is certainly on the frothy side. For those wondering about what happened to indigenous populations and genocidal depictions, you’ll want to look elsewhere. Colonial Madness stays stringently on the side of popcorn entertainment fare. For those looking for a different form of colonial or postcolonial madness (from Asian American writers) in which race and indigenous cultures are featured prominently as elements of the plot, see Sabina Murray’s A Carnivore’s Inquiry.
For more about the book, go here:
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Colonial-Madness/Jo-Whittemore/9781481405089
With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have.
In this post, reviews of Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014); David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face (Theatre Communications Group, 2009); Tania James’s The Tusk that Did the Damage (Knopf, 2015); Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character (Knopf, 2015); Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections (Graywolf, 2013); Gene Oishi’s Fox Drum Bebop (Kaya, 2014); Liana Liu’s The Memory Key (HarperTeen, 2015); Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know (Bloomsbury USA, 2015); Jo Whittemore’s Colonial Madness (Simon and Schuster Young Readers, 2015).
A Review of Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014).
Ryka Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song (Topside Signature, 2014) is her follow-up to Seasonal Velocities. In He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song, Aoki fractures perspective amongst an expansive set of characters that reminds one of an Altman film if it was set in Hawai‘i and involved a plot concerning performance and the “true meaning” of an island identity. At its core, Aoki’s spirited, slightly surrealistic, and ultimately upbeat novel challenges settler colonialist rhetoric in its evocation of a pluralist ethos for Hawaiian identity. Indeed, the opening gambit is none other than the burden that one of the characters, Noelani Choi, feels concerning Hawaiian dance and whether or not she still feels rooted to this kind of performance. Though gifted with the ability to dance, Noelani is particularly ambivalent about her talents and much of the novel delves into her own spiritual and identity quest as it relates to hula and her halau (performance troupe). But there are a number of other quirky characters, including Kamakawiwo‘ole Shulman—Kam for short—a Jewish musician who relocates to the islands and fashions himself with an appropriate name for his new home. There is the friendship that develops over the course of the novel between Harry, a local man who is still recovering from the loss of his wife, and Steve Yates, a successful businessman, who relocates to the islands after it is discovered that his wife (Lisa) may be dying. Harry and Steve bond over their mutual love of fishing. There is Nona Watanabe, who holds a torch for Harry, but can’t seem to break past his melancholic subjectivity. Nona and Lisa become the natural opposing pair to Harry and Steve. One of the most hilarious and nefarious characters in the novel is Eva Matsuoka, owner of a successful plate lunch business, who is looking to steal the recipe for the super delicious chicken that Nona is somehow able to make. Though the narratives seem disparate at first, Aoki is patient and begins to gradually twine them, especially through the motif of the Hawaiian dance performance and what it means to be Hawaiian. Toward the conclusion, Noelani Choi contemplates: “But what is Hawaiian? Where you stay born? The color of your skin, hair? Your blood? Would be easy, yeah? Maybe if you eat opihi or kulolo?” (269). Noelani later decides: “It wasn’t always about blood or culture. It could be. Sometimes, the spirit gets passed on to someone born from the aina. But sometimes, it passes to someone without one speck of Hawaiian. And then what? You cannot just say no” (270). In this sense, Aoki’s He Mele A Hilo: A Hilo Song articulates an expansive and inspiring approach to the local and Hawaiian identities. Aoki’s novel would be productive to read alongside other writers already highlighted in AALF including Gary Park and Kristiana Kahahauwila; for reviews of their work, see:
https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6144763-asian-american-literature-fans-megareview-for-april-21st-2014
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/162971.html
For more on Topside Signature, go here:
http://www.topsidesignature.com/
For Ryka Aoki’s novel, go here:
http://store.topsidepress.com/shop/he-mele-a-hilo/
A Review of David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face (Theatre Communications Group, 2009).
I’m obviously underread in the area of Asian American drama, a fact that is made (alarmingly) apparent as I am catching up on David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face, perhaps one of the most innovative additions to the field in the last decade, given its emphasis on “meta-drama” (is that a word?) and Hwang’s self-conscious exploration of race and performance in this apparently post-Asian moment. For Hwang, the play gives him the opportunity to satirize the controversy over the casting of Jonathan Pryce in Miss Saigon. Though many years have past since that debacle, the reverberations of this event remain for Asian American Studies scholars, artists, actors, and activists, especially as elucidated by Hwang’s incendiary drama. Poking fun at himself, the producers of Miss Saigon, identity politics, all the while clarifying the necessity of sensitivity in racial casting, Hwang pulls off a rare feat that entertains, mocks, but still somehow manages to call attention to the white supremacist inclinations of performance fields. Hwang creates a lead role based upon himself and this “fictive” Hwang piece is working on the production called Face Value, which is in its casting phases. Eventually, Marcus Dahlman, who is apparently of Jewish descent (via Siberia), is cast in a lead role meant to be played by someone of Asian descent. Hwang, eventually realizing his error, tries to cover his tracks by proclaiming that Dalhman is indeed Asian, though by way of continentality—he comes from Russia after all, which is a country in Asia—rather than through racial difference and hypodescent. Marcus parlays mistaken identity into a full-fledged career as a so-called Asian American actor, changing his appellation to Gee, which is of course more appropriately Chinese than Siberian. Hwang is astute to play off the elision between continental and geographical definitions of Asia in contrast to racial formations of Asian groups, but he juxtaposes this main storyline alongside that of a conspiracy type plot related to his father who is caught up in an investigation of a Chinese corporation perhaps involved in fraud. This comparison point is meant to bring the satire back into the orbit of other rising anti-Asian sentiments in this contemporary moment, especially in relation to China as a major global power. In many respects, Hwang’s latest has much in line with the newest performances that Karen Tei Yamashita penned in Anime Wong—see especially the title work in that collection—concerning the rise of a new form of yellow peril in the 21st century. It is in this juxtaposition that Hwang reminds us that our work in race and ethnic studies is likely never to be finished so long as social difference, inequality and global capitalism remains embedded in our daily lives.
For more on the book and the production (as well as an interview) go here:
http://www.amazon.com/Yellow-Edition-published-Theatre-Communications/dp/B00E31GPEW
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/02/22/bearing-the-yellow-face-qa-with-david-henry-hwang/
A Review of Tania James’s The Tusk that Did the Damage (Knopf, 2015).
Tania James’s third publication (after Atlas of Unknowns and Aerogramme: Stories) is The Tusk that Did the Damage. In this slim and naturalistic work, James takes on the subjects of animal studies, poaching, elephant subjectivity, and documentary filmmaking. There are roughly three narrative perspectives. One is given to an Indian man named Manu whose cousin is killed off by a violent elephant known only as the Gravedigger. Manu’s brother Jayan is already connected with the activity of poaching, but he is given pause when he is arrested in conjunction with his illicit hunting. The Gravedigger seems to have a larger vendetta against Manu and his family, and once the elephant comes a little bit too close to home, Manu and Jayan must make some difficult decisions about how they will protect themselves. A key figure in this subplot is Jayan’s wife who exerts a significant and almost romantic pull on Manu. The second perspective is given to a filmmaker named Emma, who has traveled to India to create a documentary film; she is working with a close friend and former lover named Teddy. The main “human contact” of their documentary is none other than a man named Ravi, a veterinarian who is well known for his championing of elephants and the protections he seeks for animals who are deemed to be targets for poachers. The third narrative perspective is completed in the third person and is more mythic: it follows the story of Gravedigger and his journey from being orphaned to his quest to exact a kind of revenge on those who have perpetrated brutalities against him and those that he loves. This third perspective is an interesting one because James chooses to provide readers only with a limited access to the animal’s subjectivity, an interesting move given the use of the first person for Emma and Manu. The toggling between these perspectives can sometimes result in uneven pacing, but James’s ultimate goal and message is obviously and strongly political: there are no winners in the industry of poaching. Elephants are targeted often for parts that become consumed only on an ornamental level, while lower caste and class individuals enter illegal trades simply to survive, while still others seek to shed light on difficult topics without falling subject to relativities and banal messages of hope and positive futures. Without a heroic center, some readers may find James’s novel too bleak, but the seriousness of the topic matter is appropriately matched by the author’s willingness to plumb the contradictory subjectivities of all the characters, human and otherwise. For another book on a similar topic and issue, please see Nikita Lalwani’s The Village, review on Asian American Literature Fans here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/163318.html
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-tusk-that-did-the-damage-tania-james/1119611919?ean=9780385354127
A Review of Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character (Knopf, 2015).
Well, this novel was a definite surprise. Deepti Kapoor’s debut novel A Bad Character is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who resides in Delhi. The novel is fairly anachronic, but the primary diegetic level appears set during a period when the protagonist is college age. She lives with her Aunt and Uncle because her mother has passed away, and her father has essentially abandoned her for a new life in Singapore. As a kind of dispossessed college aged orphan, it is really up to Aunty (as she is called) to marry the narrator off. The narrator, though, is quite resistant to all of the potential matches, especially because they are cloaked under the guise of propriety and decorum. The narrator realizes that her possible marriage matches are already limited by her tenuous socioeconomic status and the lack of support from her surviving parent. It becomes apparent, too, that the narrator is beautiful, an aspect that emerges most forcefully in the ongoing affair that she carries on with a young man, the titular “bad character,” who we discover at the start of the novel has been run over by a car and killed. We know that she and this young man have some sort of complicated romantic history, and it unfolds in fits and starts over a poetically written set of excerpts that move back and forth through time. Kapoor’s writing is raw and unflinching; the novel seems to be inspired in part by works such as Marguerite Duras’ The Lover and Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal. In terms of topic and approach, it also very much reminds me of Lawrence Chua’s Gold by the Inch, especially in the ways that the narrator and her lover spend the nights in wild abandon: driving through the streets of Delhi, snorting cocaine, or having sex. At some point, after the untimely death of her lover, the narrator discovers much of their relationship was a lie: his parents were never actually dead as he had stated, and he actually had a fiancé. These revelations spur the narrator further into a dark hole of romantic melancholy: she starts having casual sex and eventually becomes the kept woman for a successful transnational businessman. All throughout this indelicate disintegration, she waxes on and on about this love she cannot quit, this “bad character” who has infused her psyche so completely that he appears as ghostly presence no matter what she is doing, no matter who she is having sex with. This novel won’t be for everyone, but Kapoor’s talent cannot be denied. Her novel is daring, visceral, corporeal, and never shies away from the grittiness of modern Indian life, the desire for liberation amid still oppressive circumstances, urban ennui, and the romantic relationships that so often together become an unruly alchemical mixture so potent as to become the course for ruin.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/236878/a-bad-character-by-deepti-kapoor
A Review of Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections (Graywolf, 2013).
I’ve been consistently behind on my poetry reading; one of the big gaping examples is that I just recently got to Vijay Seshadri’s 3 Sections, which was notably the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He may have the distinction of being the only American writer of Asian descent to win the Pulitzer in poetry, but you can correct me if I’m wrong. I had to read 3 sections a couple of times to get a sense of its diverse topics and expansive scope. Seshadri is also quite interested in discourses of science and anthropology, as evidenced in poems like “The Descent of Man” in which the lyric speaker meditates on his physical decline through the extended metaphor of devolution. Certainly, Seshadri has mastered a certain kind of meditative, philosophical lyric (see the wonderful “Surveillance Report” for an example), but perhaps the most influential “section” from the collection appears late and takes the form of something more like a creative nonfiction short story. In “Pacific Fishes of Canada,” Seshadri explores the lives of fishermen on the Pacific Coast; this section is both harrowing and exquisitely wrought. Seshadri’s presumed autobiographical “I” is partly on a research mission, partly on a journey of exploration, as he sets sail with a group of seasoned fishermen. Seshadri is hardly prepared for the physical ailments brought on by rough waters and the constant storms, spending a number of early days on the cabin floor vomiting everything out. Once he gets his sea legs, he begins to get a glimpse of the parallax way of life for the fisherman, especially based upon the dichotomy of weather patterns that can befall a ship. One moment the seas may be calm and stunningly placid, while the next a storm may brew, bringing with it the portent of danger and death. Seshadri is also quite anthropological in his investigations, noting the high distrust that fisherman have for Russians, on the one hand, while much more latitude is given to the Japanese, on the other. There is a mutlifaceted culture out there at sea, and Seshadri’s foray into this prose section is evidence that we need to see a prose-based creative nonfiction from him in the future, to be sure. From that point forward, two poems remain. The notable “Personal Essay” is Seshadri at his most Whitmanesque: long free verse lines that give a sense again of the highly introspective lyric speaker. It is a fitting poem to follow “Pacific Fishes of Canada” and showcases the autobiographical speaker’s desire to find an intersubjective connection. The collection ends with “Light Verse,” a sense that Seshadri’s poetry project is now complete. We’re back at “standard time,” but everything’s a still a little bit off-kilter and we’re all a little bit better for it.
Buy the book Here:
https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/3-sections
A Review of Gene Oishi’s Fox Drum Bebop (Kaya, 2014).
So, I’ve been meaning to review titles from Kaya for a very long time, but I don’t think I’ve managed to do much of that here on Asian American Literature Fans. Most devotees of Asian American literature know that Kaya is one of the very few presses devoted to publishing within the general area. Kaya is well known for its innovative catalogue focusing not only on Asian American literature, but also Asian literatures in translation and the Asia-Pacific more broadly. Here’s a useful link:
http://kaya.com/
Obvious notable books in their catalogue include Younghill Kang’s East Goes West, Kimiko Hahn’s Unbearable Heart, and R. Zamora Linmark’s Rolling the R’s (which I am teaching this very quarter!). In this review, I focus on Gene Oishi’s novel Fox Drum Bebop. Oishi is actually the author of an earlier piece—something marketed as a docu-fiction—called In Search for Hiroshi, which was published in 1987. That docu-fiction is narrated in the first person and though both piece have characters named Hiroshi, it’s clear that Fox Drum Bebop is a separate cultural production. Fox Drum Bebop might be called a novel in stories: each chapter seems to be a self-contained narrative that when linked together provide a multigenerational tapestry of one Japanese American family. Though at this point the internment has become something of an ur-narrative, Oishi’s contribution is to look beyond the scope of this event to see how a family also evolves past that point. Though editorial and marketing blurbs seem to focus on Hiroshi Kono as the protagonist, he is part of a large family that includes a number of brothers (the all-American, but not so American Mickey, the tragic polio ridden Sammy, and Yukio), and one sister (Sachi). Hiroshi’s father, considered a Japanese patriot, is arrested alongside others in his community and is carted off to Montana, while Hiroshi, his mother Otsui, and his siblings must endure the desultory life of the internment camp (I believe they are held in Gila River). Sammy crumbles under the weight of interment and dies before their incarceration is over, but the other family members move on to construct their lives in the shadow of this event. Hiroshi learns to play various musical instruments, finds a great love of jazz, engages in an affair with an older piano teacher, travels to Europe, and eventually marries a Frenchwoman of Jewish background. The novel obviously comes off as largely episodic because of the way that it is structured in these self-contained chapters, but the mosaic is particularly affecting. Oishi is quite keen on elaborating upon not only the internment and its after effects, but the larger multicultural tensions that embroiled California throughout that period. Indeed, even as Hiroshi’s family eventually moves up the economic ladder, Oishi’s friendships and connections to other minorities reveal the schisms that push him to understand his asymmetrical foundations of racial difference and elucidate his privilege in certain circumstances. The payoff for the novel comes in many passages of quiet beauty and deep contemplation. As the novel comes to a class Hiroshi reflects, “The Nisei couldn’t talk about the camps, not only because it disturbed their self-image as Americans, but because it reminded them of a fear that ran too deep to probe. Somewhere at the core of their being, they were still terrified—afraid for themselves and afraid for their children. For all he or his family knew, they’d been brought to the desert to die, to starve in a barren wasteland crawling with snakes, lizards, scorpions, and other unknown dangers. Hiroshi recalled the propaganda: the Japanese were an evil race; they were subhuman, snarling apes, rats vermin. Mother and many of the Issei had been convinced that they would [end of 271] all be killed out here in the wilderness. And though the site had been turned out not to be the extermination camp they had feared, the terror and the sense of their helplessness had remained. At its most primitive level, that terror had been the unspoken shame of being Japanese. But the real threat—the worst degradation, not existentially, but spiritually—was the shame itself” (272). Here, Hiroshi reveals the extent of his understanding of the traumas rooted in internment and how they come to bear upon his life even decades ever the event has concluded. This latency is of course mirrored in the act of so many Japanese American writers completing the kind of recovery work made impossible by the fact of this shame. It is in this sense that such publications are more than just fictions and constitute an archive of witnessing and of potential healing.
Buy the Book Here:
http://kaya.com/books/fox-drum-bebop/
A Review of Liana Liu’s The Memory Key (HarperTeen, 2015).
Liana Liu’s debut novel The Memory Key is part of the blob-like archive that has become young adult paranormal romance. The official HarperCollins site provides a useful plot summary here:
“Lora Mint is determined not to forget.
Though her mother's been dead for five years, Lora struggles to remember every detail about her—most important, the specific events that occurred the night she sped off in her car, never to return.
But in a world ravaged by Vergets disease, a viral form of Alzheimer's, that isn't easy. Usually Lora is aided by her memory key, a standard-issue chip embedded in her brain that preserves memories just the way a human brain would. Then a minor accident damages Lora's key, and her memories go haywire. Suddenly Lora remembers a moment from the night of her mother's disappearance that indicates her death was no accident. Can she trust these formerly forgotten memories? Or is her ability to remember every painful part of her past driving her slowly mad—burying the truth forever?
Lora's story of longing for her lost mother—and for the truth behind her broken memories—takes readers on a twisty ride. The authentic, emotional narrative sparks fascinating questions about memory and privacy in a world that increasingly relies on electronic recall.”
At its core, The Memory Key is also a mystery novel. Lora Mint’s malfunctioning memory key gives her the ability to recall past events with full clarity; she can remember minor details that give her reasonable cause to reconsider what happened to her mother. Lora Mint becomes our noir heroine in that respect, as she looks into her mother’s past, determined to find out if the circumstances behind her death were perpetrated by a malicious party intent on silencing research that might prove to undermine the virtual monopoly held by the makers of the memory key. Lora Mint’s mother, Jeanette (nee Lee) had worked for Keep Corp, as a kind of public relations scientist, but when her research indicates that there may be something wrong with the newest generation of memory keys, she is killed in a car accident. Lora’s investigation includes numerous trips to the library (where she also happens to work); she enlists the help of her best friend, Wendy, as well as Wendy’s brother Tim, while she conducts interviews with individuals related to Keep Corp and with Grand Gardens, the retirement home that seems to have a connection to all of the events that are unfolding. There are certain details of the plot that remain intriguing to consider from the level of social difference. Lora’s family background on her mother’s side is notably an immigrant one, but it’s never quite clear what that immigrant background is. Liu chooses to deracinate her fictional world in this way, though still referencing possible social difference in that immigrant background. It’s an interesting choice to make, one that didn’t make full sense to me, especially since the novel is so politically invested in its critique of governance and corporate interests. Liu’s novel is briskly paced, and most readers will find Lora to be a likable heroine, but the conclusion is surprisingly anti-climactic and undercuts the impact of an otherwise dynamic plot and narrative trajectory. The novel’s underwhelming conclusion nevertheless sets up the possibility of sequels, but one is uncertain at this time whether or not this work is a stand-alone novel or will see future installments. Certainly, fans of young adult fiction and paranormal romance will be pleased by this debut. It has all the requisite formula elements: the ordinary but not so ordinary young teen girl on a quest to defeat the big bad while snagging a potential paramour along the way.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.harpercollins.com/9780062306647/the-memory-key
A Review of Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let Him Know (Bloomsbury USA, 2015).
Tautly written and perfectly understated in its impact, Sandip Roy’s Don’t Let him Know is a wonderful debut novel. Billed as a novel in stories, Don’t let him Know begins with an opening chapter involving a South Asian mother named Romola discovering that her adult son Amit has come upon a letter purportedly written by a former lover of Romola’s named Sumit. Romola immediately blanches at the letter, but Roy has us in his masterful hands. Indeed, though it seems as if Romola assents to the fact that she has been found out by her son, that she once had a love affair with this man before she had married the man who would come to be Amit’s father (Avinash), the second chapter reveals another secret entirely. The letter that was written was actually penned by a former lover of Avinash; Romola had come upon the letter by accident and realized what the letter had meant but never actually confronted her husband about it. Roy pens these stories in an anachronic order, so there is something of a palimpsestic experience to reading this novel. We discover things about characters that will then be contextualized in a new way by information brought up in the past. Roy’s opening gambit is somewhat of a risk because it holds our attention so acutely that when the novel starts moving to other characters and relational contexts, our attention is potentially challenged, and we wonder, for instance, whether or not the illicit romance between Sumit and Avinash will ever be fully explored. Roy frustrates readers in the best possible way. That is, the point seems to be about the elliptics of the immigration experience and that secrets remain buried instead of climactically revealed. The illict queer romance that opens the collection is of course directed at the many illicit variations on connections that appear in the novel, such as interracial/ interminority romance (between Amit and an African American woman) and the buddy love affair between Romola and a man who would later become a Bollywood Star. What is evident is that Roy is putting forth the asymmetrical, but interlinked ways in which characters act out on desires that can be labeled as deviant, and this central thematic provides the novel a solid enough foundation that we don’t mind how the plot will ultimately meander as a result of the formal conceit that Roy uses. Indeed, the final chapter’s minor triumph is a beautiful and fitting conclusion to a cultural production that revels in nuance rather than bombast and theatrics.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dont-let-him-know-sandip-roy/1119439494?ean=9781620408988
For a useful interview, go here!
http://www.npr.org/2015/02/24/383581229/family-secrets-and-mango-chutney-in-dont-let-him-know
A Review of Jo Whittemore’s Colonial Madness (Simon and Schuster Young Readers, 2015).
I’ve been meaning to read something by Jo Whittemore for a long time. She’s the author of two different series for young readers, one that is fantasy based and another that occurs in an educational setting (with titles like Front Page Face/Off). Whittemore’s latest, Colonial Madness, gave me an opportunity to engage a piece of her publication oeuvre. As the official site states, the book’s synopsis is roughly like so: “Tori Porter is best friends with her mom, and most of the time it’s awesome. Not many girls have a mom who’d take them to a graveyard for hide-and-seek or fill the bathtub with ice cream for the world’s biggest sundae. But as much as Tori loves having fun, she sometimes wishes her mom would act a little more her age. Like now. Thanks to her mom’s poor financial planning, they are in danger of losing their business and their home. But an unusual opportunity arises in the form of a bizarre type of contest put on by an eccentric relative: Whoever can survive two weeks in the Archibald Family’s colonial manor will inherit the property. The catch? Contestants have to live as in colonial times: no modern conveniences, no outside help, and daily tests of their abilities to survive challenges of the time period.” Pitched at reading audiences aged nine to thirteen, I seem to fall completely outside of that group, but this novel proved to be the right reading option after a long night of teaching, and I needed something perhaps a little bit more escapist in character. What the synopsis doesn’t mention is the fact that the eccentric relative (named Muriel Archibald) is purportedly dead (or so we’re made to think based upon an early missive that Tori and her mom receive), and she has a huge inheritance that she intended to give away, but it comes with strings: relatives must compete in a contest based upon colonial-era challenges in order to have a chance to win the property. Thus, the interested relatives, who include the family of Tori’s cousin Angel, who also happens to be her close friend, all gather on the property to begin the contest. Hijinks obviously ensue, especially when it becomes apparent that the frontrunners may do anything to win the contest. An early challenge involving the making of breakfast sees Tori and her Mom come in dead last, with her mother having fallen asleep while attending to a task required for the ingredients needed for the breakfast. Tori soon loses faith in her mother’s ability to help them win the competition and this crisis is the root of the novel’s tension: the mother-daughter bond will obviously be the way that the two will have any chance to survive the colonial times. Whittemore is of course not content to leave the plot solely to the mercurial balance of mother-daughter connections; she adds another wrinkle into the novelistic equation with a rather innocuous romance plot that begins to emerge after Tori shows some interest in one of the employees working as part of the colonial-era townsfolk who populate the property. Though eventually outlawed from meeting up with this boy, Caleb, due to the perceived unfair advantage she might be receiving from this budding romance, Tori nevertheless continues to meet with Caleb in secret, even defying her mother’s wishes. Whittemore’s novel is certainly on the frothy side. For those wondering about what happened to indigenous populations and genocidal depictions, you’ll want to look elsewhere. Colonial Madness stays stringently on the side of popcorn entertainment fare. For those looking for a different form of colonial or postcolonial madness (from Asian American writers) in which race and indigenous cultures are featured prominently as elements of the plot, see Sabina Murray’s A Carnivore’s Inquiry.
For more about the book, go here:
http://books.simonandschuster.com/Colonial-Madness/Jo-Whittemore/9781481405089
