Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 53
July 10, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for July 10, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for July 10, 2014
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, grammatical errors, and other such things. Feel free to contact me with any questions: ssohnucr@gmail.com.
In this post, reviews of Livia Blackburne’s Midnight Thief (Disney-Hyperion, 2014); Leila Rasheed’s Diamonds and Deceit (Disney-Hyperion, 2014); Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer (First Second 2014); Jenny Han’s To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2014); and Elsie Chapman’s Divided (Random House Kid’s Division, 2014).
A Review of Livia Blackburne’s Midnight Thief (Disney-Hyperion, 2014).
This novel was one of the highly anticipated new releases of 2014 in the young adult/ fantasy romance genres. In Livia Blackburne’s debut Midnight Thief, she draws upon the long history of Anglo-Saxon mythology and fantasy to create a story about an orphan named Kyra, who moves from moonlighting as a thief to becoming a trained assassin. There are palaces and armed guards, talk of griffins, people who can speak to animals, antagonists called demon riders, all the things you would want in this kind of genre. Certainly, enthusiasts of role-playing games and Dungeons & Dragons will immediately embrace this novel with its familiar vocabulary, settings, and ethnic signifiers. Other readers will be drawn to Kyra as a romantic lead, coming of age in an environment where it is unclear what her prospects might be. Given a lack of noble heritage, her options for male romance seem limited to the assassin’s guild leader, James, who is considerably older than her. As Blackburne’s narrator (the story is told from the third person) points out a number of times, Kyra is lucky enough as it is to have room and board at a tavern called the Drunken Dog. She’s found her own patchwork family with a fellow former street urchin, Flick, and other strays who have managed to survive out on the streets and later, to make a living out of what skills they developed. Kyra’s got a knack for speed and sleight of hand, which makes her a target of the assassin’s guild, who want her abilities to gain a better sense of the Palace, its layouts and its structural weaknesses. Kyra, sensing the possibility of a steady paycheck in an economically turbulent time, decides she will take on this position, even at the consternation of Flick, her most trusted friend. The other narrative involves Tristam, a knight, who must endure the death of a very close ally, James, and vows to seek vengeance against the Demon Riders who killed him. The Demon Riders seem to have magical abilities related to large, vicious cats, and these barbarians have increased the number of raids and attacks in the area. Though these two narratives are unrelated in the first hundred or so pages, Blackburne is patient and eventually draws the two main characters together. Some of the later stage reveals are not at all surprising, but Blackburne is certainly aware of her target audience. Readers of YA/ fantasy romances will get all that they have wanted: a spirited female protagonist of humble origins who makes it in a world of magic, mischief, and misogynistic men and still manages to find the one guy—with appropriately chiseled abdominal muscles—who might actually have a sense of feminist empowerment. For scholars of race and ethnicity, Blackburne’s novel is of course part of the postracial fictional contingent, which is not really so post-racial after all. The Barbarians, and Demon Riders, come to signify as the racial Other; along the way, there is talk of miscegenation and the problems that come with it. As with many other works in this YA/ fantasy genre, racial difference tends to be allegorized or analogized. Where the novel eventually moves with this issue is more suggestive of an ethos toward uneasy cultural hybridity, but Blackburne’s debut leaves quite a bit of room for more exploration of the fictional world. There is no indication that this novel is part of a planned trilogy, so we’ll wait to see if we will have more adventures with Kyra. I can already imagine future titles in what could be the three-part arc: Midnight Assassin? Midnight Rogue? Midnight Scoundrel? LOL.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Thief-Livia-Blackburne/dp/1423176383/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404833270&sr=8-1&keywords=livia+blackburne
A Review of Leila Rasheed’s Diamonds and Deceit (Disney-Hyperion, 2014).
Leila Rasheed returns with her follow up to the “At Somerton” series with Diamonds and Deceit (after Cinders & Sapphires). As with other YA fictional romances, this one looks to be the standard trilogy. In this installment, there are a number of different storylines that Rasheed will juggle. Ava, our ostensible protagonist from book 1, is getting married to a rich aristocrat named Laurence, even though she still harbors feelings for the Ravi, the Indian student with whom she engaged a brief romantic dalliance, but realized—especially given their different racial backgrounds—that such a match would be unthinkable and ill advisable given her own privileged status. Rose, who was once a handmaid, has now become a member of Ava’s family. The transition from handmaid to an elite is difficult, as Rose must entitle herself to the wealth that she once only viewed on the sidelines. Complicating matters is the rakish Duke of Huntleigh, who has come to town for the season and with an eye on Rose. Little does the Duke know of Rose’s humble origins. Charlotte Templeton is in her third season and is desperate to land the right marriage proposal. Unable to woo Laurence, Charlotte looks to disrupt other romances and has her sights set on the affluent Duke of Huntleigh. Meanwhile, in another romance plot, Sebastian Templeton desperately attempts to find a way to save his valet (and lover) Oliver from taking the fall for an accidental death which has been incorrectly determined to be a homicide that Oliver perpetrated. Finally, Michael Templeton is still in love with the domestic servant Priya, a match as ill-advised as the one that could have happened between Ravi and Ada (given the interracial/interclass issues). Michael seeks to find a way to be with Priya despite this difference in class and race, much to the ire of his aristocratic family. The publishers of this volume saw fit to include a very useful family tree at the novel’s beginning and which graces the binding pages of the hardcover edition, but noticeably absent from this tree are the many servants, housemaids and other employees that help run the various estates that appear in the novel. See the diagram here:
http://i50.tinypic.com/14t1lxi.jpg
In this sense, the family tree fails to get at the complexity of Rasheed’s work, which indeed seems to “queer” every single romance that appears, either through an interclass, interracial, and/or same-sex paradigm. Rasheed establishes the aristocratic norm and from there explores illicit variations on that norm. This second installment, as they all seem to go in the trilogy format, is fairly dark and reveals that there are significant consequences, especially from those hailing from the lower classes, as they attempt to move up along society’s ladder. Further still, Rasheed is continually operating with a larger historical tapestry in mind, with references to World War I and colonial India always in the background. Rasheed’s work is no doubt entertaining, but one would be remiss not to mention the novel’s obvious and important social critiques.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Diamonds-Deceit-Somerton-Leila-Rasheed/dp/1423171187/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401117933&sr=8-1&keywords=leila+rasheed
A Review of Jenny Han’s To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2014).
Jenny Han must have heard my prayers because she’s written a novel where an Asian American appears as the sole narrator and protagonist of the work. I think every single one of Han’s publications thus far has used first person narration in some form. Her co-authored work with Siobhan Vivian (the Burn for Burn series) boasts three different narrators, one of whom is Korean American. In To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lara Jean Song is our teenage Korean American narrator and protagonist. She has two sisters, an older one named Margot who has left for college in Europe and a younger sister named Kitty. Her father raises them on her own, since their mother passed away when they were much younger. The novel begins with Margot getting ready to leave for college; she has also recently broken up with her boyfriend Josh, an issue that is more largely a family dilemma since Josh has been sort of like an extended member of the family. The hijinks ensue when a set of letters that Lara Jean had written to the five boys that she has “loved” is mailed out to them. Not all of these letters reach their destinations, but they do reach enough of the “boys,” to make some romantic trouble. For instance, at one point when Lara Jean was years younger and before Margot was dating Josh, she had a crush on him. When she realizes that Josh is getting a little bit too close for comfort, she concocts a plot with Peter Kavinsky, another boy she had once “loved” to keep Josh from getting too close. Peter is already in a shaky relationship with a popular high school girl named Genevieve, so his aim is to make Genevieve a little bit jealous. Thus, they forge a pact to follow this “fake” relationship in the hopes that it will solve each of their problems. Genevieve will be jealous of Lara Jean and get back with Peter and Lara Jean will be free from Josh’s attempts to get her romantic attention. Of course, we know that such a plan will not operate as it is supposed to, especially in any young adult fiction where romance is on the horizon. It becomes readily apparent that Peter is growing quite fond of Lara Jean and with Josh not backing down, our proverbial love triangle is set. Who will Lara Jean choose? Will she give in to any lingering feelings with Josh, knowing that her older sister Margot might be upset with her when she finds out? Is Peter only being nice to her because he is a “fake” boyfriend? To find out, you’ll definitely have to sit down and read this novel.
On the racialized front, Han is quite subtle in ways that reveal just how insidious social difference can be. Though much of the novel is filled with seemingly first world plights like what types of cookies—fruitcake cookies anyone?—must be baked for Christmas, occasionally we’ll get a moment that takes the narrative a little bit deeper. For instance, Lara Jean laments the fact that she doesn’t have many choices for Halloween costumes because she’s half Asian. Indeed, anytime she dresses up as a particular character whose racial background does not match with hers, then she’s confused for an anime or manga figure. While this event might seem insignificant, Han’s reference to pedestrian moments like this one reveal the ways in which social difference continues to surface in the everyday. In my opinion, this work rises to the top of Han’s growing and popularly embraced oeuvre. And what luck: there is certain to be at least one more addition to the Lara Jean saga with P.S. I Still Love You.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/All-Boys-Ive-Loved-Before/dp/1442426705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399267736&sr=8-1&keywords=Jenny+Han
A Review of Elsie Chapman’s Divided (Random House Kid’s Division, 2014).
Divided is Elise Chapman’s sequel to Dualed (which was released last year). In the first installment in what is only a planned duology, West Grayer, our protagonist and our narrator, must kill her “alt” in order to complete. In the fictional world that Chapman has created, every individual has an alternate being living in a sort of mirror city. Eventually, an “idle” is made “active” and must be on the hunt to kill their alt. Only one survives. The cultural ethos behind this battle to the death is that the individual who completes the killing of their alternate is the only one worthy of survival. Because resources in this fictional world are limited, this kind of contest becomes a way to limit population growth and focus on the individuals with the will to help society continue onward. Given the fact that those in West Grayer’s world inhabit only a small section of a world butting up against a hostile placed called The Surround, the need for hardy individuals is paramount. In the sequel, West Grayer is called in by a member of the Board and requested to go on a secret mission to assassinate some alts. In exchange, West Grayer will have the guarantee that her future children will not have alts created. Further still, West will be able to get marks removed from her wrist that denote that she was once a striker, a sort of assassin for others who want to get rid of their alternates without having to complete the act on their own. West agrees to the terms offered by the Board, although this decision creates a wide gulf between her and her romantic partner Chord. She cannot tell him what is going on, but when it becomes apparent that these contracted killings are more than she bargained for, Chapman’s novel kicks into high gear. West Grayer is a protagonist haunted by the choices she had to make in book one; book two is all about dealing with the fallout of killing people she perceived were innocent. If West is hardened and traumatized by her survival, the second book offers her the chance for minor redemption. The pacing is razor fast and you’ll probably have to slow yourself down in order to catch all that is going on. Certainly, an entertaining read and a fitting ending to the Dualed duology. I have to say though I was disappointed to discover that there wouldn’t be a third installment because it’s quite clear that Chapman has more to explore in this world, especially with the area of The Surround, which remains a complete mystery.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Divided-Dualed-Sequel-Elsie-Chapman/dp/0449812952/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402122744&sr=8-1&keywords=elsie+chapman
A Review of Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer (First Second 2014).
I’ve resisted the call of reading Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer, which was all of two days. I should at some point simply give up this idea that I will not write on graphic novels and just do it. Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer is the kind of understated, coming-of-age story that I sometimes do not expect to encounter in the graphic narrative form, but then again, this dynamic duo is also author of the superb graphic novel, Skim, which I have taught with much gusto in previous course iterations. The story follows Rose and her family, who always take a family vacation to Awago Beach. This year things are different. Rose’s mother is suffering from depression, the likes of which stem from a previous miscarriage. The strain on the family is obvious: there are squabbles and all-out fights that surface and we see how it affects Rose, as she also confronts her own adolescence. Rose’s (mis)adventures at Awago Beach emerge most forcefully through her close friendship with Windy, the adopted daughter of a lesbian couple who live in a nearby cottage. Rose and Windy talk about anything and everything, but mostly about their futures as women, their possible romances, and the local store employees and associated denizens, who are all teenagers and engaging in sexual activities of various sorts that results in the pregnancy of one of the young teen girls in the group. These twinned narratives function perfectly. Rose’s mother must deal with her depression among her family members, while Rose considers what it must mean for this young teen girl, Jenny, to be a mother and that her father does not acknowledge his paternity. All around Rose is the question of family formation, whether in the alternative kinship posed by Windy and her mothers, Jenny and her pregnancy, and her own relationship to her mother and father. There are no easy answers and the Tamakis are quite content with a very subtle resolution that will leave readers of all ages satisfied. The illustration as always is lush, though there is a less formal experimentation than there was in Skim. The Tamakis are also quite comfortable with allowing the images to carry parts of the discourse, where full sets of panels include little text. There is so much to interpret and soak in at this Awago Beach that I’m sure I will return again. Simply superb.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/This-One-Summer-Mariko-Tamaki/dp/159643774X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400772816&sr=8-1&keywords=this+one+summer
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, grammatical errors, and other such things. Feel free to contact me with any questions: ssohnucr@gmail.com.
In this post, reviews of Livia Blackburne’s Midnight Thief (Disney-Hyperion, 2014); Leila Rasheed’s Diamonds and Deceit (Disney-Hyperion, 2014); Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer (First Second 2014); Jenny Han’s To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2014); and Elsie Chapman’s Divided (Random House Kid’s Division, 2014).
A Review of Livia Blackburne’s Midnight Thief (Disney-Hyperion, 2014).
This novel was one of the highly anticipated new releases of 2014 in the young adult/ fantasy romance genres. In Livia Blackburne’s debut Midnight Thief, she draws upon the long history of Anglo-Saxon mythology and fantasy to create a story about an orphan named Kyra, who moves from moonlighting as a thief to becoming a trained assassin. There are palaces and armed guards, talk of griffins, people who can speak to animals, antagonists called demon riders, all the things you would want in this kind of genre. Certainly, enthusiasts of role-playing games and Dungeons & Dragons will immediately embrace this novel with its familiar vocabulary, settings, and ethnic signifiers. Other readers will be drawn to Kyra as a romantic lead, coming of age in an environment where it is unclear what her prospects might be. Given a lack of noble heritage, her options for male romance seem limited to the assassin’s guild leader, James, who is considerably older than her. As Blackburne’s narrator (the story is told from the third person) points out a number of times, Kyra is lucky enough as it is to have room and board at a tavern called the Drunken Dog. She’s found her own patchwork family with a fellow former street urchin, Flick, and other strays who have managed to survive out on the streets and later, to make a living out of what skills they developed. Kyra’s got a knack for speed and sleight of hand, which makes her a target of the assassin’s guild, who want her abilities to gain a better sense of the Palace, its layouts and its structural weaknesses. Kyra, sensing the possibility of a steady paycheck in an economically turbulent time, decides she will take on this position, even at the consternation of Flick, her most trusted friend. The other narrative involves Tristam, a knight, who must endure the death of a very close ally, James, and vows to seek vengeance against the Demon Riders who killed him. The Demon Riders seem to have magical abilities related to large, vicious cats, and these barbarians have increased the number of raids and attacks in the area. Though these two narratives are unrelated in the first hundred or so pages, Blackburne is patient and eventually draws the two main characters together. Some of the later stage reveals are not at all surprising, but Blackburne is certainly aware of her target audience. Readers of YA/ fantasy romances will get all that they have wanted: a spirited female protagonist of humble origins who makes it in a world of magic, mischief, and misogynistic men and still manages to find the one guy—with appropriately chiseled abdominal muscles—who might actually have a sense of feminist empowerment. For scholars of race and ethnicity, Blackburne’s novel is of course part of the postracial fictional contingent, which is not really so post-racial after all. The Barbarians, and Demon Riders, come to signify as the racial Other; along the way, there is talk of miscegenation and the problems that come with it. As with many other works in this YA/ fantasy genre, racial difference tends to be allegorized or analogized. Where the novel eventually moves with this issue is more suggestive of an ethos toward uneasy cultural hybridity, but Blackburne’s debut leaves quite a bit of room for more exploration of the fictional world. There is no indication that this novel is part of a planned trilogy, so we’ll wait to see if we will have more adventures with Kyra. I can already imagine future titles in what could be the three-part arc: Midnight Assassin? Midnight Rogue? Midnight Scoundrel? LOL.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Thief-Livia-Blackburne/dp/1423176383/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404833270&sr=8-1&keywords=livia+blackburne
A Review of Leila Rasheed’s Diamonds and Deceit (Disney-Hyperion, 2014).
Leila Rasheed returns with her follow up to the “At Somerton” series with Diamonds and Deceit (after Cinders & Sapphires). As with other YA fictional romances, this one looks to be the standard trilogy. In this installment, there are a number of different storylines that Rasheed will juggle. Ava, our ostensible protagonist from book 1, is getting married to a rich aristocrat named Laurence, even though she still harbors feelings for the Ravi, the Indian student with whom she engaged a brief romantic dalliance, but realized—especially given their different racial backgrounds—that such a match would be unthinkable and ill advisable given her own privileged status. Rose, who was once a handmaid, has now become a member of Ava’s family. The transition from handmaid to an elite is difficult, as Rose must entitle herself to the wealth that she once only viewed on the sidelines. Complicating matters is the rakish Duke of Huntleigh, who has come to town for the season and with an eye on Rose. Little does the Duke know of Rose’s humble origins. Charlotte Templeton is in her third season and is desperate to land the right marriage proposal. Unable to woo Laurence, Charlotte looks to disrupt other romances and has her sights set on the affluent Duke of Huntleigh. Meanwhile, in another romance plot, Sebastian Templeton desperately attempts to find a way to save his valet (and lover) Oliver from taking the fall for an accidental death which has been incorrectly determined to be a homicide that Oliver perpetrated. Finally, Michael Templeton is still in love with the domestic servant Priya, a match as ill-advised as the one that could have happened between Ravi and Ada (given the interracial/interclass issues). Michael seeks to find a way to be with Priya despite this difference in class and race, much to the ire of his aristocratic family. The publishers of this volume saw fit to include a very useful family tree at the novel’s beginning and which graces the binding pages of the hardcover edition, but noticeably absent from this tree are the many servants, housemaids and other employees that help run the various estates that appear in the novel. See the diagram here:
http://i50.tinypic.com/14t1lxi.jpg
In this sense, the family tree fails to get at the complexity of Rasheed’s work, which indeed seems to “queer” every single romance that appears, either through an interclass, interracial, and/or same-sex paradigm. Rasheed establishes the aristocratic norm and from there explores illicit variations on that norm. This second installment, as they all seem to go in the trilogy format, is fairly dark and reveals that there are significant consequences, especially from those hailing from the lower classes, as they attempt to move up along society’s ladder. Further still, Rasheed is continually operating with a larger historical tapestry in mind, with references to World War I and colonial India always in the background. Rasheed’s work is no doubt entertaining, but one would be remiss not to mention the novel’s obvious and important social critiques.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Diamonds-Deceit-Somerton-Leila-Rasheed/dp/1423171187/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401117933&sr=8-1&keywords=leila+rasheed
A Review of Jenny Han’s To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2014).
Jenny Han must have heard my prayers because she’s written a novel where an Asian American appears as the sole narrator and protagonist of the work. I think every single one of Han’s publications thus far has used first person narration in some form. Her co-authored work with Siobhan Vivian (the Burn for Burn series) boasts three different narrators, one of whom is Korean American. In To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Lara Jean Song is our teenage Korean American narrator and protagonist. She has two sisters, an older one named Margot who has left for college in Europe and a younger sister named Kitty. Her father raises them on her own, since their mother passed away when they were much younger. The novel begins with Margot getting ready to leave for college; she has also recently broken up with her boyfriend Josh, an issue that is more largely a family dilemma since Josh has been sort of like an extended member of the family. The hijinks ensue when a set of letters that Lara Jean had written to the five boys that she has “loved” is mailed out to them. Not all of these letters reach their destinations, but they do reach enough of the “boys,” to make some romantic trouble. For instance, at one point when Lara Jean was years younger and before Margot was dating Josh, she had a crush on him. When she realizes that Josh is getting a little bit too close for comfort, she concocts a plot with Peter Kavinsky, another boy she had once “loved” to keep Josh from getting too close. Peter is already in a shaky relationship with a popular high school girl named Genevieve, so his aim is to make Genevieve a little bit jealous. Thus, they forge a pact to follow this “fake” relationship in the hopes that it will solve each of their problems. Genevieve will be jealous of Lara Jean and get back with Peter and Lara Jean will be free from Josh’s attempts to get her romantic attention. Of course, we know that such a plan will not operate as it is supposed to, especially in any young adult fiction where romance is on the horizon. It becomes readily apparent that Peter is growing quite fond of Lara Jean and with Josh not backing down, our proverbial love triangle is set. Who will Lara Jean choose? Will she give in to any lingering feelings with Josh, knowing that her older sister Margot might be upset with her when she finds out? Is Peter only being nice to her because he is a “fake” boyfriend? To find out, you’ll definitely have to sit down and read this novel.
On the racialized front, Han is quite subtle in ways that reveal just how insidious social difference can be. Though much of the novel is filled with seemingly first world plights like what types of cookies—fruitcake cookies anyone?—must be baked for Christmas, occasionally we’ll get a moment that takes the narrative a little bit deeper. For instance, Lara Jean laments the fact that she doesn’t have many choices for Halloween costumes because she’s half Asian. Indeed, anytime she dresses up as a particular character whose racial background does not match with hers, then she’s confused for an anime or manga figure. While this event might seem insignificant, Han’s reference to pedestrian moments like this one reveal the ways in which social difference continues to surface in the everyday. In my opinion, this work rises to the top of Han’s growing and popularly embraced oeuvre. And what luck: there is certain to be at least one more addition to the Lara Jean saga with P.S. I Still Love You.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/All-Boys-Ive-Loved-Before/dp/1442426705/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399267736&sr=8-1&keywords=Jenny+Han
A Review of Elsie Chapman’s Divided (Random House Kid’s Division, 2014).
Divided is Elise Chapman’s sequel to Dualed (which was released last year). In the first installment in what is only a planned duology, West Grayer, our protagonist and our narrator, must kill her “alt” in order to complete. In the fictional world that Chapman has created, every individual has an alternate being living in a sort of mirror city. Eventually, an “idle” is made “active” and must be on the hunt to kill their alt. Only one survives. The cultural ethos behind this battle to the death is that the individual who completes the killing of their alternate is the only one worthy of survival. Because resources in this fictional world are limited, this kind of contest becomes a way to limit population growth and focus on the individuals with the will to help society continue onward. Given the fact that those in West Grayer’s world inhabit only a small section of a world butting up against a hostile placed called The Surround, the need for hardy individuals is paramount. In the sequel, West Grayer is called in by a member of the Board and requested to go on a secret mission to assassinate some alts. In exchange, West Grayer will have the guarantee that her future children will not have alts created. Further still, West will be able to get marks removed from her wrist that denote that she was once a striker, a sort of assassin for others who want to get rid of their alternates without having to complete the act on their own. West agrees to the terms offered by the Board, although this decision creates a wide gulf between her and her romantic partner Chord. She cannot tell him what is going on, but when it becomes apparent that these contracted killings are more than she bargained for, Chapman’s novel kicks into high gear. West Grayer is a protagonist haunted by the choices she had to make in book one; book two is all about dealing with the fallout of killing people she perceived were innocent. If West is hardened and traumatized by her survival, the second book offers her the chance for minor redemption. The pacing is razor fast and you’ll probably have to slow yourself down in order to catch all that is going on. Certainly, an entertaining read and a fitting ending to the Dualed duology. I have to say though I was disappointed to discover that there wouldn’t be a third installment because it’s quite clear that Chapman has more to explore in this world, especially with the area of The Surround, which remains a complete mystery.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Divided-Dualed-Sequel-Elsie-Chapman/dp/0449812952/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402122744&sr=8-1&keywords=elsie+chapman
A Review of Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer (First Second 2014).
I’ve resisted the call of reading Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer, which was all of two days. I should at some point simply give up this idea that I will not write on graphic novels and just do it. Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s This One Summer is the kind of understated, coming-of-age story that I sometimes do not expect to encounter in the graphic narrative form, but then again, this dynamic duo is also author of the superb graphic novel, Skim, which I have taught with much gusto in previous course iterations. The story follows Rose and her family, who always take a family vacation to Awago Beach. This year things are different. Rose’s mother is suffering from depression, the likes of which stem from a previous miscarriage. The strain on the family is obvious: there are squabbles and all-out fights that surface and we see how it affects Rose, as she also confronts her own adolescence. Rose’s (mis)adventures at Awago Beach emerge most forcefully through her close friendship with Windy, the adopted daughter of a lesbian couple who live in a nearby cottage. Rose and Windy talk about anything and everything, but mostly about their futures as women, their possible romances, and the local store employees and associated denizens, who are all teenagers and engaging in sexual activities of various sorts that results in the pregnancy of one of the young teen girls in the group. These twinned narratives function perfectly. Rose’s mother must deal with her depression among her family members, while Rose considers what it must mean for this young teen girl, Jenny, to be a mother and that her father does not acknowledge his paternity. All around Rose is the question of family formation, whether in the alternative kinship posed by Windy and her mothers, Jenny and her pregnancy, and her own relationship to her mother and father. There are no easy answers and the Tamakis are quite content with a very subtle resolution that will leave readers of all ages satisfied. The illustration as always is lush, though there is a less formal experimentation than there was in Skim. The Tamakis are also quite comfortable with allowing the images to carry parts of the discourse, where full sets of panels include little text. There is so much to interpret and soak in at this Awago Beach that I’m sure I will return again. Simply superb.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/This-One-Summer-Mariko-Tamaki/dp/159643774X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400772816&sr=8-1&keywords=this+one+summer
July 2, 2014
asianamlitfans @ 2014-07-02T20:00:00
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for July 2, 2014
Apologies for errors, inaccuracies, etc… should you need to contact me, please e-mail me at ssohnucr@gmail.com.
In this post, reviews of Sofia M. Starnes’s Fully into Ashes (Wings Press, 2011) and Corpus Homini: A Poem for Single Flesh (Wings Press, 2010), May-lee Chai’s Tiger Girl (GemmaMedia, 2013), Ryka Aoki’s Seasonal Velocities (Trans-Genre Press, 2012), Samit Basu’s Resistance (Titan Books, 2014), Leonard Chang’s Triplines: An Autobiographical Novel (Black Heron Press, 2014).
A Review of Sofia M. Starnes’s Fully into Ashes (Wings Press, 2011) and Corpus Homini: A Poem for Single Flesh (Wings Press, 2010).
I earlier reviewed Wang Ping’s Ten Thousand Waves, which comes out of Wings Press, a unique independent publisher devoted to works with multicultural and political contours. For more on the press, go here!
http://www.wingspress.com/wingspress.cfm
Sofia M. Starnes’s Fully into Ashes is a kind of lyrical exploration into spirituality. The collection is roughly structured through three intercessions, which—if you aren’t always familiar with some religious terminology (like myself)—are forms of prayer that are dedicated to the struggles and lives of others. In this sense, there is certainly a mode of empathetic observation that comes across in many of these poems, the lyric speaker reaching out and attempting to move across places and times (place references abound throughout the collection: Mexico, Fredericksburg, Spain, Pensacola etc), with the hope of some greater power that can offer divine interventions. In “Fiction,” the lyric speaker considers the possibility of healing amongst those (perhaps veterans?) who wallow in their traumas: “Upon the stage, God’s people seemed consoled: their soldiers were no longer-flesh-and-bones, but extras from a dinky distant town; their scars were pastry, they were sharing crusts, a cherry picker’s loot in thin disguise” (9). “Fiction” introduces a general lyric approach that Starnes excels in, gesturing to material contexts, without ever directly referencing any one thing. In this respect, I’d be very interested in seeing Starnes at a reading in person; the poems tend to have an elliptical and abstracted quality that make them possess a dream-like ambience, but at the same time, there is a sense of masking that covers many lyrics and perhaps she’d be able to give some more backstory to some of them. For instance, amid a kind of pastoral filled with religious imagery in “Provinces,” there is a phrase concerning a “hung jury of a father in drapery robes” (24), but this legal reference is not brought up again in the poem; then, later, there is an interlingual register introduced in the conclusion, where the lyric speaker calls out “Hija” (24). In poems like this one, there is a sense of a rootedness that is butting up against other images that speak of bucolic vistas undermined with the sense of a coming judgment; thus “shepherds” and “pastures” mixed up with “tombs,” “psalms,” and “lambskins” (24-25). Because of this haziness, Starnes must resort occasionally to ordering notes that appear before or after poems. The concluding arc of the poems appears the most cohesive, as the elegies begin to emerge; the lyrics becoming mournful yet precise in their yearnings. My favorite sequence appears in this final arc, in the poem “The House that Bled,” and I reproduce a large portion here (but will lose the exact formatting, but perhaps that will encourage you to get the book!):
“We fear yet love our scars.
As artisans
We’re drawn to storied houses, to strip and
tell their stock of wood,
armlock of newer plaster.
We know that someone notched, nicked,
bliested their beams and mantles,
until the white gypsum hung.
Houses withstand their centuries,
double-rooms and double tales, luster
and bristle inside-out, wished-back
wounds hoisting their wishable omens.
The rough of heaven clings to them
and cannot flee, eliding” (74).
I adore the extended metaphor that the lyric speaker draws out here, the ways in which poets and artists seek out the depraved, the broken in search of a kind of reinvigoration, a rebirth that one might call, at least in the context of this poetry collection, a lyric-spiritual resurrection.
The spirituality that tracks through Fully into Ashes is on full display in Corpus Homini: A Poem for Single Flesh, which is a beautifully produced chapbook. As I’ve mentioned before, I find chapbooks to be an interesting form, especially because they are often so materially ephemeral. With limited print runs, often hand-bound, chapbooks are fairly hard to track down. Ephemerality, especially as it relates to the human body and how it perceives, its place in the world, the fact of its existence, seems to be the questions that root the lyrics in this chapbook. As with the full collection, Corpus Homini abounds not only with religious references, but intertextual registers, which give the chapbook a wonderful sense of thickness. It is clear, for instance, that Starnes has been influenced by Modernist poets; there was a moment where I simply said: oh, these lines directly invoke T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and then, about five pages later, there is a quotation pulled out from a different work by Eliot. The conclusion to Corpus Homini sees a frail old man who seems to fall near his doorstep, which is then followed by a lyric section called “One Birth.” Starnes bring us back to the circularities of the body: “Let us suppose we all consume,/ will be consumed, and consummate our living with the heart pressed hard against the freeze” (33). As with Fully into Ashes, Starnes is masterful in her use of pastoral images imbued with a sense of impermanence, no doubt a nod to her interest in the Romantic era poets, the picturesque always giving way to the overwhelming and overpowering nature of the sublime.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Fully-into-Ashes-Sofia-Starnes/dp/091672770X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1399753619&sr=8-2&keywords=Sofia+M.+Starnes
http://www.amazon.com/Corpus-Homini-Sofia-M-Starnes-ebook/dp/B00507GEHG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404355658&sr=8-1&keywords=corpus+homini
A Review of May-lee Chai’s Tiger Girl (GemmaMedia, 2013).
May-lee Chai’s Tiger Girl, a sequel to Dragon Chica, follows the protagonist (Nea Chhim), as she navigates life in the wake of knowing her family secret. Struggling in her university studies, Nea makes a drastic decision to leave school for a period and travel out to Southern California. She clearly seeks to find out more about her father, who she was raised to understand was her Uncle. Once there, Nea helps her father out at their business, a donut store, where she begins to understand more about the circumstances of his life and what may have lead to the decisions he has made about his family. Life and work at the donut shop is far from ideal; business is relatively stagnant. Her father employs two workers, Anita (who has some sort of close, but unexplained connection to her father) and Sitam, a good-natured employee. Hoping to find a way to help out, Nea realizes that she can put her energy and skills to good use. She helps to invigorate the business with a couple of key changes, including getting more publicity for the donut shop. A local news feature based upon Nea’s biological father has the unexpected ramifications of reuniting Nea’s father with his son (and Nea’s brother) Paul. The new addition to the family clearly causes strain, especially because Nea does not understand why Paul has come back into his life: is Paul looking for money? Does he have an ulterior motive?
As with Dragon Chica, Chai creates a narrative filled with politically engaged writing; this novel not only dramatizes the personal struggles of a character coming to terms with her expanding sense of family but deals with the larger atrocities of the Cambodian genocide. The stories of survival that filter throughout the novel are tastefully done and depict these immigrant families and networks as ones imbued with a sense of melancholy, but also continued hope for other trajectories and potentialities. Chai is never sentimental in her portrayals and Nea is a character that readers can certainly identify with, even despite some of her more impulsive actions. With representations of Cambodian Americans and Cambodian immigrants being still relatively nascent, Chai continues to draw upon a larger Asian American identity politic that is refreshing and aesthetically expansive and critically underrepresented.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Girl-May-lee-Chai/dp/1936846454/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401810506&sr=8-1&keywords=may+lee+chai
A Review of Ryka Aoki’s Seasonal Velocities (Trans-Genre Press, 2012).
It was pylduck who alerted me to this trailblazing title (by a trailblazing press) based upon his review here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/164612.html
I believe this work may be one of the first, if not the first, sole-authored published work by an American of Asian descent who identifies as trans. On this level alone, Aoki shoulders such a heavy burden, fortunately for us, she realizes that the work must cater to a diverse audience and offers us a mixed-genre cultural production that moves across a variety of topics including childhood abuse, animal-human transformation, queer bashing of all sorts, and ethnic/racial otherness. As I’ve tarried longer and perhaps too long within Asian American cultures, I’ve sometimes had this nostalgic view of identity politics, specifically for its activist rhetoric (not so much of its masculinist ethos of course). Aoki understands the nexus between artistry and politicism, activism and aesthetics and mines this fertile terrain through which to highlight social justice issues and present them in such nuanced and often excruciatingly complex ways. I agree with Pylduck’s sentiment that we could have used some more fiction, but the element that I was missing was the corporeal aspect. It’s clear that many of these pieces are transfigured from performance pieces and other genre/media, so I wonder what might have been lost in translation. The title is of course evoked by the structural conceit of the collection, which takes us through the seasons, a metaphorical look at the cycles of change. Of course, given the many points at which Aoki brings up trans issues, the notion of the changing seasons is entirely contextualizable, especially since, as she brings up, the prefix trans is always suggestive of change and mutability: transformation, transition, etc. I often found the lyrics to carry the strongest affective pull in the collection; here’s a little teaser from a performance piece called “Deal with the Devil”: “And then, I tell myself it’s me./ As I take another pill, get another day older,/ and all I’ve managed is to live a little longer in a world/ I can’t find a place in:/ That I might be more than a pill or a syringe,/ or memories or scars./ That I was made in the image/ of someone who said her body is okay as it is,/ but stays up nights wondering/ what it would be like to carry a child” (108). Here, a lyric speaker who understands change, the shifts required of her, but who nevertheless deserves a moment of rest. A powerful and groundbreaking work.
By the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Seasonal-Velocities-Ryka-Aoki/dp/0985110503/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400426794&sr=8-1&keywords=ryka+aoki
A Review of Samit Basu’s Resistance (Titan Books, 2014)
Taking place in the near future, Samit Basu’s Resistance is the sequel to his highly entertaining American debut Turbulence. Resistance takes place not too long after the concluding events of Turbulence; the superheroes that had banded together and even some of the supervillains from the first book find new life in this particular narrative as a new “big bad” comes into town by the name of Norio, a non-superpowered human who is intent on weeding out those individuals with skills and abilities that he deems to be destructive. You see: he is on a plan for revenge due to the fact that his own father was a casualty of a large scale battle between superpowered entities. He believes that superhumans must be stopped. The heroes of the first book have gone their separate ways. Uzma has joined an elite superhero force known as the Unit, which boasts an international group of individuals that hail from countries such as China, India, and the United States. The Unit must consider a number of possible quests, including the potential task of finding a woman (Romena) who is presumed to have a special blood property that causes those who are superpowered to lose their abilities. At this point, Aman is thought to be dead, but he is actually in hiding. Tia, or at least one of the Tias given her ability to multiple herself into seemingly endless copies, seeks to find out more information about a problematic omen portending the end of the world. She visits a young boy named Kalki who divines that he will be a part of this cataclysmic scenario. Once Norio begins his quest to round up any superpowered individual with the intent of depowering them, the novel really gains major traction. Individuals who had not been in contact with each other, begin to see each other in the hopes of finding a way to defeat Norio, on the one hand, and to prevent the end of the world, on the other. As always, Basu peppers the novel with popular culture references that make the reading experience so pleasurable and so geared toward fans of speculative fiction. The major inclusion of Japanese characters and contexts obviously stems from the grand tradition of anime and the novel benefits from this stylized cultural aesthetic. I can’t recommend this novel enough simply for the engaging plot, but Basu is obviously breaking new ground, especially for American audiences, in uniting international contexts, a diverse array of characters from multiple nations, and the genre of speculative fiction. This novel is certainly one to add to your reading list, or if you’re an instructor, your syllabus!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Resistance-Samit-Basu/dp/1781162492/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1398214213&sr=8-2&keywords=Samit+Basu
A Review of Leonard Chang’s Triplines: An Autobiographical Novel (Black Heron Press, 2014).
Leonard Chang’s newest offering sees him explore the form of the autobiographical novel in Triplines. The tone and ambience produced by this novel is not entirely unlike Chang’s social realist fictions Crossings and Fruit ’N Food, his previous and his first publications respectively. In between those two novels, Chang penned detective fiction (Over the Shoulder, Underkill, Fade to Clear, which are all part of the Allen Choice series and the stand-alone Dispatches from the Cold). The autobiographical novel is always an interesting aesthetic choice because it immediately puts the reader on a kind of notice, especially as he or she attempts to discern what might be fabricated and what might be most authentic. In the acknowledgments that follow the novel, it is clear that Chang consulted some family members in order to corroborate accounts depicted. Chang also chooses an interesting discursive mode, as the entire novel is narrated from a kind of retrospective third person storyteller. In this sense, Chang promotes the divide between author and the fictional storyteller, as well as the author and protagonist. Lenny, our ostensible hero, is a young adolescent, with on older brother, Ed (about to graduate from high school) and a younger sister Mira. His mother Umee suffers harassment and domestic violence from their alcoholic father Yul. For the most part, Lenny, Mira, and Ed do not suffer the same kind of physical assaults, but nevertheless Yul stands as an ominous storm cloud constantly raining on their lives. Yul and Umee at first run a novelty-type store (called Sweet ’N Gifts, reminding us of his first novel’s title), but it eventually goes out of business. The failure of the business ultimately increases tension in the family; each child chooses to deal with the situation in their own ways. Ed maintains physical and emotional distance from the family, rarely staying at home. Mira remains introverted and artistic, constantly writing, reading, or playing music, while Lenny languishes in his own attempt to move toward what we might call Asian American manhood, trying to find his sense of self beyond his domineering father. Lenny, for instance, finds great interest in martial arts, which becomes a compelling outlet for the physical trials he suffers under Yul, who attempts to push him to become more hardened. Later, Lenny sees the opportunity of being a kind of gopher for a pot dealer as a quick means to achieve some financial capital. But, the clear talent that Lenny develops and the way that he survives is through his skills of observation, something that he will later put to excellent use as a writer. The character that perhaps undergoes the greatest change is Umee, who begins the novel as a battered housewife, but over the course of the plotting initiates a search into a new career and, by the conclusion, stands up to her husband and achieves independence from him. There is a poetic quality to this work, one reminiscent of the sparer writing style Chang employed in his first novel. What emerges from this portrait of a dysfunctional Asian American/ Korean immigrant family is a reminder of the fallacy of the model minority myth. Underlying this novel is an interesting kind of secular spirituality, which appears through the constant ways in which Mira and Lenny find refuge in a church across the street, which they break into after hours and find a sense of peace, a break from the constant fighting occurring between their parents. Without a false sense of sentimentality, Chang’s Triplines is a highly compelling read. The novel further resonates quite well with with the “dysfunctional” Asian American family plots that appear in works such as Akhil Sharma’s Family Life and Lan Samantha Chang’s Hunger.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Triplines-Leonard-Chang/dp/1936364093/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403621175&sr=8-1&keywords=Leonard+Chang
Apologies for errors, inaccuracies, etc… should you need to contact me, please e-mail me at ssohnucr@gmail.com.
In this post, reviews of Sofia M. Starnes’s Fully into Ashes (Wings Press, 2011) and Corpus Homini: A Poem for Single Flesh (Wings Press, 2010), May-lee Chai’s Tiger Girl (GemmaMedia, 2013), Ryka Aoki’s Seasonal Velocities (Trans-Genre Press, 2012), Samit Basu’s Resistance (Titan Books, 2014), Leonard Chang’s Triplines: An Autobiographical Novel (Black Heron Press, 2014).
A Review of Sofia M. Starnes’s Fully into Ashes (Wings Press, 2011) and Corpus Homini: A Poem for Single Flesh (Wings Press, 2010).
I earlier reviewed Wang Ping’s Ten Thousand Waves, which comes out of Wings Press, a unique independent publisher devoted to works with multicultural and political contours. For more on the press, go here!
http://www.wingspress.com/wingspress.cfm
Sofia M. Starnes’s Fully into Ashes is a kind of lyrical exploration into spirituality. The collection is roughly structured through three intercessions, which—if you aren’t always familiar with some religious terminology (like myself)—are forms of prayer that are dedicated to the struggles and lives of others. In this sense, there is certainly a mode of empathetic observation that comes across in many of these poems, the lyric speaker reaching out and attempting to move across places and times (place references abound throughout the collection: Mexico, Fredericksburg, Spain, Pensacola etc), with the hope of some greater power that can offer divine interventions. In “Fiction,” the lyric speaker considers the possibility of healing amongst those (perhaps veterans?) who wallow in their traumas: “Upon the stage, God’s people seemed consoled: their soldiers were no longer-flesh-and-bones, but extras from a dinky distant town; their scars were pastry, they were sharing crusts, a cherry picker’s loot in thin disguise” (9). “Fiction” introduces a general lyric approach that Starnes excels in, gesturing to material contexts, without ever directly referencing any one thing. In this respect, I’d be very interested in seeing Starnes at a reading in person; the poems tend to have an elliptical and abstracted quality that make them possess a dream-like ambience, but at the same time, there is a sense of masking that covers many lyrics and perhaps she’d be able to give some more backstory to some of them. For instance, amid a kind of pastoral filled with religious imagery in “Provinces,” there is a phrase concerning a “hung jury of a father in drapery robes” (24), but this legal reference is not brought up again in the poem; then, later, there is an interlingual register introduced in the conclusion, where the lyric speaker calls out “Hija” (24). In poems like this one, there is a sense of a rootedness that is butting up against other images that speak of bucolic vistas undermined with the sense of a coming judgment; thus “shepherds” and “pastures” mixed up with “tombs,” “psalms,” and “lambskins” (24-25). Because of this haziness, Starnes must resort occasionally to ordering notes that appear before or after poems. The concluding arc of the poems appears the most cohesive, as the elegies begin to emerge; the lyrics becoming mournful yet precise in their yearnings. My favorite sequence appears in this final arc, in the poem “The House that Bled,” and I reproduce a large portion here (but will lose the exact formatting, but perhaps that will encourage you to get the book!):
“We fear yet love our scars.
As artisans
We’re drawn to storied houses, to strip and
tell their stock of wood,
armlock of newer plaster.
We know that someone notched, nicked,
bliested their beams and mantles,
until the white gypsum hung.
Houses withstand their centuries,
double-rooms and double tales, luster
and bristle inside-out, wished-back
wounds hoisting their wishable omens.
The rough of heaven clings to them
and cannot flee, eliding” (74).
I adore the extended metaphor that the lyric speaker draws out here, the ways in which poets and artists seek out the depraved, the broken in search of a kind of reinvigoration, a rebirth that one might call, at least in the context of this poetry collection, a lyric-spiritual resurrection.
The spirituality that tracks through Fully into Ashes is on full display in Corpus Homini: A Poem for Single Flesh, which is a beautifully produced chapbook. As I’ve mentioned before, I find chapbooks to be an interesting form, especially because they are often so materially ephemeral. With limited print runs, often hand-bound, chapbooks are fairly hard to track down. Ephemerality, especially as it relates to the human body and how it perceives, its place in the world, the fact of its existence, seems to be the questions that root the lyrics in this chapbook. As with the full collection, Corpus Homini abounds not only with religious references, but intertextual registers, which give the chapbook a wonderful sense of thickness. It is clear, for instance, that Starnes has been influenced by Modernist poets; there was a moment where I simply said: oh, these lines directly invoke T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and then, about five pages later, there is a quotation pulled out from a different work by Eliot. The conclusion to Corpus Homini sees a frail old man who seems to fall near his doorstep, which is then followed by a lyric section called “One Birth.” Starnes bring us back to the circularities of the body: “Let us suppose we all consume,/ will be consumed, and consummate our living with the heart pressed hard against the freeze” (33). As with Fully into Ashes, Starnes is masterful in her use of pastoral images imbued with a sense of impermanence, no doubt a nod to her interest in the Romantic era poets, the picturesque always giving way to the overwhelming and overpowering nature of the sublime.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Fully-into-Ashes-Sofia-Starnes/dp/091672770X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1399753619&sr=8-2&keywords=Sofia+M.+Starnes
http://www.amazon.com/Corpus-Homini-Sofia-M-Starnes-ebook/dp/B00507GEHG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404355658&sr=8-1&keywords=corpus+homini
A Review of May-lee Chai’s Tiger Girl (GemmaMedia, 2013).
May-lee Chai’s Tiger Girl, a sequel to Dragon Chica, follows the protagonist (Nea Chhim), as she navigates life in the wake of knowing her family secret. Struggling in her university studies, Nea makes a drastic decision to leave school for a period and travel out to Southern California. She clearly seeks to find out more about her father, who she was raised to understand was her Uncle. Once there, Nea helps her father out at their business, a donut store, where she begins to understand more about the circumstances of his life and what may have lead to the decisions he has made about his family. Life and work at the donut shop is far from ideal; business is relatively stagnant. Her father employs two workers, Anita (who has some sort of close, but unexplained connection to her father) and Sitam, a good-natured employee. Hoping to find a way to help out, Nea realizes that she can put her energy and skills to good use. She helps to invigorate the business with a couple of key changes, including getting more publicity for the donut shop. A local news feature based upon Nea’s biological father has the unexpected ramifications of reuniting Nea’s father with his son (and Nea’s brother) Paul. The new addition to the family clearly causes strain, especially because Nea does not understand why Paul has come back into his life: is Paul looking for money? Does he have an ulterior motive?
As with Dragon Chica, Chai creates a narrative filled with politically engaged writing; this novel not only dramatizes the personal struggles of a character coming to terms with her expanding sense of family but deals with the larger atrocities of the Cambodian genocide. The stories of survival that filter throughout the novel are tastefully done and depict these immigrant families and networks as ones imbued with a sense of melancholy, but also continued hope for other trajectories and potentialities. Chai is never sentimental in her portrayals and Nea is a character that readers can certainly identify with, even despite some of her more impulsive actions. With representations of Cambodian Americans and Cambodian immigrants being still relatively nascent, Chai continues to draw upon a larger Asian American identity politic that is refreshing and aesthetically expansive and critically underrepresented.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Girl-May-lee-Chai/dp/1936846454/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401810506&sr=8-1&keywords=may+lee+chai
A Review of Ryka Aoki’s Seasonal Velocities (Trans-Genre Press, 2012).
It was pylduck who alerted me to this trailblazing title (by a trailblazing press) based upon his review here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/164612.html
I believe this work may be one of the first, if not the first, sole-authored published work by an American of Asian descent who identifies as trans. On this level alone, Aoki shoulders such a heavy burden, fortunately for us, she realizes that the work must cater to a diverse audience and offers us a mixed-genre cultural production that moves across a variety of topics including childhood abuse, animal-human transformation, queer bashing of all sorts, and ethnic/racial otherness. As I’ve tarried longer and perhaps too long within Asian American cultures, I’ve sometimes had this nostalgic view of identity politics, specifically for its activist rhetoric (not so much of its masculinist ethos of course). Aoki understands the nexus between artistry and politicism, activism and aesthetics and mines this fertile terrain through which to highlight social justice issues and present them in such nuanced and often excruciatingly complex ways. I agree with Pylduck’s sentiment that we could have used some more fiction, but the element that I was missing was the corporeal aspect. It’s clear that many of these pieces are transfigured from performance pieces and other genre/media, so I wonder what might have been lost in translation. The title is of course evoked by the structural conceit of the collection, which takes us through the seasons, a metaphorical look at the cycles of change. Of course, given the many points at which Aoki brings up trans issues, the notion of the changing seasons is entirely contextualizable, especially since, as she brings up, the prefix trans is always suggestive of change and mutability: transformation, transition, etc. I often found the lyrics to carry the strongest affective pull in the collection; here’s a little teaser from a performance piece called “Deal with the Devil”: “And then, I tell myself it’s me./ As I take another pill, get another day older,/ and all I’ve managed is to live a little longer in a world/ I can’t find a place in:/ That I might be more than a pill or a syringe,/ or memories or scars./ That I was made in the image/ of someone who said her body is okay as it is,/ but stays up nights wondering/ what it would be like to carry a child” (108). Here, a lyric speaker who understands change, the shifts required of her, but who nevertheless deserves a moment of rest. A powerful and groundbreaking work.
By the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Seasonal-Velocities-Ryka-Aoki/dp/0985110503/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400426794&sr=8-1&keywords=ryka+aoki
A Review of Samit Basu’s Resistance (Titan Books, 2014)
Taking place in the near future, Samit Basu’s Resistance is the sequel to his highly entertaining American debut Turbulence. Resistance takes place not too long after the concluding events of Turbulence; the superheroes that had banded together and even some of the supervillains from the first book find new life in this particular narrative as a new “big bad” comes into town by the name of Norio, a non-superpowered human who is intent on weeding out those individuals with skills and abilities that he deems to be destructive. You see: he is on a plan for revenge due to the fact that his own father was a casualty of a large scale battle between superpowered entities. He believes that superhumans must be stopped. The heroes of the first book have gone their separate ways. Uzma has joined an elite superhero force known as the Unit, which boasts an international group of individuals that hail from countries such as China, India, and the United States. The Unit must consider a number of possible quests, including the potential task of finding a woman (Romena) who is presumed to have a special blood property that causes those who are superpowered to lose their abilities. At this point, Aman is thought to be dead, but he is actually in hiding. Tia, or at least one of the Tias given her ability to multiple herself into seemingly endless copies, seeks to find out more information about a problematic omen portending the end of the world. She visits a young boy named Kalki who divines that he will be a part of this cataclysmic scenario. Once Norio begins his quest to round up any superpowered individual with the intent of depowering them, the novel really gains major traction. Individuals who had not been in contact with each other, begin to see each other in the hopes of finding a way to defeat Norio, on the one hand, and to prevent the end of the world, on the other. As always, Basu peppers the novel with popular culture references that make the reading experience so pleasurable and so geared toward fans of speculative fiction. The major inclusion of Japanese characters and contexts obviously stems from the grand tradition of anime and the novel benefits from this stylized cultural aesthetic. I can’t recommend this novel enough simply for the engaging plot, but Basu is obviously breaking new ground, especially for American audiences, in uniting international contexts, a diverse array of characters from multiple nations, and the genre of speculative fiction. This novel is certainly one to add to your reading list, or if you’re an instructor, your syllabus!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Resistance-Samit-Basu/dp/1781162492/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1398214213&sr=8-2&keywords=Samit+Basu
A Review of Leonard Chang’s Triplines: An Autobiographical Novel (Black Heron Press, 2014).
Leonard Chang’s newest offering sees him explore the form of the autobiographical novel in Triplines. The tone and ambience produced by this novel is not entirely unlike Chang’s social realist fictions Crossings and Fruit ’N Food, his previous and his first publications respectively. In between those two novels, Chang penned detective fiction (Over the Shoulder, Underkill, Fade to Clear, which are all part of the Allen Choice series and the stand-alone Dispatches from the Cold). The autobiographical novel is always an interesting aesthetic choice because it immediately puts the reader on a kind of notice, especially as he or she attempts to discern what might be fabricated and what might be most authentic. In the acknowledgments that follow the novel, it is clear that Chang consulted some family members in order to corroborate accounts depicted. Chang also chooses an interesting discursive mode, as the entire novel is narrated from a kind of retrospective third person storyteller. In this sense, Chang promotes the divide between author and the fictional storyteller, as well as the author and protagonist. Lenny, our ostensible hero, is a young adolescent, with on older brother, Ed (about to graduate from high school) and a younger sister Mira. His mother Umee suffers harassment and domestic violence from their alcoholic father Yul. For the most part, Lenny, Mira, and Ed do not suffer the same kind of physical assaults, but nevertheless Yul stands as an ominous storm cloud constantly raining on their lives. Yul and Umee at first run a novelty-type store (called Sweet ’N Gifts, reminding us of his first novel’s title), but it eventually goes out of business. The failure of the business ultimately increases tension in the family; each child chooses to deal with the situation in their own ways. Ed maintains physical and emotional distance from the family, rarely staying at home. Mira remains introverted and artistic, constantly writing, reading, or playing music, while Lenny languishes in his own attempt to move toward what we might call Asian American manhood, trying to find his sense of self beyond his domineering father. Lenny, for instance, finds great interest in martial arts, which becomes a compelling outlet for the physical trials he suffers under Yul, who attempts to push him to become more hardened. Later, Lenny sees the opportunity of being a kind of gopher for a pot dealer as a quick means to achieve some financial capital. But, the clear talent that Lenny develops and the way that he survives is through his skills of observation, something that he will later put to excellent use as a writer. The character that perhaps undergoes the greatest change is Umee, who begins the novel as a battered housewife, but over the course of the plotting initiates a search into a new career and, by the conclusion, stands up to her husband and achieves independence from him. There is a poetic quality to this work, one reminiscent of the sparer writing style Chang employed in his first novel. What emerges from this portrait of a dysfunctional Asian American/ Korean immigrant family is a reminder of the fallacy of the model minority myth. Underlying this novel is an interesting kind of secular spirituality, which appears through the constant ways in which Mira and Lenny find refuge in a church across the street, which they break into after hours and find a sense of peace, a break from the constant fighting occurring between their parents. Without a false sense of sentimentality, Chang’s Triplines is a highly compelling read. The novel further resonates quite well with with the “dysfunctional” Asian American family plots that appear in works such as Akhil Sharma’s Family Life and Lan Samantha Chang’s Hunger.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Triplines-Leonard-Chang/dp/1936364093/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403621175&sr=8-1&keywords=Leonard+Chang
June 15, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareviews for June 15, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareviews for June 15, 2014
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and grammar mistakes. If you should need to contact me, please send to: sohnlitcrit@gmail.com
In this post, reviews of: Susan York and Arthur Sze’s The Unfolding Center (Radius Books, 2013); Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood (Albert & Whitman, 2014); Kyoko Mori’s Barn Cat (GemmaMedia, 2013); Sandra Tsing Loh’s The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones (W.W. Norton, 2014); Violet Kupersmith’s The Frangipani Hotel (Spiegel and Grau, 2014).
A Review of Susan York and Arthur Sze’s The Unfolding Center (Radius Books, 2013).
Arthur Sze’s been working hard! He actually has two different publications in the past calendar year (the other is Compass Rose), so I figured it was high time we spent a little bit of time reviewing some of his new work. Sze is author of numerous other poetry collections, including but not limited to Dazzled, Quipu, The Redshifting Web. What is of course interesting about The Unfolding Center is that it is a collaboration with the artist Susan York. We might look back to this review of Timothy Liu’s work and collaboration with Greg Drasler:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/99123.html
In Sze’s co-authored work with Susan York, there are eleven drawings that go along with eleven poems. Those involved with the production and completion of this piece also saw fit to include drafts of early poems and sequences, a truly eye-catching look into the creative development process. An accompanying interview at the conclusion (conducted by John Yau no less) provides key insights into the inspirations and intent behind many of the collaborative portions. Indeed, I was not entirely sure what to make of the poems and the pictorial sequences that followed (though I did notice the symmetry in numbers) until I read a little bit into that interview. Each poem has two different drawings related to it. The motivation behind each drawing is a section of dark and a section of light: the dividing line between the two acts as a tension point. For instance, in unfolding center #4, one picture contains a dividing line a third of the way down the page, the other about three quarter of the way down the page. The one on the left corresponds Susan York’s consideration of the poems central tension and the one on the right corresponds to Arthur Sze’s consideration of the poem’s central tension. I reprint the poetic portion from unfolding center #4 below:
4. I slice oyster mushrooms off an aspen
then, in the next clearing, stumble
into beer cans and plastic bags.
We cannot elude ourselves; we jump
across state lines where four corners touch,
and nothing happens. A point is a period,
an intersection, spore, center of a circle,
or— “Where are my honeymoon panties?”
a woman mutters, rummaging in her purse—
the beginning of a vector in any direction.
If I’m understanding the interview within its basic context, York’s consideration of poetic tension appears in the upper third. With ten lines, my guess would be after the period completes on the third line, while Sze places the tension at the bottom one quarter, which would be roughly with the question mark. The interesting element here is to think about what tensions that each artist or poet was considering when creating the so-called “dividing line.” There is much talk about light and dark in the interview itself and how poems can be illuminated or cast in shadow. If we take York’s vision of the poem, the philosophical turning point of this piece appears to be after the third line, especially because the lyric perspective shifts into a collective, but I agreed with Sze’s vision because I was startled by the words that the woman mutters. There is a desert southwest and interior Midwest regional impulse to many of these unfolding center poems and Sze has an especially vivid way of describing landscapes, so the intrusion of the direct quotation appears as particularly jarring. But, perhaps the most fundamental thing about this collection is that you must read and re-read, considering the vision of the artist and poet and rethinking how poetry is as visual as it is textual and how art can be as poetic as it is imagistic. A fascinating work driven much by philosophical insights. The one drawback I do find in this collection is one that I’ve seen in other illustrated pieces: the lack of page numbers! If one were to assign this book in class, it could be a hindrance. Otherwise, this lushly produced collaboration is sure to invite numerous interpretations and “unfoldings.” Just as a general note, this work is completed in an especially beautiful board book style (the actual size of this book is probably four times the cover size page of a regular trade paperback to give you a sense of the dimensionality), which allows the poems to “unfurl” in an epic way and gives the artist’s abstracted drawings a panoramic gravitas. This is the kind of book that you could enjoy for its literary value, but also certainly give as a special gift for the poet or the art lover, someone with a sense of orientation toward the avant-garde, the experimental, the slightly off-kilter. Finally, as a lover of Russian Modern art, particularly Malevich and Kandinsky, I found Susan York’s drawings to be both absolutely minimalist but ultimately so expressively nuanced. A delight for any who enjoys “non-representational” arts.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Susan-York-Arthur-Sze-Unfolding/dp/1934435694/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399907407&sr=8-1&keywords=Susan+York
A Review of Varsha Bajaj’s Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood (Albert & Whitman, 2014).
Varsha Bajaj’s Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood is a rather frothy, but entertaining debut novel that follows that titular adventures of Abby Spencer. Abby’s a teenager, is raised by her single mother and extended family (mother’s side grandparents); she happens to be half-South Asian, but has no contact with her father. When Abby shows a major allergic reaction to something she has eaten—she surmises coconut—the doctor advises that the family look into her father’s medical history because the mother’s side shows no hereditary issues with the foods that Abby had eaten. Thus, the truth of Abby’s parentage comes out and Abby discovers that her father is none other than a famous Bollywood actor named Naveen Kumar. Prior to his stardom, Naveen (who at that time was known by a different name) had a short but loving relationship with Abby’s mother. Though they do not end up getting married Abby’s mother had hoped that Naveen would end up participating in some way in Abby’s life, even if he had gone back to India. But, when Abby’s mother sends him a letter when Abby is very young, it is never answered and Abby’s mother assumes that Naveen wants nothing to do with Abby. Abby’s potentially deadly medical condition pushes her family to look back into her paternal ancestry; they locate Naveen, who tells them that he never received the letter that he had a daughter, and he is very enthused to meet Abby. Thus, the title comes to fruition: “Abby Spences goes to Bollywood.” She meets her father, but the relationship is slightly tentative. Though Naveen is friendly and Naveen’s mother (Abby’s paternal side grandmother) is especially doting, the fact that Naveen is in the public eye makes this relationship complicated. Indeed, Abby is in a kind of “closet,” as Naveen waits for the perfect time to release the news that he has a daughter. Given his stature in Bollywood, such a revelation would no doubt cause a large ruckus.
Bajaj’s novel manages to weave in an entertaining plot with a major social issue: that of poverty and class disparity in India. Abby is often struck by the clapboard housing and clamoring children that assail her wherever she goes and she realizes that her life is one of privilege and security. Though Bajaj cannot obviously resolve a social ill within this kind of fictional world, her novel takes on a more textured foundation due to this kind of historical and sociocultural grounding. The other element to note is of course the issue of mixed race, an aspect that Bajaj takes head on, as Abby must confront her dual heritages and figure out how to address the possibility that she might have ties to both her mother’s lineage and her father’s. Bajaj knows her target audience and there is a requisite romance plot that emerges over the course of the novel. A novel sure to delight its intended readership.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Abby-Spencer-Bollywood-Varsha-Bajaj/dp/0807563633/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398445168&sr=8-1&keywords=abby+spencer+goes+to+bollywood
A Review of Kyoko Mori’s Barn Cat (GemmaMedia, 2013).
Kyoko Mori’s Barn Cat is part of GemmaMedia’s open series, which offers established and exciting writers a chance for exposure to a wider audience through a very interesting book format: the novelette in mass market form. You’ll easily finish Barn Cat within about an hour, probably less. These are slim volumes with small sizing. Though the length, width, and height of these books are not that impressive, we should not discount their importance and their depth. Mori’s Barn Cat is a contoured exploration of an “alternative” family. Our narrator is Lily, recently estranged from her husband Sam, living in Boston, who finds out that her mother is missing. She must return home, which is to Denmark, a town in the Midwest where she reconnects with her stepsister Jill. Over the course of the narrative, many revelations are made concerning Lily’s mother, Kumiko, including the problematic relationship that she had with Lily’s stepfather. This novel thus exposes the communication gaps that appear in this family, ones that reverberate to the present day. Mori’s work is effortless; she uses succinct, pared down sentences to generate a poignant narrative that doesn’t rely on a cataclysmic paranormal plot or a central romance to generate tension. The “barn cat” of the title is a nod to the ways in which Lily finds comfort in the lives of animals, particularly of cats with whom she experiences a special bonding. The importance of animals to this book is evident in the ways that they become larger metaphors for alienation, community, and the chance for familial renaissance. A beautifuly, lyrically rendered novelette.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Barn-Open-Door-Kyoko-Mori/dp/1936846403/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1398466580&sr=8-5&keywords=Kyoko+Mori
A Review of Sandra Tsing Loh’s The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones (W.W. Norton, 2014).
Sandra Tsing Loh is author of numerous other works (Mother on Fire, A Year in Van Nuys, Depth Takes a Holiday, etc) and is well-known for her performance shows; she returns to the publishing world with a lively, comic memoir about menopause, unruly teens, marital affairs, losing weight and perhaps most of all: finding happiness and fulfillment as she is about to turn fifty. Loh’s memoir is constructed in anecdotes, but is loosely organized by the cataclysmic event of an extramarital affair that ends in her divorce with Mr. X. She ends up living for a brief time with Mr. Y, with whom she had had the affair, only to have him move out momentarily—he tries to make things work in his own marriage—but then they move back in together. If this initial sequence sounds rather tumultuous, it is, and Loh makes clear that the issue exacerbating everything going on is her “raging hormones,” the fact of her experiencing menopause. How is one to deal with life-changing event, the common pedestrian trials of everyday life and everything in between? For Loh, to answer this question, she must ask for advice not only of psychotherapists, but also of her family, and her many girlfriends, who often offer her useful tips, some of which she chooses to implement and others that she exposes as particularly unfruitful in the context of her life. Loh’s tonality is a difficult one to ground a memoir in, because it requires the use of humor to propel a fragmented narrative forward; there are sure to be dips and lows in a memoir working in this way. At some point, Loh relies upon hyperbole to drive points home and that can detract against the very sobering reality of aging: the well of loneliness, the questions of fulfillment, the regrets about roads not taken, and the challenges of trying to find a more authentic path amid the cult of celebrity and image that is Los Angeles. Surely, a memoir also about an upper middle-class existence, some might find Loh’s navel-gazing to be narcissistic, overwrought, and evidence of a certifiable neurotic, but this “diagnosis” would be to miss the point: Loh is quite well-aware of the ridiculousness that can be the upper middle-class existence and attempts to shore what it is that she truly values. So take a chill pill and accept a ride with a madwoman in a Volvo.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Madwoman-Volvo-Raging-Hormones/dp/0393088685/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398960579&sr=8-1&keywords=Sandra+Tsing+Loh
A Review of Violet Kupersmith’s The Frangipani Hotel (Spiegel and Grau, 2014).
Violet Kupersmith’s The Frangipani Hotel is a short story collection that takes on some supernatural registers. Each story begins with a relatively basic premise, but all are generally linked by Vietnamese and Vietnamese American contexts. In the first story, “Boat Story,” told entirely in dialogue, a girl asks her grandmother about her experiences as a refugee. Though the girl already has a sense of what might be said, the grandmother proceeds to tell her a different story entirely, one in which the dead can come alive, something that seems far from the harrowing narrative that the girl had been expecting. This kind of story becomes a template for the others. Of course, this first story is a kind of metaphor for Kupersmith’s reconsideration of what Vietnamese American literature can be, attempting to alter its boundaries and the expectations of those seeking perhaps some sort of authentic ethnic experience. In the title story, for instance, a worker at a dilapidated hotel (the titular hotel) comes upon a strange woman, listing in the bathroom of one of the rooms. She seems to have a strange thirst for water and the story takes another unexpected turn when she decides to accompany this hotel worker on a trip with a transnational businessman, who has requested the company of a beautiful Vietnamese woman. In “Skin and Bones,” two young sisters travel to Vietnam on a sort of heritage visit, remaining with their elderly grandmother. One of the sisters—who is overweight—is under pressure to get fit, but while in Vietnam, she succumbs to the temptations of a street vendor who provides her with delicious breads. As with the other stories, the ending also moves into a kind of surrealist register. Kupersmith tackles a variety of different characters and contexts as the collection moves on: folktale storytelling within a religious institution, a transnational relationship with a surprise and perhaps immaculate pregnancy, a driver who must deal with a mysterious passenger. The last story of the collection, “Descending Dragon,” finally and directly engages one of the more common tropes related to Vietnamese American literature: trauma in the wake of war. In this case, the main character is subsisting in a nursing home and is increasingly afflicted by visions of a tank. Her daughter has promised to come visit her soon, but says that she cannot visit for Tet, the Vietnamese holiday. The strength of this collection can also be its weakness: Kupersmith’s stories have been influenced by her study of folktales and myths and she is clearly and dynamically reworking many within these fictional worlds, but for those who are radically unfamiliar with these terrains may find the subtlety inherent to be a little bit too distancing.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Frangipani-Hotel-Violet-Kupersmith/dp/0812993314/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399752225&sr=8-1&keywords=Violet+Kupersmith
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and grammar mistakes. If you should need to contact me, please send to: sohnlitcrit@gmail.com
In this post, reviews of: Susan York and Arthur Sze’s The Unfolding Center (Radius Books, 2013); Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood (Albert & Whitman, 2014); Kyoko Mori’s Barn Cat (GemmaMedia, 2013); Sandra Tsing Loh’s The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones (W.W. Norton, 2014); Violet Kupersmith’s The Frangipani Hotel (Spiegel and Grau, 2014).
A Review of Susan York and Arthur Sze’s The Unfolding Center (Radius Books, 2013).
Arthur Sze’s been working hard! He actually has two different publications in the past calendar year (the other is Compass Rose), so I figured it was high time we spent a little bit of time reviewing some of his new work. Sze is author of numerous other poetry collections, including but not limited to Dazzled, Quipu, The Redshifting Web. What is of course interesting about The Unfolding Center is that it is a collaboration with the artist Susan York. We might look back to this review of Timothy Liu’s work and collaboration with Greg Drasler:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/99123.html
In Sze’s co-authored work with Susan York, there are eleven drawings that go along with eleven poems. Those involved with the production and completion of this piece also saw fit to include drafts of early poems and sequences, a truly eye-catching look into the creative development process. An accompanying interview at the conclusion (conducted by John Yau no less) provides key insights into the inspirations and intent behind many of the collaborative portions. Indeed, I was not entirely sure what to make of the poems and the pictorial sequences that followed (though I did notice the symmetry in numbers) until I read a little bit into that interview. Each poem has two different drawings related to it. The motivation behind each drawing is a section of dark and a section of light: the dividing line between the two acts as a tension point. For instance, in unfolding center #4, one picture contains a dividing line a third of the way down the page, the other about three quarter of the way down the page. The one on the left corresponds Susan York’s consideration of the poems central tension and the one on the right corresponds to Arthur Sze’s consideration of the poem’s central tension. I reprint the poetic portion from unfolding center #4 below:
4. I slice oyster mushrooms off an aspen
then, in the next clearing, stumble
into beer cans and plastic bags.
We cannot elude ourselves; we jump
across state lines where four corners touch,
and nothing happens. A point is a period,
an intersection, spore, center of a circle,
or— “Where are my honeymoon panties?”
a woman mutters, rummaging in her purse—
the beginning of a vector in any direction.
If I’m understanding the interview within its basic context, York’s consideration of poetic tension appears in the upper third. With ten lines, my guess would be after the period completes on the third line, while Sze places the tension at the bottom one quarter, which would be roughly with the question mark. The interesting element here is to think about what tensions that each artist or poet was considering when creating the so-called “dividing line.” There is much talk about light and dark in the interview itself and how poems can be illuminated or cast in shadow. If we take York’s vision of the poem, the philosophical turning point of this piece appears to be after the third line, especially because the lyric perspective shifts into a collective, but I agreed with Sze’s vision because I was startled by the words that the woman mutters. There is a desert southwest and interior Midwest regional impulse to many of these unfolding center poems and Sze has an especially vivid way of describing landscapes, so the intrusion of the direct quotation appears as particularly jarring. But, perhaps the most fundamental thing about this collection is that you must read and re-read, considering the vision of the artist and poet and rethinking how poetry is as visual as it is textual and how art can be as poetic as it is imagistic. A fascinating work driven much by philosophical insights. The one drawback I do find in this collection is one that I’ve seen in other illustrated pieces: the lack of page numbers! If one were to assign this book in class, it could be a hindrance. Otherwise, this lushly produced collaboration is sure to invite numerous interpretations and “unfoldings.” Just as a general note, this work is completed in an especially beautiful board book style (the actual size of this book is probably four times the cover size page of a regular trade paperback to give you a sense of the dimensionality), which allows the poems to “unfurl” in an epic way and gives the artist’s abstracted drawings a panoramic gravitas. This is the kind of book that you could enjoy for its literary value, but also certainly give as a special gift for the poet or the art lover, someone with a sense of orientation toward the avant-garde, the experimental, the slightly off-kilter. Finally, as a lover of Russian Modern art, particularly Malevich and Kandinsky, I found Susan York’s drawings to be both absolutely minimalist but ultimately so expressively nuanced. A delight for any who enjoys “non-representational” arts.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Susan-York-Arthur-Sze-Unfolding/dp/1934435694/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399907407&sr=8-1&keywords=Susan+York
A Review of Varsha Bajaj’s Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood (Albert & Whitman, 2014).
Varsha Bajaj’s Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood is a rather frothy, but entertaining debut novel that follows that titular adventures of Abby Spencer. Abby’s a teenager, is raised by her single mother and extended family (mother’s side grandparents); she happens to be half-South Asian, but has no contact with her father. When Abby shows a major allergic reaction to something she has eaten—she surmises coconut—the doctor advises that the family look into her father’s medical history because the mother’s side shows no hereditary issues with the foods that Abby had eaten. Thus, the truth of Abby’s parentage comes out and Abby discovers that her father is none other than a famous Bollywood actor named Naveen Kumar. Prior to his stardom, Naveen (who at that time was known by a different name) had a short but loving relationship with Abby’s mother. Though they do not end up getting married Abby’s mother had hoped that Naveen would end up participating in some way in Abby’s life, even if he had gone back to India. But, when Abby’s mother sends him a letter when Abby is very young, it is never answered and Abby’s mother assumes that Naveen wants nothing to do with Abby. Abby’s potentially deadly medical condition pushes her family to look back into her paternal ancestry; they locate Naveen, who tells them that he never received the letter that he had a daughter, and he is very enthused to meet Abby. Thus, the title comes to fruition: “Abby Spences goes to Bollywood.” She meets her father, but the relationship is slightly tentative. Though Naveen is friendly and Naveen’s mother (Abby’s paternal side grandmother) is especially doting, the fact that Naveen is in the public eye makes this relationship complicated. Indeed, Abby is in a kind of “closet,” as Naveen waits for the perfect time to release the news that he has a daughter. Given his stature in Bollywood, such a revelation would no doubt cause a large ruckus.
Bajaj’s novel manages to weave in an entertaining plot with a major social issue: that of poverty and class disparity in India. Abby is often struck by the clapboard housing and clamoring children that assail her wherever she goes and she realizes that her life is one of privilege and security. Though Bajaj cannot obviously resolve a social ill within this kind of fictional world, her novel takes on a more textured foundation due to this kind of historical and sociocultural grounding. The other element to note is of course the issue of mixed race, an aspect that Bajaj takes head on, as Abby must confront her dual heritages and figure out how to address the possibility that she might have ties to both her mother’s lineage and her father’s. Bajaj knows her target audience and there is a requisite romance plot that emerges over the course of the novel. A novel sure to delight its intended readership.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Abby-Spencer-Bollywood-Varsha-Bajaj/dp/0807563633/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398445168&sr=8-1&keywords=abby+spencer+goes+to+bollywood
A Review of Kyoko Mori’s Barn Cat (GemmaMedia, 2013).
Kyoko Mori’s Barn Cat is part of GemmaMedia’s open series, which offers established and exciting writers a chance for exposure to a wider audience through a very interesting book format: the novelette in mass market form. You’ll easily finish Barn Cat within about an hour, probably less. These are slim volumes with small sizing. Though the length, width, and height of these books are not that impressive, we should not discount their importance and their depth. Mori’s Barn Cat is a contoured exploration of an “alternative” family. Our narrator is Lily, recently estranged from her husband Sam, living in Boston, who finds out that her mother is missing. She must return home, which is to Denmark, a town in the Midwest where she reconnects with her stepsister Jill. Over the course of the narrative, many revelations are made concerning Lily’s mother, Kumiko, including the problematic relationship that she had with Lily’s stepfather. This novel thus exposes the communication gaps that appear in this family, ones that reverberate to the present day. Mori’s work is effortless; she uses succinct, pared down sentences to generate a poignant narrative that doesn’t rely on a cataclysmic paranormal plot or a central romance to generate tension. The “barn cat” of the title is a nod to the ways in which Lily finds comfort in the lives of animals, particularly of cats with whom she experiences a special bonding. The importance of animals to this book is evident in the ways that they become larger metaphors for alienation, community, and the chance for familial renaissance. A beautifuly, lyrically rendered novelette.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Barn-Open-Door-Kyoko-Mori/dp/1936846403/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1398466580&sr=8-5&keywords=Kyoko+Mori
A Review of Sandra Tsing Loh’s The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones (W.W. Norton, 2014).
Sandra Tsing Loh is author of numerous other works (Mother on Fire, A Year in Van Nuys, Depth Takes a Holiday, etc) and is well-known for her performance shows; she returns to the publishing world with a lively, comic memoir about menopause, unruly teens, marital affairs, losing weight and perhaps most of all: finding happiness and fulfillment as she is about to turn fifty. Loh’s memoir is constructed in anecdotes, but is loosely organized by the cataclysmic event of an extramarital affair that ends in her divorce with Mr. X. She ends up living for a brief time with Mr. Y, with whom she had had the affair, only to have him move out momentarily—he tries to make things work in his own marriage—but then they move back in together. If this initial sequence sounds rather tumultuous, it is, and Loh makes clear that the issue exacerbating everything going on is her “raging hormones,” the fact of her experiencing menopause. How is one to deal with life-changing event, the common pedestrian trials of everyday life and everything in between? For Loh, to answer this question, she must ask for advice not only of psychotherapists, but also of her family, and her many girlfriends, who often offer her useful tips, some of which she chooses to implement and others that she exposes as particularly unfruitful in the context of her life. Loh’s tonality is a difficult one to ground a memoir in, because it requires the use of humor to propel a fragmented narrative forward; there are sure to be dips and lows in a memoir working in this way. At some point, Loh relies upon hyperbole to drive points home and that can detract against the very sobering reality of aging: the well of loneliness, the questions of fulfillment, the regrets about roads not taken, and the challenges of trying to find a more authentic path amid the cult of celebrity and image that is Los Angeles. Surely, a memoir also about an upper middle-class existence, some might find Loh’s navel-gazing to be narcissistic, overwrought, and evidence of a certifiable neurotic, but this “diagnosis” would be to miss the point: Loh is quite well-aware of the ridiculousness that can be the upper middle-class existence and attempts to shore what it is that she truly values. So take a chill pill and accept a ride with a madwoman in a Volvo.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Madwoman-Volvo-Raging-Hormones/dp/0393088685/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398960579&sr=8-1&keywords=Sandra+Tsing+Loh
A Review of Violet Kupersmith’s The Frangipani Hotel (Spiegel and Grau, 2014).
Violet Kupersmith’s The Frangipani Hotel is a short story collection that takes on some supernatural registers. Each story begins with a relatively basic premise, but all are generally linked by Vietnamese and Vietnamese American contexts. In the first story, “Boat Story,” told entirely in dialogue, a girl asks her grandmother about her experiences as a refugee. Though the girl already has a sense of what might be said, the grandmother proceeds to tell her a different story entirely, one in which the dead can come alive, something that seems far from the harrowing narrative that the girl had been expecting. This kind of story becomes a template for the others. Of course, this first story is a kind of metaphor for Kupersmith’s reconsideration of what Vietnamese American literature can be, attempting to alter its boundaries and the expectations of those seeking perhaps some sort of authentic ethnic experience. In the title story, for instance, a worker at a dilapidated hotel (the titular hotel) comes upon a strange woman, listing in the bathroom of one of the rooms. She seems to have a strange thirst for water and the story takes another unexpected turn when she decides to accompany this hotel worker on a trip with a transnational businessman, who has requested the company of a beautiful Vietnamese woman. In “Skin and Bones,” two young sisters travel to Vietnam on a sort of heritage visit, remaining with their elderly grandmother. One of the sisters—who is overweight—is under pressure to get fit, but while in Vietnam, she succumbs to the temptations of a street vendor who provides her with delicious breads. As with the other stories, the ending also moves into a kind of surrealist register. Kupersmith tackles a variety of different characters and contexts as the collection moves on: folktale storytelling within a religious institution, a transnational relationship with a surprise and perhaps immaculate pregnancy, a driver who must deal with a mysterious passenger. The last story of the collection, “Descending Dragon,” finally and directly engages one of the more common tropes related to Vietnamese American literature: trauma in the wake of war. In this case, the main character is subsisting in a nursing home and is increasingly afflicted by visions of a tank. Her daughter has promised to come visit her soon, but says that she cannot visit for Tet, the Vietnamese holiday. The strength of this collection can also be its weakness: Kupersmith’s stories have been influenced by her study of folktales and myths and she is clearly and dynamically reworking many within these fictional worlds, but for those who are radically unfamiliar with these terrains may find the subtlety inherent to be a little bit too distancing.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Frangipani-Hotel-Violet-Kupersmith/dp/0812993314/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399752225&sr=8-1&keywords=Violet+Kupersmith
May 28, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for May 28, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for May 28, 2014
In this post, reviews of Samit Basu’s Turbulence (Titan Books, 2013); Marisa de Los Santos and David Teague’s Saving Lucas Biggs (Harper Children’s Division, 2014); Melissa de la Cruz’s The Ring and the Crown (Disney Hyperion, 2014); and Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian’s Fire for Fire (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013).
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and grammar mistakes. If you should need to contact me, please send to: sohnlitcrit@gmail.com
A Review of Samit Basu’s Turbulence (Titan Books, 2013).
Samit Basu’s Turbulence is definitely one of the most fun reads I have had in a long time. Basu is already known for his cult series The Simoqin Prophecies, which was published out of Penguin India. This series is hard to get in the States, but it established Basu as a speculative writer of formidable talent; descriptions make clear that The Simoqin Prophecies brings together postcolonial Indian Anglophone fiction and the fantasy genre. Basu takes a similar turn with Turbulence in what I would consider to be postcolonial Indian Anglophone fiction meets X-Men meets Tim Kring’s Heroes (specifically in its evocation of a Sylar-like big baddie). Turbulence explores what happens to a group of Indians who all happened to take the same plane flight. All those who were on that plane apparently exhibit special powers. Aman Sen, one of those individuals, attempts to unite those who were on that plane and keep them safe from forces that seem to be looking to kill them. Enter Uzma: a woman who was on the plane and who enters Sen’s would-be refuge and meets the others who are specially powered. For his part, Sen is gifted with incredible talents related to the internet. Others include Tia, who can make multiple copies of herself; Bob, who can change the weather based upon what he eats; and Sundar, who has become proficient at creating new technology, with the power of invention. Uzma’s gift seems to be a little less impressive: anyone one who meets her immediately falls in love with her. In any case, the plot takes on greater urgency when it becomes clear that there is an evil force looking to exploit the specially powered plane flight passengers and use them to rule over the entire world: Jai, the leader, has his own group of cronies with special powers, including Mukesh, who can take the form of a snake; Amina, a young girl who has taken on persona of an anime character in a video game and can accordingly injure people with special moves; Sher, a man who can take the form of a tiger; among others. Sen’s band of merry mutants seems to be the only thing stopping Jai.
Basu’s novel is so engaging because there’s a wonderful mix of action and humor. Basu puts to effective use some of the unique powers, with Tia’s multiple copies perhaps being the most comedic. Indeed, Tia’s many versions of herself often argue with each other, while others go on their own missions without informing the larger mutant clan. Basu is well aware of the intertextual resonances of his novel and is sure to cite other popular culture documents featuring mutants and monsters. Readers will be overjoyed to note that Basu’s follow-up to Turbulence, Resistance, will soon see its release in 2014. Truly, a pyrotechnic feat of the superhero-oriented imagination.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Turbulence-Samit-Basu/dp/1781161194
A Review of Marisa de Los Santos and David Teague’s Saving Lucas Biggs (Harper Children’s Division, 2014)
Marisa de Los Santos takes a break from her single-authored books to team up with her husband David Teague for their debut collaboration: Saving Lucas Biggs (Harper Children’s Division, 2014). Santos and Teague split storytelling duties up among three characters: Margaret O’Malley, her best friend Charlie, and Charlie’s grandfather Josh. Initially, readers are split into two different times frames, with alternating viewpoints from Margaret in 2014 and from Josh in 1938. In the present time, Margaret O’Malley’s father has just been convicted of murder based upon a fire that he reputedly had set, one linked to the very corporation that he had been trying to take down as a whistleblower for Victory Fuels, a large fossil fuel-related corporation. The circumstances are of course sketchy and Margaret makes it clear that her father was likely the victim of a framing. The novel then shifts to 1938 where Josh tells us the story of his parents’ move from Mississippi to Victory, Arizona, (in part due to his brother who seems to have some sort of respiratory ailment) a town that is just beginning its development of industries. In 1938, this industry is coal mining. These two time periods seem to be, for the most part, unrelated, except for the fact that Margaret and Charlie do happen to be best friends and that Margaret does know Josh in 2014, as an elderly man. But, about one-third of the way into the novel, we finally figure out what the strange maxim that Margaret lives by concerning “foreswearing,” which is related to the fact that everyone in the O’Malley line (seemingly passed down from Margaret’s paternal line) is able to do time travel. Whut, whut, you say?! Yes, time travel. So, this young adult fiction clearly moves into the realm of the paranormal from this point forward, though it obviously gestures to a social realist impulse based upon the issue of union organizing occurring in 1938 and the fight against big corporations destroying the environment in 2014. Margaret, after hearing a key story from Josh in 2014, realizes that if she travels back to 1938, she might be able to alter a set of events that would then result in a different set of happenings in 2014. Specifically, she looks to prevent another framing and murder that occurred in 1938; the father of Josh’s best friend, Aristotle Agrippa, is accused of murdering the then owner of the Victory company, Mr. Ratliff. The actual killer is none other than a man named Elijah Biggs, who will later go on to own the company and adopt Aristotle’s son (and who is Josh’s best friend) Luke. If this is all sort of confusing for you, you should read the novel and enjoy its many twists and turns. Santos and Teague certainly have created a stimulating and enthralling story, one easily read within a single night (especially for those like me with reading addiction). The twining of the sociopolitical with the family drama (and the paranormal no less) heightens the stakes of this particular novel and proves to make it quite relatable to current and past social contexts. As with many books aimed at younger audience, you can expect some sort of closed resolution. This formal conceit seems to one of the primary modes of distinguishing more adult-oriented narratives from the youth-oriented ones. The question I have is related to the impulse behind this approach: are we attempting to simplify the narrative of good over evil, re-introduce the viability of a proto-romance plot? Certainly, these works traffic in the ur-narratives of our time and exploit our desire to see the heroes triumph over perceived villains. If anything though, Santos and Teague’s narrative rises above strict binaries in its climactic reorientation of the central Big Bad.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Lucas-Biggs-Marisa-Santos/dp/0062274627/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397776982&sr=8-1&keywords=Marisa+de+los+Santos+David+Teague
A Review of Melissa de la Cruz’s The Ring and the Crown (Disney Hyperion, 2014).
In what seems to be a stand-alone novel, The Ring and the Crown offers Melissa de la Cruz yet another golden opportunity to showcase her tried and true formula of romance and intrigue set in a paranormal fictional world. In this case, she’s created a kind of counterfactual history in which magicians and sorcerers live alongside British Royalty. The novel starts off a little bit slowly, as de la Cruz generates narrative perspectives from at least five different characters; the two most important characters are: Princess Marie-Victoria, who is set to be married to Prince Leopold VII, heir to the Prussian throne and Aelwyn Myrddn, a powerful mage, who is separated from Marie-Victoria at a very young age due to the potential destructive power of her abilities. A goodreads member actually created a relationship chart for this book which I thought was hilarious, but also quite on the money. de la Cruz creates so many different possible romantic combinations that you sort of want a chart somewhere in the book. By this point, de la Cruz has mastered a kind of shifting third person perspective with a focus on romance plots. Certainly, this approach has been successful for her, but I can’t help but hope that de la Cruz will branch out a little bit more narratologically, perhaps experiment with different storytelling approaches in the future.
For the relationship chart, go here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18296016-the-ring-and-the-crown
The tension of the novel is that Marie-Victoria does not want to marry Prince Leopold; her sights are on another, a guard named Gill Cameron. The other major character is Prince Leopold’s younger brother Wolf, who ends up entertaining a possible romance with an American (named Ronan) who is on the lower fringes of the landed gentry. The Ronan figure is perhaps the one most connected to the traditional courtship and marriage plot; consider her a stand-in for a kind of Lizzie Bennet figure. She’s looking to secure the right match, especially in this case to help out the dire financial circumstances of her family. With so much of the focus on the relationships, de la Cruz’s novel loses its paranormal luster; the magical elements seem tacked on and only come into play—for the most part—in one sequence involving a switcheroo between Marie-Victoria and Aelwyn. Further still, readers may balk at the concluding pairing, which abruptly pairs two figures together that seemed one of the least likely couples. de la Cruz was certainly working with the hope that such a surprise might delight, but the gamble, at least in my opinion, does not work within the logic of that fictional world. de la Cruz, as always, is exceedingly steady in her publications, the coming months and years offer another installment in the Blue Bloods series (a take I think on an adult-oriented fictional approach to this series) and then of course the Witches of East End Series and the Heart of Dread series. It remains to be seen whether The Ring and the Crown is part of a larger sequence of books, but if so, let’s hope de la Cruz gives us more of the magical and the mystical to flesh out what will surely be another “game of thrones” type plot.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ring-Crown-Melissa-Cruz/dp/1423157427
A Review of Lauren Francis-Sharma’s ’Til The Well Runs Dry (Henry Holt, 2014).
Lauren Francis-Sharma’s debut novel ’Til The Well Runs Dry uses a polyvocal first person narrative to great effect in the complicated story of a mixed race family in the Caribbean. This particular novel mines the crucial interracial histories that have linked those of African and Asian descent in Trinidad. The three first person perspectives are given to Marcia Garcia, who begins the novel as a teenage seamstress who hails from an impoverished background; Farouk Karam, a police officer, Marcia’s lover and later father to her four children; and then Jacqueline Karam, one of Marcia and Farouk’s children. Because the novel is split into these perspectives, there are always at least three “diegetic” plots occurring. For her part, Marcia simply struggles to make a life for her and her four children (Patsy, Jacqueline, Yvonne and Wesley). Her life with Farouk is complicated because Farouk’s parents, who are of South Asian ancestry, do not welcome her as a potential marriage partner. Their relationship sours after this point and Marcia must also contend with a romantic rival in the form of the daughter of a woman who practices Obeah. Marcia and Farouk are separated, though Farouk does do what he can to help support the family. His life as a police officer keeps him busy, but his professional job takes a complicated turn when he starts laundering money and he must work with corrupt officials and organized criminals. Jacqueline Karam gives us the perspective of the potential of the next generation. Jacqueline is bookish and observant, realizes that her prospects in life are limited and considers education as a possible escape route from poverty and obviously desires a life different than the one that has mired her mother. Francis-Sharma’s ability to clarify the boundaries of these three very distinct narrative positions is one of the great strengths in this novel, which grants us a kaleidoscopic viewpoint of a family that always seems to be stuck in some sort of peril. These characters are complicated and flawed, and as I mentioned earlier, this work adds much to the representational terrain of Afro-Asian Caribbean literatures; it certainly could be taught alongside works such as Patricia Powell’s The Pagoda, Kerry Young’s Pao, and others.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Til-Well-Runs-Dry-Novel/dp/0805098038/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398096664&sr=8-1&keywords=Lauren+Francis-Sharma
A Review of Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian’s Fire for Fire (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013).
(hmmm... I think Kat is in the middle and Mary is on the right?)
I was saving this read for a time when I needed to take a mental break from some research, knowing Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian’s next installment was sure to be entertaining. In the follow up to Burn for Burn, revenge continues to get both sweeter and more complicated. The trio that began the first book are back for more retribution: there’s Lillia, the popular, pretty and smart Korean American; Kat, the gothic, punkish rebel; and Mary, the formerly overweight, bookish, slightly socially awkward wallflower who all come together to hatch a plan for revenge. In the first book, the intended target Reeve is now suffering from a devastating leg injury that jeopardizes his chances for a college football scholarship. Though the three seem to have gotten the revenge that they so desired, the injury has done little to change Reeve’s character. A chance encounter with Mary, who has long harbored feelings for Reeve but was unceremoniously dropped as a friend and ridiculed for being fat, reveals that Reeve is still in need of more character refinement, so the three teens hatch a plan to get back at Reeve yet again. This plan involves Lillia pretending to win Reeve’s heart, which will of course be all an act. Lillia will then proceed to break his heart in the way that he broke Mary’s. Of course, nothing ever goes as planned and we’re not surprised when Lillia starts becoming confused about whether or not Reeve is really as bad as everyone makes him out to be. Things also get complicated because Lillia’s bestie, Rennie, also has her sights set on Reeve. This rivalry generates enough tension to create the narrative momentum needed for the plot to move toward to its cataclysmic conclusion. If you thought the ending of the first book had some generally negative and catastrophic results, this installment raises the stakes in multiple ways. The first novel hinted at the possibilities of the paranormal and Han and Vivian finally take one of the characters in the direction that all the readers were probably expecting. Even with this expectation fulfilled, Han and Vivian do surprise us with where the novel ultimately goes with this particular character and leaves readers with an excruciating cliffhanger that will have all fans lining up to buy the third copy right away. Definitely an improvement over the first of the series.
As always, you can’t help but wonder what “reality” this novel is set in; Han and Vivian create a fictional island (not unlike the many we have seen in other novels reviewed in this community) that allows them to construct a kind of isolated laboratory where you can almost forget that there’s supposedly other stuff going on in the world. In this sense, the insularity that emerges in the lives of these teen characters seem potentially alarming, especially since Han and Vivian do choose to set the fictional world in a realist aesthetic frame (indeed characters do end up traveling to colleges in preparation for graduating high school, rooting this fictional world on one that is somewhat like our own). In any case, Han and Vivian do some interesting and subtle, but nonetheless compelling work with race in this novel that cannot be overlooked. Lillia is a character that is more fully fleshed out in this version and her viewpoint is definitely the one that carries the weight of this novel, especially given her pivotal role in the faux-romance plot.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Burn-Jenny-Han/dp/1442440783/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1398664649&sr=8-7&keywords=Jenny+Han
In this post, reviews of Samit Basu’s Turbulence (Titan Books, 2013); Marisa de Los Santos and David Teague’s Saving Lucas Biggs (Harper Children’s Division, 2014); Melissa de la Cruz’s The Ring and the Crown (Disney Hyperion, 2014); and Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian’s Fire for Fire (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013).
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and grammar mistakes. If you should need to contact me, please send to: sohnlitcrit@gmail.com
A Review of Samit Basu’s Turbulence (Titan Books, 2013).
Samit Basu’s Turbulence is definitely one of the most fun reads I have had in a long time. Basu is already known for his cult series The Simoqin Prophecies, which was published out of Penguin India. This series is hard to get in the States, but it established Basu as a speculative writer of formidable talent; descriptions make clear that The Simoqin Prophecies brings together postcolonial Indian Anglophone fiction and the fantasy genre. Basu takes a similar turn with Turbulence in what I would consider to be postcolonial Indian Anglophone fiction meets X-Men meets Tim Kring’s Heroes (specifically in its evocation of a Sylar-like big baddie). Turbulence explores what happens to a group of Indians who all happened to take the same plane flight. All those who were on that plane apparently exhibit special powers. Aman Sen, one of those individuals, attempts to unite those who were on that plane and keep them safe from forces that seem to be looking to kill them. Enter Uzma: a woman who was on the plane and who enters Sen’s would-be refuge and meets the others who are specially powered. For his part, Sen is gifted with incredible talents related to the internet. Others include Tia, who can make multiple copies of herself; Bob, who can change the weather based upon what he eats; and Sundar, who has become proficient at creating new technology, with the power of invention. Uzma’s gift seems to be a little less impressive: anyone one who meets her immediately falls in love with her. In any case, the plot takes on greater urgency when it becomes clear that there is an evil force looking to exploit the specially powered plane flight passengers and use them to rule over the entire world: Jai, the leader, has his own group of cronies with special powers, including Mukesh, who can take the form of a snake; Amina, a young girl who has taken on persona of an anime character in a video game and can accordingly injure people with special moves; Sher, a man who can take the form of a tiger; among others. Sen’s band of merry mutants seems to be the only thing stopping Jai.
Basu’s novel is so engaging because there’s a wonderful mix of action and humor. Basu puts to effective use some of the unique powers, with Tia’s multiple copies perhaps being the most comedic. Indeed, Tia’s many versions of herself often argue with each other, while others go on their own missions without informing the larger mutant clan. Basu is well aware of the intertextual resonances of his novel and is sure to cite other popular culture documents featuring mutants and monsters. Readers will be overjoyed to note that Basu’s follow-up to Turbulence, Resistance, will soon see its release in 2014. Truly, a pyrotechnic feat of the superhero-oriented imagination.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Turbulence-Samit-Basu/dp/1781161194
A Review of Marisa de Los Santos and David Teague’s Saving Lucas Biggs (Harper Children’s Division, 2014)
Marisa de Los Santos takes a break from her single-authored books to team up with her husband David Teague for their debut collaboration: Saving Lucas Biggs (Harper Children’s Division, 2014). Santos and Teague split storytelling duties up among three characters: Margaret O’Malley, her best friend Charlie, and Charlie’s grandfather Josh. Initially, readers are split into two different times frames, with alternating viewpoints from Margaret in 2014 and from Josh in 1938. In the present time, Margaret O’Malley’s father has just been convicted of murder based upon a fire that he reputedly had set, one linked to the very corporation that he had been trying to take down as a whistleblower for Victory Fuels, a large fossil fuel-related corporation. The circumstances are of course sketchy and Margaret makes it clear that her father was likely the victim of a framing. The novel then shifts to 1938 where Josh tells us the story of his parents’ move from Mississippi to Victory, Arizona, (in part due to his brother who seems to have some sort of respiratory ailment) a town that is just beginning its development of industries. In 1938, this industry is coal mining. These two time periods seem to be, for the most part, unrelated, except for the fact that Margaret and Charlie do happen to be best friends and that Margaret does know Josh in 2014, as an elderly man. But, about one-third of the way into the novel, we finally figure out what the strange maxim that Margaret lives by concerning “foreswearing,” which is related to the fact that everyone in the O’Malley line (seemingly passed down from Margaret’s paternal line) is able to do time travel. Whut, whut, you say?! Yes, time travel. So, this young adult fiction clearly moves into the realm of the paranormal from this point forward, though it obviously gestures to a social realist impulse based upon the issue of union organizing occurring in 1938 and the fight against big corporations destroying the environment in 2014. Margaret, after hearing a key story from Josh in 2014, realizes that if she travels back to 1938, she might be able to alter a set of events that would then result in a different set of happenings in 2014. Specifically, she looks to prevent another framing and murder that occurred in 1938; the father of Josh’s best friend, Aristotle Agrippa, is accused of murdering the then owner of the Victory company, Mr. Ratliff. The actual killer is none other than a man named Elijah Biggs, who will later go on to own the company and adopt Aristotle’s son (and who is Josh’s best friend) Luke. If this is all sort of confusing for you, you should read the novel and enjoy its many twists and turns. Santos and Teague certainly have created a stimulating and enthralling story, one easily read within a single night (especially for those like me with reading addiction). The twining of the sociopolitical with the family drama (and the paranormal no less) heightens the stakes of this particular novel and proves to make it quite relatable to current and past social contexts. As with many books aimed at younger audience, you can expect some sort of closed resolution. This formal conceit seems to one of the primary modes of distinguishing more adult-oriented narratives from the youth-oriented ones. The question I have is related to the impulse behind this approach: are we attempting to simplify the narrative of good over evil, re-introduce the viability of a proto-romance plot? Certainly, these works traffic in the ur-narratives of our time and exploit our desire to see the heroes triumph over perceived villains. If anything though, Santos and Teague’s narrative rises above strict binaries in its climactic reorientation of the central Big Bad.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Lucas-Biggs-Marisa-Santos/dp/0062274627/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397776982&sr=8-1&keywords=Marisa+de+los+Santos+David+Teague
A Review of Melissa de la Cruz’s The Ring and the Crown (Disney Hyperion, 2014).
In what seems to be a stand-alone novel, The Ring and the Crown offers Melissa de la Cruz yet another golden opportunity to showcase her tried and true formula of romance and intrigue set in a paranormal fictional world. In this case, she’s created a kind of counterfactual history in which magicians and sorcerers live alongside British Royalty. The novel starts off a little bit slowly, as de la Cruz generates narrative perspectives from at least five different characters; the two most important characters are: Princess Marie-Victoria, who is set to be married to Prince Leopold VII, heir to the Prussian throne and Aelwyn Myrddn, a powerful mage, who is separated from Marie-Victoria at a very young age due to the potential destructive power of her abilities. A goodreads member actually created a relationship chart for this book which I thought was hilarious, but also quite on the money. de la Cruz creates so many different possible romantic combinations that you sort of want a chart somewhere in the book. By this point, de la Cruz has mastered a kind of shifting third person perspective with a focus on romance plots. Certainly, this approach has been successful for her, but I can’t help but hope that de la Cruz will branch out a little bit more narratologically, perhaps experiment with different storytelling approaches in the future.
For the relationship chart, go here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18296016-the-ring-and-the-crown
The tension of the novel is that Marie-Victoria does not want to marry Prince Leopold; her sights are on another, a guard named Gill Cameron. The other major character is Prince Leopold’s younger brother Wolf, who ends up entertaining a possible romance with an American (named Ronan) who is on the lower fringes of the landed gentry. The Ronan figure is perhaps the one most connected to the traditional courtship and marriage plot; consider her a stand-in for a kind of Lizzie Bennet figure. She’s looking to secure the right match, especially in this case to help out the dire financial circumstances of her family. With so much of the focus on the relationships, de la Cruz’s novel loses its paranormal luster; the magical elements seem tacked on and only come into play—for the most part—in one sequence involving a switcheroo between Marie-Victoria and Aelwyn. Further still, readers may balk at the concluding pairing, which abruptly pairs two figures together that seemed one of the least likely couples. de la Cruz was certainly working with the hope that such a surprise might delight, but the gamble, at least in my opinion, does not work within the logic of that fictional world. de la Cruz, as always, is exceedingly steady in her publications, the coming months and years offer another installment in the Blue Bloods series (a take I think on an adult-oriented fictional approach to this series) and then of course the Witches of East End Series and the Heart of Dread series. It remains to be seen whether The Ring and the Crown is part of a larger sequence of books, but if so, let’s hope de la Cruz gives us more of the magical and the mystical to flesh out what will surely be another “game of thrones” type plot.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Ring-Crown-Melissa-Cruz/dp/1423157427
A Review of Lauren Francis-Sharma’s ’Til The Well Runs Dry (Henry Holt, 2014).
Lauren Francis-Sharma’s debut novel ’Til The Well Runs Dry uses a polyvocal first person narrative to great effect in the complicated story of a mixed race family in the Caribbean. This particular novel mines the crucial interracial histories that have linked those of African and Asian descent in Trinidad. The three first person perspectives are given to Marcia Garcia, who begins the novel as a teenage seamstress who hails from an impoverished background; Farouk Karam, a police officer, Marcia’s lover and later father to her four children; and then Jacqueline Karam, one of Marcia and Farouk’s children. Because the novel is split into these perspectives, there are always at least three “diegetic” plots occurring. For her part, Marcia simply struggles to make a life for her and her four children (Patsy, Jacqueline, Yvonne and Wesley). Her life with Farouk is complicated because Farouk’s parents, who are of South Asian ancestry, do not welcome her as a potential marriage partner. Their relationship sours after this point and Marcia must also contend with a romantic rival in the form of the daughter of a woman who practices Obeah. Marcia and Farouk are separated, though Farouk does do what he can to help support the family. His life as a police officer keeps him busy, but his professional job takes a complicated turn when he starts laundering money and he must work with corrupt officials and organized criminals. Jacqueline Karam gives us the perspective of the potential of the next generation. Jacqueline is bookish and observant, realizes that her prospects in life are limited and considers education as a possible escape route from poverty and obviously desires a life different than the one that has mired her mother. Francis-Sharma’s ability to clarify the boundaries of these three very distinct narrative positions is one of the great strengths in this novel, which grants us a kaleidoscopic viewpoint of a family that always seems to be stuck in some sort of peril. These characters are complicated and flawed, and as I mentioned earlier, this work adds much to the representational terrain of Afro-Asian Caribbean literatures; it certainly could be taught alongside works such as Patricia Powell’s The Pagoda, Kerry Young’s Pao, and others.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Til-Well-Runs-Dry-Novel/dp/0805098038/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398096664&sr=8-1&keywords=Lauren+Francis-Sharma
A Review of Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian’s Fire for Fire (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2013).
(hmmm... I think Kat is in the middle and Mary is on the right?)
I was saving this read for a time when I needed to take a mental break from some research, knowing Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian’s next installment was sure to be entertaining. In the follow up to Burn for Burn, revenge continues to get both sweeter and more complicated. The trio that began the first book are back for more retribution: there’s Lillia, the popular, pretty and smart Korean American; Kat, the gothic, punkish rebel; and Mary, the formerly overweight, bookish, slightly socially awkward wallflower who all come together to hatch a plan for revenge. In the first book, the intended target Reeve is now suffering from a devastating leg injury that jeopardizes his chances for a college football scholarship. Though the three seem to have gotten the revenge that they so desired, the injury has done little to change Reeve’s character. A chance encounter with Mary, who has long harbored feelings for Reeve but was unceremoniously dropped as a friend and ridiculed for being fat, reveals that Reeve is still in need of more character refinement, so the three teens hatch a plan to get back at Reeve yet again. This plan involves Lillia pretending to win Reeve’s heart, which will of course be all an act. Lillia will then proceed to break his heart in the way that he broke Mary’s. Of course, nothing ever goes as planned and we’re not surprised when Lillia starts becoming confused about whether or not Reeve is really as bad as everyone makes him out to be. Things also get complicated because Lillia’s bestie, Rennie, also has her sights set on Reeve. This rivalry generates enough tension to create the narrative momentum needed for the plot to move toward to its cataclysmic conclusion. If you thought the ending of the first book had some generally negative and catastrophic results, this installment raises the stakes in multiple ways. The first novel hinted at the possibilities of the paranormal and Han and Vivian finally take one of the characters in the direction that all the readers were probably expecting. Even with this expectation fulfilled, Han and Vivian do surprise us with where the novel ultimately goes with this particular character and leaves readers with an excruciating cliffhanger that will have all fans lining up to buy the third copy right away. Definitely an improvement over the first of the series.
As always, you can’t help but wonder what “reality” this novel is set in; Han and Vivian create a fictional island (not unlike the many we have seen in other novels reviewed in this community) that allows them to construct a kind of isolated laboratory where you can almost forget that there’s supposedly other stuff going on in the world. In this sense, the insularity that emerges in the lives of these teen characters seem potentially alarming, especially since Han and Vivian do choose to set the fictional world in a realist aesthetic frame (indeed characters do end up traveling to colleges in preparation for graduating high school, rooting this fictional world on one that is somewhat like our own). In any case, Han and Vivian do some interesting and subtle, but nonetheless compelling work with race in this novel that cannot be overlooked. Lillia is a character that is more fully fleshed out in this version and her viewpoint is definitely the one that carries the weight of this novel, especially given her pivotal role in the faux-romance plot.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Burn-Jenny-Han/dp/1442440783/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1398664649&sr=8-7&keywords=Jenny+Han
May 10, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for May 10 2014
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for May 10 2014
In this post, reviews of Kathryn Ma’s The Year She Left Us (Harper, 2014); Wang Ping’s Ten Thousand Waves (WingsPress, 2014); Soman Chainani’s The School of Good and Evil: A World Without Princes (Harper Children’s Division, 2014); Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Algonquin Books, 2014); Tamai Kobayashi’s Prairie Ostrich (Goose Lane Editions, 2014).
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and grammar mistakes. If you should need to contact me, please send to: sohnlitcrit@gmail.com
A Review of Kathryn Ma’s The Year She Left Us (Harper, 2014).
I really enjoyed Kathryn Ma’s short story collection All that Work and Still No Boys, which I earlier reviewed here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/70464.html
Naturally, I was stoked to find out Kathryn Ma was about to publish her first novel, which I am reviewing here. In The Year She Left Us, Ma employs three narrative perspectives (two first person and one third person) to construct a rather complicated and unsentimental intergenerational family saga. Our ostensible protagonist is Ari (Ariadne) Kong is adopted from a Chinese orphanage by Charlie (Charlotte) Kong, a social worker who hails from a Chinese American background. Charlie raises Ari as a single mother, but has support from her extended family, including her sister Les, and her mother, Gran. There is also a larger adoptee community that Charlie relies on in the Bay Area; Ari calls these adoptees the Whackadoodles. The novel starts off with Ari having been in China, a sort of trip that allows her to think more about her identity, but she supposedly severs a finger by accident and her mother comes visiting to make sure she is okay. This incident is just the beginning of a longer and difficult trajectory that the novel takes us on: Ari wants to stay in China, defer college, get a better sense of where she was born, what she might have been taken from. Charlie is anxious and perceives the growing distance between them, while Gran wants Ari to head off to Bryn Mawr. When Ari announces that she’s going back to China and deferring college, she realizes that she’s striking out on her own and must separate from her mother’s company. Ari attempts to save money for the plane flight while working for a store selling specialty pens and inks, but the novel stages a midway intervention when Ari tries to sell some trinkets she finds in her mother’s home (without her mother’s knowledge of course). While pilfering whatever she can, she manages to stumble upon a photo of a man who was holding her as a baby. She realizes that there may be more to her story on the American side than she realizes and she is determined to find out who his man is and what this man meant to her adoptive mother. This trail eventually leads her to Alaska; she ends up crashing with a good friend of the man (Aaron Streeter) who was in the photo. Aaron Streeter died in an accident while hiking in Alaska and Ari realizes that she can get to know more about him and his life by staying with Aaron’s friend Steve and his wife Peg. As Ari discovers, Aaron was also purportedly in a relationship with Charlie when the accident happened and was determined to help raise Ari when he was tragically killed. But, there are contradictions to the story, as it seems that Aaron might have wanted to get back with his wife and that his son Noah might have been a factor in that decision. Without giving the rest of the plot away, I will say that Ma’s novel does not operate with a deterministic trajectory. The narrative seems to create only more loose ends as the plot moves further and further into each character’s lives and backstories. Gran, for instance, harbors deep family secrets concerning a brother who seems to have been developmentally challenged. While this kind of unfurling might have completely unraveled the novel, Ma is able to construct a story that reads often much more like an unedited memoir, achieving a realism that is both poignant and impressive. The choice of narrative perspectives can sometimes be uneven. Gran, in particular, is such a strong personality that her first person viewpoints can often overpower the other perspectives. Ma also makes the interesting choice of narrating the sections related to Charlie in the third person; it would be interesting to hear why Ma chose this one character for that particular perspective over the first person, which is given to both Ari and Gran. Finally, this novel is one that could be taught alongside a number of other outstanding Asian American narratives/ memoirs concerning adoptees such as Jane Jeong Trenka’s Fugitive Visions and Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-She-Left-Us/dp/0062273345/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399610751&sr=8-1&keywords=Kathryn+Ma
A Review of Wang Ping’s Ten Thousand Waves (WingsPress, 2014)
Wang Ping latest poetry collection, Ten Thousand Waves, explores many themes resonant across her growing body of work, including transnationalism, global capitalism, China’s modernization, political activism, art and cultural production, Tibetan independence, labor and sacrifice. “Dust Angels” provides a stanza that might be seen as a kind of overarching artistic impulse that unites these many poems:
they say we fake our sickness
have never worked in their factories
they hire lawyers to erase our names, ban our union
Marx and Mao are history, they claim
only freedom of market economy
the golden path toward democracy (7).
Ping’s lyrics are most effective in the evocation of the dramatic monologue, as Ping is able to inhabit a lyric speaker so seamlessly. In this case, the “we” refers to the ghostly factory workers and laborers that move throughout the collection, as the unseen army motivating global capitalism. The intriguing “found” poem “The Price of a Finger” brings together rules and guidelines (that would be on posters and signs) located in factories and businesses to generate a critique of working conditions and the lack of rights given to laborers. The party line is generated in the hopes that working conditions seem tolerable: “Kin Ki and other big producers/ have come under the greater pressure to adhere to global labor codes. They open their doors to foreign inspectors to assuage concerns that products used to entertain children in rich countries are not made under oppressive conditions in poor ones” (53). Of course, even with improvements in these facilities, the “price of the finger” still reminds us of the bodily dangers for these workers, who routinely sever appendages, so much so that Ping includes a diagram of one of the pictures she found on a factory wall in the notes that accompany the poems at the conclusion of the collection. The other quality of Ping’s work that is so effectively used is the panoramic descriptions that give sweep and scope to locations that are at once touristic centers and capitalist hubs: “Drunken tourists and their nightingales/ Money is the moon on Lhasa’s holy streets,” then “Wind, breath, naked riverbeds/ At dusk, a boy on motorcycle/ Comes home with his last herd/ Nomad daughter from the Sacred Lake” (20). We are always in the richly textured poetic hands of Ping, traveling across the vast expanses that link nomads to revelers and mystics. Many voices ring out in the collection clamor for recognition, “Who will know me but ghosts?” (90), a question that Ping can only answer with her ability to memorialize the lost and the downtrodden in the painful beauty of lyric poetry.
For more on the indie publisher WingsPress, see:
http://www.wingspress.com/wingspress.cfm
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Thousand-Waves-Ping-Wang/dp/1609403509/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1396804428&sr=8-7&keywords=Wang+Ping
A Review of Soman Chainani’s The School of Good and Evil: A World Without Princes (Harper Children’s Division, 2014).
Agatha and Sophie are back at it again in Chainani’s sequel to The School of Good and Evil. Please see this link for the earlier review:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/160531.html
In The School of Good and Evil: A World Without Princes, Agatha and Sophie have returned to the “real” world and attempt to adjust to their so-called storybook ending. For those that don’t mind being spoiled, Agatha chooses Sophie over the romantic lead Tedros. Therein lies a kind of proto-feminist rhetoric coming out of the first novel where women must work together and avoid the “marriage” plot. When both Agatha and Sophie break a rule and wish for something impossible, both are set back into the fairy tale world. They soon discover that this world has entirely changed due to the ramifications of their earlier actions. Rather than schools for good and evil, now there are schools for boys and girls. Thus, the factions are based upon gender at this point with girls of both evil and good backgrounds mixing together. It becomes apparent that the friendship between Agatha and Sophie is showing signs of strain. On the one hand, Agatha seems to be having dreams of Tedros, the very man she spurned at the end of the first book. There seems to be some sort of latent desire that is driving her back to him. On the other, Sophie is trying to keep her friendship with Agatha solid and will do anything to keep her. Sophie realizes that Agatha is a pivotal reason why she has not succumbed to her evil tendencies. This particular installment is far darker than the previous one and the conclusion will leave some feeling especially bereft. At the same time, these kinds of cliffhangers are certain to push readers to go get the third book. It’s not clear whether or not the “School of Good and Evil” series is meant to be a trilogy, but this portion is full of action and the metafictional impulse that made the first so intriguing.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-School-Good-Evil-without/dp/0062104926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396489358&sr=8-1&keywords=Soman+Chainani
A Review of Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Algonquin Books, 2014).
This book has probably been the most surprising read for me this year, especially in part because this author was entirely unknown to me, though she has already published a number of novels (including a YA trilogy called Birthright, which I am going to get started on as soon as I can carve out some time, two adult targeted novels, another YA fiction called Elsewhere and another called Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac). Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Algonquin Books, 2014) kept me up into the late hours of one night, as I looked for the right kind of book to transport me away to another place and time. The novel takes place on a fictional island called Alice in New England, somewhere off the shores of Rhode Island. The main character is A.J. Fikry, a recently widowed man of mixed-race background (he is part South Asian), who runs the Island bookstore. The opening of the novel sees a new sales representative from Knightley Books traveling to Alice island in order to showcase the upcoming publications. This meeting goes badly; Mr. Fikry is particularly cantankerous and the representative (named Amelia) leaves the island with a far from favorable impression of him. The third person narrative perspective then moves to Mr. Fikry, focusing on his life, which takes a drastic turn when a baby is left at the bookstore’s doorstep and Fikry decides to put in the paperwork to adopt this girl, a two-year-old named Maya. Maya quickly develops a love of literature, something that certainly warms the heart of Fikry. And Maya’s ability to thaw Fikry into a doting father has other effects as well: Fikry begins to see Amelia as a potential romantic partner. Thus, the novel shifts into the courtship phase between Fikry and Amelia; their love blossoms among their mutual love of books and comes to fruition at a special event: a reading held for an author that both adore. Though the reading goes far from perfectly, their relationship is well on its way to marriage. As the novel moves toward the conclusion, Zevin ingeniously intertwines narrative mysteries. For instance, the focus on the romance plot leaves us sometimes inattentive to the mystery behind Maya’s origins: who was her mother (Marian Wallace)? Why did she commit suicide? These aporias are somehow unfolding in the island community, one that extends to Fikry’s officer friend Chief Lambiase, Fikry’s sister-in-law Ismay (the sister of his deceased wife Nic), Ismay’s husband Daniel. Readers of romance novels will find much to adore about this novel, but high literary aesthetes will appreciate Zevin’s nods to a more hallowed and canonical literary lineage. Indeed, Fikry is a bit of a book snob and initially specializes his store’s offerings based upon what he considers to be the best exemplars of fine literature. As the novel moves forward though Fikry realizes that he must change not only his tastes but what he can offer for the Alice island community, especially as fatherhood and a second marriage push him to develop new ways to appreciate culture and other seemingly lowbrow literary forms. Thus, young adult fiction, children’s board books, and mysteries all find their places along references to Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Kate Chopin. Zevin’s latest is certainly a novel that any contemporary English Major would greatly enjoy. The novel is not without its idiosyncrasies: the representation of race in this novel seems simultaneously important to the construction of characters’ identities, yet is never fully fleshed out. Indeed, Zevin introduces the fact of racial homogeneity in the Alice island community, especially with respect to the general feelings of alienation that Fikry experiences as a minority. Further still, the fact of Fikry’s complicated adoptive paternity and connection to Maya mark this particular family as one especially anomalous to the larger populace of the island. But, these issues eventually recede quite dramatically into the novel’s background, as the romance plots and mysteries take center stage.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Storied-Life-A-Fikry/dp/1616203218/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397370409&sr=8-1&keywords=Gabrielle+Zevin
A Review of Tamai Kobayashi’s Prairie Ostrich (Goose Lane Editions, 2014).
Tamai Kobayashi’s first novel Prairie Ostrich (after a number of collections: Quixotic Erotic and Exile and the Heart) explores the ways a Japanese Canadian family copes and cannot cope with a tragedy. The narrative perspective tightly follows Imogene Murakami, nicknamed egg, with the novel being set in Bittercreek, Alberta sometime in the seventies. Through her viewpoint, we discover that her older brother was killed in a tragic accident. Egg’s mother deals with this trauma by turning to alcohol, while Egg’s father turns most of his attention to the ostriches that he raises. Egg’s closest relationship seems to be with her older sister, Kathy, a gifted athlete and who is likely queer. Kobayashi’s novel is immediately noteworthy in its lyricism. Despite the youthful narrative perspective, her life is rendered through a poeticism that exerts a dream-like quality over the fictional world. It is perhaps quite fitting given that Egg is herself quite immersed in culture, finding respite and refuge in stories. Though Egg is not often aware of what is going on around her, this kind of youthful unreliable narration gives this novel a gravitas that requires the reader to engage the various subtexts emerging. Egg, with her diminutive size, is picked on often at school and it is only through Kathy’s interventions that she is often able to avoid predation by bullies. Bittercreek is rendered through is austerity, something that registers most forcefully when it becomes clear that Kathy is seeking a way out of the small town. For Egg, this potential loss is one that keeps her on edge, as she has become so distanced from both her mother and her father. Many of the scenes that see her interacting with her parents are nuanced and heartbreaking. Kobayashi’s gift is in leaving scenes rather unadorned; so often using figural narration that lends itself to shorter sentences and staccato rhythms, everyday connections take on greater urgency, so when we see Egg’s father carefully and tenderly tending to the loss of a dead ostrich that has painfully broken its own neck as it panicked in the presence of the coyote, we immediately see how he cannot project his love back onto his own family. In this space of melancholy, the novel showcases the Japanese Canadian family’s slow disintegration. Fortunately, all is not completely lost, as Kobayashi grants us a potential opening into the possibilities of rebirth and reconnection.
This novel is quite interesting to think about in relation to the surge in YA fiction interests. Certainly, this novel could have been written in that vein, but the difference in approaches seems to be the stronger dissonance between a third person omniscient narrator and the youthful protagonist, a dissonance that produces the effect of irony, as we are constantly realizing what Egg is missing from what she is seeing and observing.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Prairie-Ostrich-Tamai-Kobayashi/dp/0864926804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397533894&sr=8-1&keywords=tamai+kobayashi
In this post, reviews of Kathryn Ma’s The Year She Left Us (Harper, 2014); Wang Ping’s Ten Thousand Waves (WingsPress, 2014); Soman Chainani’s The School of Good and Evil: A World Without Princes (Harper Children’s Division, 2014); Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Algonquin Books, 2014); Tamai Kobayashi’s Prairie Ostrich (Goose Lane Editions, 2014).
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and grammar mistakes. If you should need to contact me, please send to: sohnlitcrit@gmail.com
A Review of Kathryn Ma’s The Year She Left Us (Harper, 2014).
I really enjoyed Kathryn Ma’s short story collection All that Work and Still No Boys, which I earlier reviewed here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/70464.html
Naturally, I was stoked to find out Kathryn Ma was about to publish her first novel, which I am reviewing here. In The Year She Left Us, Ma employs three narrative perspectives (two first person and one third person) to construct a rather complicated and unsentimental intergenerational family saga. Our ostensible protagonist is Ari (Ariadne) Kong is adopted from a Chinese orphanage by Charlie (Charlotte) Kong, a social worker who hails from a Chinese American background. Charlie raises Ari as a single mother, but has support from her extended family, including her sister Les, and her mother, Gran. There is also a larger adoptee community that Charlie relies on in the Bay Area; Ari calls these adoptees the Whackadoodles. The novel starts off with Ari having been in China, a sort of trip that allows her to think more about her identity, but she supposedly severs a finger by accident and her mother comes visiting to make sure she is okay. This incident is just the beginning of a longer and difficult trajectory that the novel takes us on: Ari wants to stay in China, defer college, get a better sense of where she was born, what she might have been taken from. Charlie is anxious and perceives the growing distance between them, while Gran wants Ari to head off to Bryn Mawr. When Ari announces that she’s going back to China and deferring college, she realizes that she’s striking out on her own and must separate from her mother’s company. Ari attempts to save money for the plane flight while working for a store selling specialty pens and inks, but the novel stages a midway intervention when Ari tries to sell some trinkets she finds in her mother’s home (without her mother’s knowledge of course). While pilfering whatever she can, she manages to stumble upon a photo of a man who was holding her as a baby. She realizes that there may be more to her story on the American side than she realizes and she is determined to find out who his man is and what this man meant to her adoptive mother. This trail eventually leads her to Alaska; she ends up crashing with a good friend of the man (Aaron Streeter) who was in the photo. Aaron Streeter died in an accident while hiking in Alaska and Ari realizes that she can get to know more about him and his life by staying with Aaron’s friend Steve and his wife Peg. As Ari discovers, Aaron was also purportedly in a relationship with Charlie when the accident happened and was determined to help raise Ari when he was tragically killed. But, there are contradictions to the story, as it seems that Aaron might have wanted to get back with his wife and that his son Noah might have been a factor in that decision. Without giving the rest of the plot away, I will say that Ma’s novel does not operate with a deterministic trajectory. The narrative seems to create only more loose ends as the plot moves further and further into each character’s lives and backstories. Gran, for instance, harbors deep family secrets concerning a brother who seems to have been developmentally challenged. While this kind of unfurling might have completely unraveled the novel, Ma is able to construct a story that reads often much more like an unedited memoir, achieving a realism that is both poignant and impressive. The choice of narrative perspectives can sometimes be uneven. Gran, in particular, is such a strong personality that her first person viewpoints can often overpower the other perspectives. Ma also makes the interesting choice of narrating the sections related to Charlie in the third person; it would be interesting to hear why Ma chose this one character for that particular perspective over the first person, which is given to both Ari and Gran. Finally, this novel is one that could be taught alongside a number of other outstanding Asian American narratives/ memoirs concerning adoptees such as Jane Jeong Trenka’s Fugitive Visions and Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-She-Left-Us/dp/0062273345/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399610751&sr=8-1&keywords=Kathryn+Ma
A Review of Wang Ping’s Ten Thousand Waves (WingsPress, 2014)
Wang Ping latest poetry collection, Ten Thousand Waves, explores many themes resonant across her growing body of work, including transnationalism, global capitalism, China’s modernization, political activism, art and cultural production, Tibetan independence, labor and sacrifice. “Dust Angels” provides a stanza that might be seen as a kind of overarching artistic impulse that unites these many poems:
they say we fake our sickness
have never worked in their factories
they hire lawyers to erase our names, ban our union
Marx and Mao are history, they claim
only freedom of market economy
the golden path toward democracy (7).
Ping’s lyrics are most effective in the evocation of the dramatic monologue, as Ping is able to inhabit a lyric speaker so seamlessly. In this case, the “we” refers to the ghostly factory workers and laborers that move throughout the collection, as the unseen army motivating global capitalism. The intriguing “found” poem “The Price of a Finger” brings together rules and guidelines (that would be on posters and signs) located in factories and businesses to generate a critique of working conditions and the lack of rights given to laborers. The party line is generated in the hopes that working conditions seem tolerable: “Kin Ki and other big producers/ have come under the greater pressure to adhere to global labor codes. They open their doors to foreign inspectors to assuage concerns that products used to entertain children in rich countries are not made under oppressive conditions in poor ones” (53). Of course, even with improvements in these facilities, the “price of the finger” still reminds us of the bodily dangers for these workers, who routinely sever appendages, so much so that Ping includes a diagram of one of the pictures she found on a factory wall in the notes that accompany the poems at the conclusion of the collection. The other quality of Ping’s work that is so effectively used is the panoramic descriptions that give sweep and scope to locations that are at once touristic centers and capitalist hubs: “Drunken tourists and their nightingales/ Money is the moon on Lhasa’s holy streets,” then “Wind, breath, naked riverbeds/ At dusk, a boy on motorcycle/ Comes home with his last herd/ Nomad daughter from the Sacred Lake” (20). We are always in the richly textured poetic hands of Ping, traveling across the vast expanses that link nomads to revelers and mystics. Many voices ring out in the collection clamor for recognition, “Who will know me but ghosts?” (90), a question that Ping can only answer with her ability to memorialize the lost and the downtrodden in the painful beauty of lyric poetry.
For more on the indie publisher WingsPress, see:
http://www.wingspress.com/wingspress.cfm
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Thousand-Waves-Ping-Wang/dp/1609403509/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1396804428&sr=8-7&keywords=Wang+Ping
A Review of Soman Chainani’s The School of Good and Evil: A World Without Princes (Harper Children’s Division, 2014).
Agatha and Sophie are back at it again in Chainani’s sequel to The School of Good and Evil. Please see this link for the earlier review:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/160531.html
In The School of Good and Evil: A World Without Princes, Agatha and Sophie have returned to the “real” world and attempt to adjust to their so-called storybook ending. For those that don’t mind being spoiled, Agatha chooses Sophie over the romantic lead Tedros. Therein lies a kind of proto-feminist rhetoric coming out of the first novel where women must work together and avoid the “marriage” plot. When both Agatha and Sophie break a rule and wish for something impossible, both are set back into the fairy tale world. They soon discover that this world has entirely changed due to the ramifications of their earlier actions. Rather than schools for good and evil, now there are schools for boys and girls. Thus, the factions are based upon gender at this point with girls of both evil and good backgrounds mixing together. It becomes apparent that the friendship between Agatha and Sophie is showing signs of strain. On the one hand, Agatha seems to be having dreams of Tedros, the very man she spurned at the end of the first book. There seems to be some sort of latent desire that is driving her back to him. On the other, Sophie is trying to keep her friendship with Agatha solid and will do anything to keep her. Sophie realizes that Agatha is a pivotal reason why she has not succumbed to her evil tendencies. This particular installment is far darker than the previous one and the conclusion will leave some feeling especially bereft. At the same time, these kinds of cliffhangers are certain to push readers to go get the third book. It’s not clear whether or not the “School of Good and Evil” series is meant to be a trilogy, but this portion is full of action and the metafictional impulse that made the first so intriguing.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-School-Good-Evil-without/dp/0062104926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396489358&sr=8-1&keywords=Soman+Chainani
A Review of Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Algonquin Books, 2014).
This book has probably been the most surprising read for me this year, especially in part because this author was entirely unknown to me, though she has already published a number of novels (including a YA trilogy called Birthright, which I am going to get started on as soon as I can carve out some time, two adult targeted novels, another YA fiction called Elsewhere and another called Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac). Gabrielle Zevin’s The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Algonquin Books, 2014) kept me up into the late hours of one night, as I looked for the right kind of book to transport me away to another place and time. The novel takes place on a fictional island called Alice in New England, somewhere off the shores of Rhode Island. The main character is A.J. Fikry, a recently widowed man of mixed-race background (he is part South Asian), who runs the Island bookstore. The opening of the novel sees a new sales representative from Knightley Books traveling to Alice island in order to showcase the upcoming publications. This meeting goes badly; Mr. Fikry is particularly cantankerous and the representative (named Amelia) leaves the island with a far from favorable impression of him. The third person narrative perspective then moves to Mr. Fikry, focusing on his life, which takes a drastic turn when a baby is left at the bookstore’s doorstep and Fikry decides to put in the paperwork to adopt this girl, a two-year-old named Maya. Maya quickly develops a love of literature, something that certainly warms the heart of Fikry. And Maya’s ability to thaw Fikry into a doting father has other effects as well: Fikry begins to see Amelia as a potential romantic partner. Thus, the novel shifts into the courtship phase between Fikry and Amelia; their love blossoms among their mutual love of books and comes to fruition at a special event: a reading held for an author that both adore. Though the reading goes far from perfectly, their relationship is well on its way to marriage. As the novel moves toward the conclusion, Zevin ingeniously intertwines narrative mysteries. For instance, the focus on the romance plot leaves us sometimes inattentive to the mystery behind Maya’s origins: who was her mother (Marian Wallace)? Why did she commit suicide? These aporias are somehow unfolding in the island community, one that extends to Fikry’s officer friend Chief Lambiase, Fikry’s sister-in-law Ismay (the sister of his deceased wife Nic), Ismay’s husband Daniel. Readers of romance novels will find much to adore about this novel, but high literary aesthetes will appreciate Zevin’s nods to a more hallowed and canonical literary lineage. Indeed, Fikry is a bit of a book snob and initially specializes his store’s offerings based upon what he considers to be the best exemplars of fine literature. As the novel moves forward though Fikry realizes that he must change not only his tastes but what he can offer for the Alice island community, especially as fatherhood and a second marriage push him to develop new ways to appreciate culture and other seemingly lowbrow literary forms. Thus, young adult fiction, children’s board books, and mysteries all find their places along references to Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Kate Chopin. Zevin’s latest is certainly a novel that any contemporary English Major would greatly enjoy. The novel is not without its idiosyncrasies: the representation of race in this novel seems simultaneously important to the construction of characters’ identities, yet is never fully fleshed out. Indeed, Zevin introduces the fact of racial homogeneity in the Alice island community, especially with respect to the general feelings of alienation that Fikry experiences as a minority. Further still, the fact of Fikry’s complicated adoptive paternity and connection to Maya mark this particular family as one especially anomalous to the larger populace of the island. But, these issues eventually recede quite dramatically into the novel’s background, as the romance plots and mysteries take center stage.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Storied-Life-A-Fikry/dp/1616203218/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397370409&sr=8-1&keywords=Gabrielle+Zevin
A Review of Tamai Kobayashi’s Prairie Ostrich (Goose Lane Editions, 2014).
Tamai Kobayashi’s first novel Prairie Ostrich (after a number of collections: Quixotic Erotic and Exile and the Heart) explores the ways a Japanese Canadian family copes and cannot cope with a tragedy. The narrative perspective tightly follows Imogene Murakami, nicknamed egg, with the novel being set in Bittercreek, Alberta sometime in the seventies. Through her viewpoint, we discover that her older brother was killed in a tragic accident. Egg’s mother deals with this trauma by turning to alcohol, while Egg’s father turns most of his attention to the ostriches that he raises. Egg’s closest relationship seems to be with her older sister, Kathy, a gifted athlete and who is likely queer. Kobayashi’s novel is immediately noteworthy in its lyricism. Despite the youthful narrative perspective, her life is rendered through a poeticism that exerts a dream-like quality over the fictional world. It is perhaps quite fitting given that Egg is herself quite immersed in culture, finding respite and refuge in stories. Though Egg is not often aware of what is going on around her, this kind of youthful unreliable narration gives this novel a gravitas that requires the reader to engage the various subtexts emerging. Egg, with her diminutive size, is picked on often at school and it is only through Kathy’s interventions that she is often able to avoid predation by bullies. Bittercreek is rendered through is austerity, something that registers most forcefully when it becomes clear that Kathy is seeking a way out of the small town. For Egg, this potential loss is one that keeps her on edge, as she has become so distanced from both her mother and her father. Many of the scenes that see her interacting with her parents are nuanced and heartbreaking. Kobayashi’s gift is in leaving scenes rather unadorned; so often using figural narration that lends itself to shorter sentences and staccato rhythms, everyday connections take on greater urgency, so when we see Egg’s father carefully and tenderly tending to the loss of a dead ostrich that has painfully broken its own neck as it panicked in the presence of the coyote, we immediately see how he cannot project his love back onto his own family. In this space of melancholy, the novel showcases the Japanese Canadian family’s slow disintegration. Fortunately, all is not completely lost, as Kobayashi grants us a potential opening into the possibilities of rebirth and reconnection.
This novel is quite interesting to think about in relation to the surge in YA fiction interests. Certainly, this novel could have been written in that vein, but the difference in approaches seems to be the stronger dissonance between a third person omniscient narrator and the youthful protagonist, a dissonance that produces the effect of irony, as we are constantly realizing what Egg is missing from what she is seeing and observing.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Prairie-Ostrich-Tamai-Kobayashi/dp/0864926804/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397533894&sr=8-1&keywords=tamai+kobayashi
May 5, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for May 5 2014.
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for May 5 2014.
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and grammar mistakes. If you should need to contact me, please send to: sohnlitcrit@gmail.com
In this post, reviews of Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Wanderers (HarperTeen, 2014); Akhil Sharma’s An Obedient Father (W.W. Norton, reprint edition, 2014); Akhil Sharma’s Family Life (WW Norton, 2014); Leza Lowitz and Shogo Ogetani’s Jet Black and Ninja Wind (Tuttle Publishing, 2013); Julian Go’s The Steady Running of the Hour (Simon Schuster, 2014).
A Review of Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Wanderers (HarperTeen, 2014).
In Wanderers, Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s follow-up to Wasteland, our heroine Esther and her partner Caleb seek to find a better life beyond Prin. Big mistake. Spoilers forthcoming. For my earlier review of Wasteland, see:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/155717.html
The novel starts out with a catastrophic earthquake that kills off many of the townfolk. Caleb uses that event to encourage the remaining inhabitants to consider striking out for a land that would include a better source of water and more game to hunt. Once on the road, Esther, Caleb and their band of followers (with return appearances of Skar, the variant; Michal; Joseph; Kai; Rafe; Eli; Asha; Rhea and others) immediately encounter trouble. A trio of hoodlums lead by a particularly sociopathic figure named Lewt quickly demolishes solidarity among the former Prin-ers. Caleb is murdered causing the group is split, some deciding to return to Prin rather than to risk more harm. Esther, eventually recovering from her mourning, continues to seek potential refuge in a mythic place known only as Mundreel. The majority of the aforementioned returning characters decide to travel with her. Eventually, Esther is able to recruit a guide, though loses the respect of her companions when it is discovered that their guide is actually blind. From here on out, Kim and Klavan’s story turns increasingly bleak; one by one more characters are killed off and the question becomes: who will actually survive to make it to Mundreel? Further still, will Mundreel actually be the haven they hope it to be?
Kim and Klavan’s second book in the Wasteland trilogy relies upon the quest narrative to generate readerly motivation: we are wondering how Esther will be able to lead her people to a kind of promised land. Indeed, there is something inherently Biblical about this journey; these are a nomadic people seeking refuge in a place that might prove to be their salvation. As with the “big bad” of the first book, Kim and Klavan set up worthy menaces that mark this journey filled with death and injury. Interestingly enough, Kim and Klavan provide the most idiosyncratic social formation in a sort of cross-“racial,” queer relationship, suggesting the need for an alternative kinship to help establish the possibility of a future, however guarded or limited it may be.
A solid second act for the Wasteland trilogy and a must read for fans of the paranormal/ fantasy/ romance/ young adult fiction genres.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Wanderers-Wasteland-Susan-Kim/dp/0062118544/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1395351922&sr=8-2&keywords=Susan+Kim
A Review of Akhil Sharma’s An Obedient Father (W.W. Norton, reprint edition, 2014)
Akhil Sharma is due out with a new novel this year, the much anticipated Family Life. His first, An Obedient Father, has also received new life, as it has come out in a reprint edition; it had been listing for a number of years as an out-of-print title. Originally published in 2000 by Farrar Straus and Giroux, the novel received considerable critical acclaim. It won the PEN/ Hemingway Award for fiction. My own relationship to the text began far before I actually read it. Viet Thanh Nguyen engages a very short reading of the novel in his monograph Race and Resistance; the novel depicts a character very much in line with Nguyen’s general argument concerning the potential over-reading of resistance within so-called Asian American narratives. There are three narrative perspectives that appear in this novel; most of the novel is narrated from the perspective of Ram Karan, also called Pitaji, who is a corrupt official who collects bribes from local schools and who works under the supervision of a minor public servant, Mr. Gupta. The reason why Nguyen focuses on this character is that he is very easy to dislike: not only is he a corrupt official, he also very openly admits to his pederasty and incestual history. He repeatedly raped his 12 year old daughter Anita. Anita eventually comes to live with him in his flat; she has few choices, as her husband has died and she has no income. Once she observes Pitaji rubbing up against her young daughter Asha does the novel’s exploration of revenge and trauma begin in earnest. Anita is given two points in the novel as the first person perspective; these moments are important because they provide an unobstructed interiority and show us how little Pitaji can fully understand what it is he has done not only to her, but the family at large. The novel also does a fascinating job of interweaving political turmoil into the main plotting. When Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated, there is a shift in the power base and the two most prominent parties are pitted against each other: Bharatiya Janatas Party (BJP) and Congress. Mr. Gupta must consider where to place his loyalties, especially because he may be exposed as a corrupt official, taking his underlings down with him. Thus, Pitaji has much to worry about not only in the domestic space, where Anita’s rage grows over the course of the novel, but also in the occupational space, where he must find a way to avoid coming to financial ruin. Sharma’s debut was for me relentlessly depressing and hard to read for the simple fact of Pitaji’s characterization: there is a way that the novel presents him as a complex, flawed subject, even when we might come to find so much of his actions repugnant. Certainly, it is a multifaceted portrait of one family and its relationship to history and politics, but the eventual conclusion seems somehow still unfulfilling. Perhaps, that is the point: in this naturalistic narrative, there can be not developmental trajectory, no sense of transcendence for these characters that function almost as a variation on Sartre’s No Exit.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/An-Obedient-Father-Akhil-Sharma/dp/0393337812/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395698214&sr=8-1&keywords=an+obedient+father
A Review of Akhil Sharma’s Family Life (WW Norton, 2014)
Sometimes a book will keep me awake late into the night; this time it was Akhil Sharma’s Family Life. It’s a strange, sparely written novel narrated from the perspective of a boy named Ajay who immigrates with his family to America. He has one older brother, Birju, who is intellectually gifted, a father who embraces the capitalist spirit of America, and a doting mother. One day, Birju dives into the swimming pool and manages to land on his neck; he isn’t taken out of the water until three minutes have passed. He incurs brain damage and the rest of the novel is basically how that family survives in the midst of taking care of this bedridden, perpetually catatonic brother. It’s a tough novel: what does love look like in that situation? what is loyalty? The family is naturally torn apart at various points. Ajay’s father descends into alcoholism, while Ajay’s mother becomes a sort of spiritual guide that allows other Indian immigrant families into their home to receive blessings. For his part, Ajay finds his own way to excel in school and eventually is accepted into Princeton, thus achieving a trajectory that no doubt would have been similar his brother’s. The shadow of the brother’s life is always there: he must have almost round the clock care; he cannot speak, he cannot really move, and there is a question of how conscious he is of the things going on around him. There are difficult scenes that reveal the ambivalence that the narrator feels toward Birju in the post-accident period; as with Sharma’s debut novel, he never shies away from the prickly and darkest recesses of his character’s thoughts. The novel ends with the narrator feeling strangely happy and he thinks that he has a problem. That’s the gist of this character’s core issue: he has a problem because of happiness. I was thinking long and hard about this: hardship and pain had been so much of his life that he didn’t understand what to do with this feeling of love and contentment and happiness that enters. When happiness hits, it becomes this stranger, a riddle that cannot be solved: that was the life that this narrator leads. There is a metafictional impulse, too, this way that the narrator wrestles with the power of what writing can do, yet he ultimately becomes a rich investment banker.
The novel reminds me of the work of Jon Pineda, both in Apology and in Sleep in Me with respect to the care of a character who has endured a catastrophic injury. The developmental impulse of the novel is an odd one. On the one hand, Ajay seems to be the very epitome of the model minority subject; he attains a high level of intellectual and financial success, but at the same time, the family’s endurance and lives in America are far from ideal. By stripping away the layers behind supposed achievement, Sharma’s poetic novel provides its own corrective to narratives of Asian American uplift. Another highly recommended read!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Family-Life-Novel-Akhil-Sharma/dp/0393060055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396647808&sr=8-1&keywords=akhil+sharma
A Review of Leza Lowitz and Shogo Ogetani’s Jet Black and Ninja Wind (Tuttle Publishing, 2013)
I’ve been devouring as much YA fiction as I can lately: I think it’s become my Asian American genre comfort food, which is not to say that all such works are frothy or insignificant of course. Indeed, the impact of this genre is quite large simply based upon the dedicated and wide readership; certainly, something we cannot thumb our noses at or castigate as a lowbrow genre unworthy of critical attention. But I digress. Leza Lowitz and Shogo Ogetani’s meticulously crafted and thrilling Jet Black and Ninja Wind follows the adventures of a young teenager who must come to terms with her complicated inheritance. Indeed, our protagonist Jet is a ninja. The third person narration follows her perspective the most, but Lowitz and Ogetani are quite aware of some of the genre impulses that ground the paranormal romance and do offer us an occasional shift to a figure, Takumi, who is simultaneously figured as villain and as a possible romantic lead. When Jet’s mother dies, Jet flies from New Mexico to Japan and meets up with her grandfather and her cousin, Hiro. But soon enough, Jet realizes that all of the training exercises that her mother mysteriously put her through while she was growing up must be employed in order to survive a threat that has emerged and that revolves around her very capacities as a fighter. Jet soon discovers that she comes from a long lineage of female ninjas (also called Kuroi), ones entrusted with a kind of treasure passed intergenerationally. Jet is unaware of what that treasure is, but there are shadowy underworld and corporate figures after her regardless; Ojisan and Hiro are of course her allies, but an early skirmish leaves her grandfather presumed dead, forcing her and her cousin to travel to Tokyo to get support from their Uncle Soji. While in the care of her uncle, Jet continues to get more information about her past and it becomes evident that she and Hiro must travel back to the United States in order to get to the bottom of the issue related to the treasure and how she may uncover its location and keep it from the nefarious forces that are after her (and her allies). Lowitz and Ogetani pack a lot of history and ethnocgraphic information into this text that make it apparent that quite a lot of research went into this fictional representation. Interestingly enough, Lowitz and Ogetani’s choice of New Mexico is no accident: they mean to connect the indigenous cultures of Japan—Ojisan and Hiro are part Ainu—with that of New Mexico—J-Bird (Jet’s mother’s partner) is Navajo. Thus, Lowitz and Ogetani’s work continues to accrue intercultural and interracial texture as the plotting moves forward. I would be interested to hear more about the process of writing a young adult fiction in a collaborative mode, especially as there are more and more examples of this going on (e.g. Michael Johnston and Melissa De La Cruz’s Frozen and Marisa de Los Santos and David Teague’s Saving Lucas Biggs).
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Ninja-Wind-Leza-Lowitz/dp/480531284X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396049571&sr=8-1&keywords=jet+black+and+ninja+wind
A Review of Julian Go’s The Steady Running of the Hour (Simon Schuster, 2014).
For fans of detective fiction, historical fiction, and/or Downton Abbey, Julian Go’s sweeping debut, The Steady Running of the Hour, will be certain to be one of your favorite reads for this year. The novel starts out immediately with the central mystery: is the young, college age Yankee Tristan Campbell (our first person narrator and ostensible hero) the heir of a large fortune? He has assumed that his great grandmother Elinor—an individual he knew little about—may have in fact been the sister to his actual great grandmother (Imogen Soames-Andersson). The difference in ancestry is vital because Imogen once had a romantic liaison with a man known as Ashley Walsingham, an Englishman of high society and an avid climber. Upon Ashley Walsingham’s death—he dies in a tragic accident while attempting to climb Mount Everest—he bequeaths his fortunes to Imogen, who by that point has disappeared, or to any of her surviving descendant. If no one claims the inheritance within 80 years, the fortune will be released to various charities and organizations. When Tristan is contacted at the beginning of the novel and requested to come to London, he discovers that there is only two months left on the clock. If he is to have any claim on this fortune, he needs to work quickly in order to gain any concrete evidence that it was Imogen, not Elinor, that was his actual grandmother. One large problem immediately arises due to the fact that the archive is devastatingly bare. Elinor was a sculptress of minor renown but Imogen’s legacy is less obvious and Tristan’s unofficial investigation is hampered by this limitation. Further still, Tristan’s lack of monetary income—he is working off of his savings in his archival search—certainly slows his progress. Tristan begins to travel all over Europe in order to find other archives that the solicitors have missed. For instance, he manages to gain entry to the home in which Elinor (or Imogen, we’re still unsure at this point) might have given birth to a daughter, presumably Tristan’s grandmother. Later, Tristan attempts to locate some of Elinor’s paintings on a hunch that perhaps Imogen was one of Elinor’s studies. Intercut with Tristan’s quest, Go provides a third person narrator who follows the formative years in the relationship between Ashley and Imogen. We see their connection blossom in a short five days, a romance cut short when Ashley must go off to serve in The Great War. During Ashley’s tenure on the war front, his spirits are only kept buoyed by the possibility that he will be eventually reunited with Imogen. Go takes a lot of risks with this novel; the split narrative structure is always one that causes a division in the reader’s interests, but fortunately both plots are incredibly interesting. The expansive scale—both geographical and historical—of this novel could have been too much for any writer, but first time novelist Go wields it commandingly and further still, the intergenerational and Transatlantic sweep is the appropriate tapestry for a central mystery that gains rich contours the further we get into the plot. Fans of Merchant Ivory Productions will probably wonder when this novel will be made into a movie, but there will be those who will balk at the ending (certainly a love it or hate it conclusion), one that will surely cause discussion amongst the readers propelled so assuredly to that point.
From a scholarly perspective, the novel is quite fascinating because it delves so much into the guesswork that occurs in archival research. Tristan must follow hunches and unexpected leads in the hopes that a narrative will be brought together; in some sense, the novel achieves a kind of metanarrativistic contour: will research produce some sort of definitive ending? Does it ever produce a definitive ending? The other element that Go begins to introduce is a twinned narrative structure. Halfway through the plot, Tristan meets a Frenchwoman that blossoms into a potential romance. When Tristan must leave France for yet another European country (by the novel concludes, he is in Iceland), we recall Ashley’s departure to war. Indeed, Tristan has known the Frenchwoman for a short amount of time, yet there is a connection there that cannot be severed. The mystery concerning love and devotion is certainly at play for both narratives, though the gravity of the historical portion—with long sequences devoted to World War I trench warfare and the climbing of Mount Everest—certainly weighs most heavily. Finally, perhaps, the most brilliant technique that Go employs in this novel is irony: the reader always knows more than Tristan actually does and so we can’t help but root for the narrator to get to the place where we are. The point at which Tristan knows more than we do can seem like a betrayal, which is why the ending—at least for some—might seem like an aesthetically incorporated form of treason.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Steady-Running-Hour-Novel/dp/1476704589/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396111182&sr=8-1&keywords=the+steady+running+of+the+hour
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and grammar mistakes. If you should need to contact me, please send to: sohnlitcrit@gmail.com
In this post, reviews of Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Wanderers (HarperTeen, 2014); Akhil Sharma’s An Obedient Father (W.W. Norton, reprint edition, 2014); Akhil Sharma’s Family Life (WW Norton, 2014); Leza Lowitz and Shogo Ogetani’s Jet Black and Ninja Wind (Tuttle Publishing, 2013); Julian Go’s The Steady Running of the Hour (Simon Schuster, 2014).
A Review of Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Wanderers (HarperTeen, 2014).
In Wanderers, Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s follow-up to Wasteland, our heroine Esther and her partner Caleb seek to find a better life beyond Prin. Big mistake. Spoilers forthcoming. For my earlier review of Wasteland, see:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/155717.html
The novel starts out with a catastrophic earthquake that kills off many of the townfolk. Caleb uses that event to encourage the remaining inhabitants to consider striking out for a land that would include a better source of water and more game to hunt. Once on the road, Esther, Caleb and their band of followers (with return appearances of Skar, the variant; Michal; Joseph; Kai; Rafe; Eli; Asha; Rhea and others) immediately encounter trouble. A trio of hoodlums lead by a particularly sociopathic figure named Lewt quickly demolishes solidarity among the former Prin-ers. Caleb is murdered causing the group is split, some deciding to return to Prin rather than to risk more harm. Esther, eventually recovering from her mourning, continues to seek potential refuge in a mythic place known only as Mundreel. The majority of the aforementioned returning characters decide to travel with her. Eventually, Esther is able to recruit a guide, though loses the respect of her companions when it is discovered that their guide is actually blind. From here on out, Kim and Klavan’s story turns increasingly bleak; one by one more characters are killed off and the question becomes: who will actually survive to make it to Mundreel? Further still, will Mundreel actually be the haven they hope it to be?
Kim and Klavan’s second book in the Wasteland trilogy relies upon the quest narrative to generate readerly motivation: we are wondering how Esther will be able to lead her people to a kind of promised land. Indeed, there is something inherently Biblical about this journey; these are a nomadic people seeking refuge in a place that might prove to be their salvation. As with the “big bad” of the first book, Kim and Klavan set up worthy menaces that mark this journey filled with death and injury. Interestingly enough, Kim and Klavan provide the most idiosyncratic social formation in a sort of cross-“racial,” queer relationship, suggesting the need for an alternative kinship to help establish the possibility of a future, however guarded or limited it may be.
A solid second act for the Wasteland trilogy and a must read for fans of the paranormal/ fantasy/ romance/ young adult fiction genres.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Wanderers-Wasteland-Susan-Kim/dp/0062118544/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1395351922&sr=8-2&keywords=Susan+Kim
A Review of Akhil Sharma’s An Obedient Father (W.W. Norton, reprint edition, 2014)
Akhil Sharma is due out with a new novel this year, the much anticipated Family Life. His first, An Obedient Father, has also received new life, as it has come out in a reprint edition; it had been listing for a number of years as an out-of-print title. Originally published in 2000 by Farrar Straus and Giroux, the novel received considerable critical acclaim. It won the PEN/ Hemingway Award for fiction. My own relationship to the text began far before I actually read it. Viet Thanh Nguyen engages a very short reading of the novel in his monograph Race and Resistance; the novel depicts a character very much in line with Nguyen’s general argument concerning the potential over-reading of resistance within so-called Asian American narratives. There are three narrative perspectives that appear in this novel; most of the novel is narrated from the perspective of Ram Karan, also called Pitaji, who is a corrupt official who collects bribes from local schools and who works under the supervision of a minor public servant, Mr. Gupta. The reason why Nguyen focuses on this character is that he is very easy to dislike: not only is he a corrupt official, he also very openly admits to his pederasty and incestual history. He repeatedly raped his 12 year old daughter Anita. Anita eventually comes to live with him in his flat; she has few choices, as her husband has died and she has no income. Once she observes Pitaji rubbing up against her young daughter Asha does the novel’s exploration of revenge and trauma begin in earnest. Anita is given two points in the novel as the first person perspective; these moments are important because they provide an unobstructed interiority and show us how little Pitaji can fully understand what it is he has done not only to her, but the family at large. The novel also does a fascinating job of interweaving political turmoil into the main plotting. When Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated, there is a shift in the power base and the two most prominent parties are pitted against each other: Bharatiya Janatas Party (BJP) and Congress. Mr. Gupta must consider where to place his loyalties, especially because he may be exposed as a corrupt official, taking his underlings down with him. Thus, Pitaji has much to worry about not only in the domestic space, where Anita’s rage grows over the course of the novel, but also in the occupational space, where he must find a way to avoid coming to financial ruin. Sharma’s debut was for me relentlessly depressing and hard to read for the simple fact of Pitaji’s characterization: there is a way that the novel presents him as a complex, flawed subject, even when we might come to find so much of his actions repugnant. Certainly, it is a multifaceted portrait of one family and its relationship to history and politics, but the eventual conclusion seems somehow still unfulfilling. Perhaps, that is the point: in this naturalistic narrative, there can be not developmental trajectory, no sense of transcendence for these characters that function almost as a variation on Sartre’s No Exit.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/An-Obedient-Father-Akhil-Sharma/dp/0393337812/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395698214&sr=8-1&keywords=an+obedient+father
A Review of Akhil Sharma’s Family Life (WW Norton, 2014)
Sometimes a book will keep me awake late into the night; this time it was Akhil Sharma’s Family Life. It’s a strange, sparely written novel narrated from the perspective of a boy named Ajay who immigrates with his family to America. He has one older brother, Birju, who is intellectually gifted, a father who embraces the capitalist spirit of America, and a doting mother. One day, Birju dives into the swimming pool and manages to land on his neck; he isn’t taken out of the water until three minutes have passed. He incurs brain damage and the rest of the novel is basically how that family survives in the midst of taking care of this bedridden, perpetually catatonic brother. It’s a tough novel: what does love look like in that situation? what is loyalty? The family is naturally torn apart at various points. Ajay’s father descends into alcoholism, while Ajay’s mother becomes a sort of spiritual guide that allows other Indian immigrant families into their home to receive blessings. For his part, Ajay finds his own way to excel in school and eventually is accepted into Princeton, thus achieving a trajectory that no doubt would have been similar his brother’s. The shadow of the brother’s life is always there: he must have almost round the clock care; he cannot speak, he cannot really move, and there is a question of how conscious he is of the things going on around him. There are difficult scenes that reveal the ambivalence that the narrator feels toward Birju in the post-accident period; as with Sharma’s debut novel, he never shies away from the prickly and darkest recesses of his character’s thoughts. The novel ends with the narrator feeling strangely happy and he thinks that he has a problem. That’s the gist of this character’s core issue: he has a problem because of happiness. I was thinking long and hard about this: hardship and pain had been so much of his life that he didn’t understand what to do with this feeling of love and contentment and happiness that enters. When happiness hits, it becomes this stranger, a riddle that cannot be solved: that was the life that this narrator leads. There is a metafictional impulse, too, this way that the narrator wrestles with the power of what writing can do, yet he ultimately becomes a rich investment banker.
The novel reminds me of the work of Jon Pineda, both in Apology and in Sleep in Me with respect to the care of a character who has endured a catastrophic injury. The developmental impulse of the novel is an odd one. On the one hand, Ajay seems to be the very epitome of the model minority subject; he attains a high level of intellectual and financial success, but at the same time, the family’s endurance and lives in America are far from ideal. By stripping away the layers behind supposed achievement, Sharma’s poetic novel provides its own corrective to narratives of Asian American uplift. Another highly recommended read!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Family-Life-Novel-Akhil-Sharma/dp/0393060055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396647808&sr=8-1&keywords=akhil+sharma
A Review of Leza Lowitz and Shogo Ogetani’s Jet Black and Ninja Wind (Tuttle Publishing, 2013)
I’ve been devouring as much YA fiction as I can lately: I think it’s become my Asian American genre comfort food, which is not to say that all such works are frothy or insignificant of course. Indeed, the impact of this genre is quite large simply based upon the dedicated and wide readership; certainly, something we cannot thumb our noses at or castigate as a lowbrow genre unworthy of critical attention. But I digress. Leza Lowitz and Shogo Ogetani’s meticulously crafted and thrilling Jet Black and Ninja Wind follows the adventures of a young teenager who must come to terms with her complicated inheritance. Indeed, our protagonist Jet is a ninja. The third person narration follows her perspective the most, but Lowitz and Ogetani are quite aware of some of the genre impulses that ground the paranormal romance and do offer us an occasional shift to a figure, Takumi, who is simultaneously figured as villain and as a possible romantic lead. When Jet’s mother dies, Jet flies from New Mexico to Japan and meets up with her grandfather and her cousin, Hiro. But soon enough, Jet realizes that all of the training exercises that her mother mysteriously put her through while she was growing up must be employed in order to survive a threat that has emerged and that revolves around her very capacities as a fighter. Jet soon discovers that she comes from a long lineage of female ninjas (also called Kuroi), ones entrusted with a kind of treasure passed intergenerationally. Jet is unaware of what that treasure is, but there are shadowy underworld and corporate figures after her regardless; Ojisan and Hiro are of course her allies, but an early skirmish leaves her grandfather presumed dead, forcing her and her cousin to travel to Tokyo to get support from their Uncle Soji. While in the care of her uncle, Jet continues to get more information about her past and it becomes evident that she and Hiro must travel back to the United States in order to get to the bottom of the issue related to the treasure and how she may uncover its location and keep it from the nefarious forces that are after her (and her allies). Lowitz and Ogetani pack a lot of history and ethnocgraphic information into this text that make it apparent that quite a lot of research went into this fictional representation. Interestingly enough, Lowitz and Ogetani’s choice of New Mexico is no accident: they mean to connect the indigenous cultures of Japan—Ojisan and Hiro are part Ainu—with that of New Mexico—J-Bird (Jet’s mother’s partner) is Navajo. Thus, Lowitz and Ogetani’s work continues to accrue intercultural and interracial texture as the plotting moves forward. I would be interested to hear more about the process of writing a young adult fiction in a collaborative mode, especially as there are more and more examples of this going on (e.g. Michael Johnston and Melissa De La Cruz’s Frozen and Marisa de Los Santos and David Teague’s Saving Lucas Biggs).
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Ninja-Wind-Leza-Lowitz/dp/480531284X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396049571&sr=8-1&keywords=jet+black+and+ninja+wind
A Review of Julian Go’s The Steady Running of the Hour (Simon Schuster, 2014).
For fans of detective fiction, historical fiction, and/or Downton Abbey, Julian Go’s sweeping debut, The Steady Running of the Hour, will be certain to be one of your favorite reads for this year. The novel starts out immediately with the central mystery: is the young, college age Yankee Tristan Campbell (our first person narrator and ostensible hero) the heir of a large fortune? He has assumed that his great grandmother Elinor—an individual he knew little about—may have in fact been the sister to his actual great grandmother (Imogen Soames-Andersson). The difference in ancestry is vital because Imogen once had a romantic liaison with a man known as Ashley Walsingham, an Englishman of high society and an avid climber. Upon Ashley Walsingham’s death—he dies in a tragic accident while attempting to climb Mount Everest—he bequeaths his fortunes to Imogen, who by that point has disappeared, or to any of her surviving descendant. If no one claims the inheritance within 80 years, the fortune will be released to various charities and organizations. When Tristan is contacted at the beginning of the novel and requested to come to London, he discovers that there is only two months left on the clock. If he is to have any claim on this fortune, he needs to work quickly in order to gain any concrete evidence that it was Imogen, not Elinor, that was his actual grandmother. One large problem immediately arises due to the fact that the archive is devastatingly bare. Elinor was a sculptress of minor renown but Imogen’s legacy is less obvious and Tristan’s unofficial investigation is hampered by this limitation. Further still, Tristan’s lack of monetary income—he is working off of his savings in his archival search—certainly slows his progress. Tristan begins to travel all over Europe in order to find other archives that the solicitors have missed. For instance, he manages to gain entry to the home in which Elinor (or Imogen, we’re still unsure at this point) might have given birth to a daughter, presumably Tristan’s grandmother. Later, Tristan attempts to locate some of Elinor’s paintings on a hunch that perhaps Imogen was one of Elinor’s studies. Intercut with Tristan’s quest, Go provides a third person narrator who follows the formative years in the relationship between Ashley and Imogen. We see their connection blossom in a short five days, a romance cut short when Ashley must go off to serve in The Great War. During Ashley’s tenure on the war front, his spirits are only kept buoyed by the possibility that he will be eventually reunited with Imogen. Go takes a lot of risks with this novel; the split narrative structure is always one that causes a division in the reader’s interests, but fortunately both plots are incredibly interesting. The expansive scale—both geographical and historical—of this novel could have been too much for any writer, but first time novelist Go wields it commandingly and further still, the intergenerational and Transatlantic sweep is the appropriate tapestry for a central mystery that gains rich contours the further we get into the plot. Fans of Merchant Ivory Productions will probably wonder when this novel will be made into a movie, but there will be those who will balk at the ending (certainly a love it or hate it conclusion), one that will surely cause discussion amongst the readers propelled so assuredly to that point.
From a scholarly perspective, the novel is quite fascinating because it delves so much into the guesswork that occurs in archival research. Tristan must follow hunches and unexpected leads in the hopes that a narrative will be brought together; in some sense, the novel achieves a kind of metanarrativistic contour: will research produce some sort of definitive ending? Does it ever produce a definitive ending? The other element that Go begins to introduce is a twinned narrative structure. Halfway through the plot, Tristan meets a Frenchwoman that blossoms into a potential romance. When Tristan must leave France for yet another European country (by the novel concludes, he is in Iceland), we recall Ashley’s departure to war. Indeed, Tristan has known the Frenchwoman for a short amount of time, yet there is a connection there that cannot be severed. The mystery concerning love and devotion is certainly at play for both narratives, though the gravity of the historical portion—with long sequences devoted to World War I trench warfare and the climbing of Mount Everest—certainly weighs most heavily. Finally, perhaps, the most brilliant technique that Go employs in this novel is irony: the reader always knows more than Tristan actually does and so we can’t help but root for the narrator to get to the place where we are. The point at which Tristan knows more than we do can seem like a betrayal, which is why the ending—at least for some—might seem like an aesthetically incorporated form of treason.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Steady-Running-Hour-Novel/dp/1476704589/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396111182&sr=8-1&keywords=the+steady+running+of+the+hour
April 21, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for April 21st, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for April 21st, 2014
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and grammar mistakes. If you should need to contact me, please send to: sohnlitcrit@gmail.com
In this post, reviews of N.H. Senzai’s Shooting Kabul (Simon & Schuster, Paula Wiseman Books 2010); Saving Kabul Corner (Simon & Schuster, Paula Wiseman Books, 2014); Gary Pak’s Brothers Under a Same Sky (University of Hawaii Press, 2013); Deborah Jiang Stein’s Prison Baby: A Memoir (Beacon Press, 2014); Ovidia Yu’s Aunty Lee’s Delights (William Morrow, 2013); Janie Chang’s Three Souls (William Morrow, 2014); Carrianne Leung’s The Wondrous Woo (Inanna Publications, 2013); A Review of Na Liu (author) and Andrés Vera Martínez’s (author, illustrator) Little White Duck: A Childhood in China (Graphic Universe, 2012).
A Review of N.H. Senzai’s Shooting Kabul (Simon & Schuster, Paula Wiseman Books 2010).
N.H. Senzai’s debut novel Shooting Kabul (a young adult fiction targeted at children who are in grades three to seven) follows the adventures of an 11 year-old-Afghani transnational Fadi who comes to the United States in the wake of turmoil in his home country. His father had originally returned to Afghanistan after having received a PhD in an agricultural field in order to help out with the country’s recovery process. With the emergence of different factions (including the Taliban), Afghanistan is embroiled in internal conflict. To protect his family, Fadi’s father Habib and his ailing wife Zafoona decide to evacuate. A big problem arises when the youngest child in the family, Mariam, is accidentally left behind: each family member believes that he or she was at fault. Fadi, being the one who had been physically closest to Mariam at the time of the accidental separation, seems to harbor the most guilt. The question of whether or not they will be reunited with Mariam becomes increasingly tense, especially when they become refugees and have to travel to the United States. Once in the states, Fadi begins to explore his artistic interests in school, especially developing his photographic skills. There is a photography contest that would give him a chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to India, a country he feels would get him close enough to Afghanistan and Pakistan and perhaps offer him the opportunity to redeem himself by finding his sister. Senzai’s young adult novel also weaves in the events of 9/11, a moment that causes Fadi much strife not only because he realizes it means more instability in Afghanistan, but also because he is targeted for his ethnic difference. Senzai has taken quite a serious topic and shifted the focalization through the eyes of a young boy. To pull off the complexity of the historical contexts, Senzai must employ a third person omniscient narrator, one whose voice and whose scope is broader and deeper than that of the young Fadi. As with most novels targeted at this age group, closure is emphasized, thus potentially obscuring the gravity of family rupture and racial prejudice in light of 9/11 and the ongoing conflicts and wars in the Middle East and Western Asia. Fans of children’s literature will be happy to see Senzai effectively weaving in an extended intertextual reference to The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a favorite read of Fadi’s. Certainly an important addition to children’s literature through its attentive consideration of ethnic and social contexts not often seen in this younger readers’ arena.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Kabul-N-H-Senzai/dp/1442401958/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395205384&sr=8-1&keywords=Senzai+Shooting+Kabul
A Review of N.H. Senzai’s Saving Kabul Corner (Simon & Schuster, Paula Wiseman Books, 2014).
wish a higher res pic were available!
Loosely connected to her debut Shooting Kabul, N.H. Senzai’s sophomore effort explores the adventures of a 12 year old Afghan American named Ariana, who reluctantly must help her cousin, Laila, adjust to her recent migration to the United States. Ariana is part of a family that runs a grocery store—the titular Kabul Corner—which has had a tenuous existence as part of a strip mall in Fremont, California. Though their business has stabilized, Ariana’s family finds it troubling when another Afghan American family opens up a grocery store in the same strip mall. The owner of the strip mall property was pressured into leasing the land to that family due to the need for rental income. Further tensions arise when it is discovered that the competing store, Pamir Market, is siphoning off some of Kabul Corner’s regular customers. Indeed, at one point, the baker who was behind a bread product that was popular at Kabul Corner jumps ship and is hired by the Pamir Market. Complicating matters even further is the fact that the owners of Pamir Market are from an family whose roots are traced back to a feud that was supposedly settled with Ariana’s family sometime back in Afghanistan. Thus, Ariana’s family surmises that the Pamir Market’s emergence is perhaps traceable to the fact that the feud was never actually resolved. When fliers appear decrying the quality of Pamir Market’s groceries, it becomes evident that something fishy is going on. Is the family running Pamir Market trying to gain sympathy by suggesting that Ariana’s family had created those fliers? Or is someone connected to Ariana’s family secretly behind the problematic fliers? The problems between the two stores continue to escalate, as evidenced especially when Kabul Corner is burglarized. Determined to get to the bottom of things, Ariana, along with her cousin Laila, and her school friend Mariam—the very one who was left behind in Afghanistan in Senzai’s debut and who returns here as part of the same fictional universe—and Wali, with whom the three have generated a tentative alliance and who is the son of the Pamir Market’s owners, attempt to unravel the mystery behind the fliers and the burglary. Interspersed between the narrative concerning the competing grocery stores, Senzai generates a transnational subplot when Laila’s father, a translator for the US army, goes missing. How will all these various storylines be resolved? Senzai is certainly game to answer that question and the novel’s twinned detective-type plots push the reader along at a brisk pace. Along the way, Senzai no doubt operates to create a narrative that fleshes out the cultural contours of a diasporic community attempting to make American lives in the shadow of war and conflict. In this sense, as with many other young adult and children’s literature publications, the narrative not only serves as an entertaining story but also a kind of veiled ethnographic apparatus meant to give a partial glimpse into a community’s struggles as well as its triumphs.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Kabul-Corner-N-Senzai/dp/1442484942/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395460668&sr=8-1&keywords=Saving+Kabul+Corner
A Review of Gary Pak’s Brothers Under a Same Sky (University of Hawaii Press, 2013).
Gary Pak’s fifth publication (after The Watcher of Waipuna and Other Stories, A Ricepaper Airplane, The Language of the Geckos and Other Stories, and Children of a Fireland) is the story of two brothers, Nam Kun (Robert) Han and Nam Ki (Nammy) Han who end up becoming estranged after the Korean War. I’ve read all of Pak’s other work and I found this book to be the most disorienting stylistically of his oeuvre: Pak changes perspective quite often, moving from first to third and back again, often times covering similar ground from a different viewpoint; then the narrative itself is far from chronological. Roughly, the novel begins with a kind of frame narrative in which Nam Kun travels to Southern California. He is temporarily staying with his daughter Shelly (and her husband); Shelly and Nam Kun go to the local state hospital (Sweet Briar). Nam Kun finally finds out that his brother has been institutionalized. Nam Ki does not even remember who Nam Kun is and thus begins the story of estrangement. Nam Kun believes that part of the large distance between them occurred far prior to Nam Ki’s mental illnesses. Indeed, Nam Kun pressures Nam Ki into serving for the American military during the Korean Conflict, even though Nam Ki believes that he should not undergo this route due to his devout religious faith. Once in Korea, Nam Ki must endure the horrors of war, which include questionable orders by commanding officers, outright racism, and of course, grisly killings, some of which are conducted under dubious auspices. Nam Ki eventually comes to a crisis point during a particularly tense battle in which he is the sole survivor of his unit. These collective experiences are part and parcel of Nam Ki’s loss of faith in God and the eventual disintegration of his mental state. A late stage and potential romance with a Korean woman named Margaret ultimately only exacerbates his problems and thus readers come to understand why Nam Ki has come to be in a mental institution. There is a late stage reveal concerning Nam Kun’s own experiences in Korea that serve to catalyze a final arc, but there were some moments where I got confused about what happened to which brother, so be forewarned that there will be perspectival changes coming at you at a rapid rate. In terms of this book’s resonances with others, it obviously adds to the rather small body of work focused on the representational recovery of the Korean War from the perspective of Korean American writers (adding to Susan Choi’s The Foreign Student, Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered, Richard E. Kim’s The Martyred, among others). What is absolutely unique about this book is the prospect of a Korean American having to serve in Korea, a possibility that I had not thought could have occurred, but was no doubt possible. As always, Pak’s work is politically textured, making for a novel that will no doubt stimulate discussion.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Under-Same-Sky-Latitude/dp/0824836057/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1387820422&sr=8-2&keywords=Gary+Pak
A Review of Deborah Jiang Stein’s Prison Baby: A Memoir (Beacon Press, 2014).
I read Deborah Jiang Stein’s Prison Baby: A Memoir on a flight to Southern California. At a briskly paced length (the memoir stands at under 200 pages), I devoured this incredible work that explores the narrator’s complicated adoption history as well as the development of her sense of equanimity over her life’s circumstances. Stein details her difficult and tumultuous childhood and early adulthood years, a time in which she acts out, delves into drugs and drug-running, at one point tries to commit suicide and at another, barely evades imprisonment. She also struggles with addiction for a number of years, including one stint in which she almost overdoses. This period of incredible exploration and rebellion is of course part and parcel of a longer history in which she attempts to carve out her own space for understanding her sense of family, belonging, and identity. At the tender age of 12, while snooping in her parents’ room, she ends up discovering that she was adopted from a mother who was serving time for an undisclosed offence. It will only be two decades later that she will begin to consider this origin point with her adoptive family, one which includes an older brother (also adopted), a father who is an academic (a Miltonist) and a very put-together, elegant stay-at home mother. Stein realizes she is different from a very young age, not only because of her multiracial features, but precisely because of her complicated sense of kinship. Once Stein fully engages in some investigation into her mother’s life does she find a sense of purpose that carries her through to the ending point of the memoir. There have been a number of astonishing and incisive adoptee memoirs/ creative publications that have appeared in the last decade and Stein’s work will certainly add its unique intervention in its social contextual representations. There are moments of incredible heartbreak and poignancy that come with Stein understanding the possibility of two mothers, rather than one. Her story calls attention to David L. Eng’s account of “poststructural kinship” from his latest book and reveals the tortuous path toward embracing the possibility and the emergence of alternative social formations. A must-read.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Prison-Baby-Deborah-Jiang-Stein/dp/0807098108/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395009324&sr=8-1&keywords=deborah+jiang+stein
A Review of Ovidia Yu’s Aunty Lee’s Delights (William Morrow, 2013).
Though well known in her home country of Singapore as well as in other former commonwealth countries, Ovidia Yu has not had her American debut until Aunty Lee’s Delights, a frothy murder mystery (intended as a series; the second will be published in 2014) that follows the titular Aunty Lee as she investigates the untimely deaths of two patrons and friends. The novel does not set up the murder mystery until well into the narrative, but we do know rather immediately that the news has reported a dead body found on the island resort of Sentosa. Aunty Lee is putting on a dinner partner with the help of her undocumented worker and friend Nina. Invited are Harry Sullivan, Lucy and Peter Cunningham, Selina and Mark Lim (who is the son from the first marriage of Aunty Lee’s now dead husband), Cherril Lim-Peters, and Carla Saito. One person who is invited but is supposedly not going to show up is Laura Kwee, but it later becomes apparent that the missing body is none other than this dinner guest. Further still, the aforementioned Carla Saito arrives without an official invitation, seeking the whereabouts of Marianne Peters, the daughter of a family that Aunty Lee knows well. Saito’s unexpected appearance only leads to more questions: where is Marianne Peters and how is it that Carla Saito knows about Laura Kwee. With Carla Saito, the novel initiates its first apparent and possible suspect. For her part, Aunty Lee has always been interested in the local news, but this particular case, given its connection to her own life, propels her into her own investigation. Certainly, there are actual officials on the case, but Aunty Lee is obviously the center of this plot and her keen intellectual acumen gives her an ability to generate more leads. Yu’s work is fun and funny, even given the dark topic; the earliest section in the novel concerning the dinner party is the liveliest in part because there are so many shifts in third person perspective that you get a sense of most of the colorful personalities of the invitees. There is also a touch of the Sherlockian investigatory structure, as Aunty Lee’s unofficial inquiry is strongly supported by her ever-loyal employee, Nina (who is of Filipina descent). Yu weaves in a multicultural tapestry, largely indicative of Singapore’s history as a nexus point of trade and capital: the Peters family is of Indian descent; Carla is Japanese American; Lucy, Peter, and Harry all of Anglo backgrounds. Once the mystery is solved, readers might balk at the identity of the killer as well as the killer’s motive, but the comic textures of this particular work are sure to keep you interested.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Aunty-Lees-Delights-Singaporean-Mystery/dp/0062227157/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395941781&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=auntee+lee%27s+delights
A Review of Janie Chang’s Three Souls (William Morrow, 2014).
Janie Chang’s debut Three Souls is a historical fiction that has an immediate hook to its narrative perspective. The young narrator, Leiyin, is telling us the story from beyond the grave. Indeed, she is observing her own funeral. This event gives her the chance and her “three souls” to emerge, which accordingly provide her with a kind of commentary on her own life. From her funeral (which occurs in 1935), we travel back into the past and learn of the secure, but restricted life she leads as a young girl. She is the third daughter in a well-to-do family. She has two older brothers and two older sisters; her father is very stern and follows patriarchal traditions and uses strategy in marriage and matchmaking. Her oldest sister, for instance, is betrothed to a man known to be addicted to opium, a match that is made due to the fact that this individual is connected to a powerful family line. Leiyin’s path becomes complicated when she meets a poet (named Hanchin) who exudes a charismatic, romantic, and political influence over her. Leiyin begins to believe that her life is better served by following her dream of becoming a teacher to those in less fortunate positions. This occupational choice is not one supported by her father. With the help of her sister, she is able to get the funding she needs for tuition and makes a clandestine trip to another city in hopes of enrolling at a college. Her plans are found out and she is forced to return to her home; her father, in an attempt to reform her ideas about her career aspirations, ends up forcing her into a marriage. Though Leiyin is opposed to the marriage at first, she begins developing strong feelings for her husband Baizhen. She soon is pregnant with a child that later turns out to be a girl (Weilan). The novel takes a dramatic turn when Hanchin arrives in town looking for an ally to hide a communist manifesto. Given their almost-romance that occurred years before, he realizes that he might be able to recruit Leiyin into the effort. As the novel moves toward resolution, there are questions of betrayal and political influences that result. It becomes clear, too, why Leiyin has not been able to move beyond the grave and why it is she continues to watch over her family, especially her daughter. As a ghost, she still somehow has the power to influence the actions of those still living by entering their dreams. In this respect, Leiyin knows that she must act with what little time she has in her spiritual limbo in order to protect the ones she loves.
This novel reminded me a lot of Tan’s Saving Fish From Drowning, as both books are narrated from the perspective of a ghost figure. By this point, I’ve seen three novels by Chinese American authors who have used this conceit: Lan Samantha Chang in Hunger, Tan in Saving Fish From Drowning, and now Chang and it’s certainly an appropriate “ethnic form” if we might call it that, especially given that the female ghost figure seems more largely an emblem of lost feminist agency and the hope that something can still be rectified from beyond the grave. The challenge for Chang and others who write in this genre is the complicated nature between individual stories and the political climate and historical texture; for instance, Chang must work to interweave the growing Chinese governmental tensions/ problems with Japan with Leiyin’s desire for independence and romantic agency. It’s certainly why these novels tend to be on the longer side; there are really at least two narratives going on: one about a character and another about a nation (as its own character?). This storytelling approach is not allegory as Fredric James most infamously argued, but simply the desire to mark the individual and the structural alongside each other, a kind of “dialectic” that makes Asian American literature so rich and so challenging to execute. Chang’s heroine is crafty and that’s the biggest strength of this book: we want Leiyin to succeed in her various quests (both in life and in death) because we know so many cards are already stacked against her.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Souls-A-Novel-P-S/dp/0062293192/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396907311&sr=8-1&keywords=Janie+Chang
A Review of Carrianne Leung’s The Wondrous Woo (Inanna Publications, 2013).
I’m going north of the border and reviewing Carrianne Leung’s debut novel The Wondrous Woo, which is told from the perspective of Miramar Woo, the oldest of three children (she has one younger sister, Sophia, and then a younger brother, Darwin), who resides in Scarborough, Canada with her family (her father is the one who convinces his family to immigrate). The novel immediately takes a dark turn when Miramar’s father is hit by a car and succumbs to his injuries. Soon after this moment, Miramar’s brother develops an amazing and prodigious talent in music, while Sophia becomes an incredibly brilliant mathematician. Both are whisked away to various areas: Darwin heads out on a European tour, accompanied by the Woo matriarch, while Sophia heads off to McGill University under the tutelage of a professor. Darwin is a big hit and Sophia is a revelation; both are utter spectacles, and the Woo family becomes known for the two children with The Gifts. Of course, Miramar does not seem to have any talent and this lack of a gift weighs upon her heavily. She attends Carleton College, where she engages in the requisite search for her identity. Much of her time there is spent having sex with her boyfriend Jerry, a cad of a man with obviously rakish intentions. We are not surprised when that relationship fails, but it becomes clear that this romance was sustaining any sense of stability in her life. At that point, she finds herself listing in one job position to the next, eventually deciding to make a rather radical break and moving away from her family without telling them where she is. Indeed, she begins to perceive her family is holding her back: her mother’s budding romantic relationship with another man certainly causes strain upon everyone, while Sophia and Darwin continue to garner accolades for their talents. While on her self-imposed exile, she develops a relationship with a strange Chinese Canadian man by the name of Mouse, who seems to have no real or discernible past. He does have an interest in Kung Fu movies (see the cover of this book for the obvious connection) and Miramar and Mouse begin collaborating on writing film and movie scripts. But Miramar eventually realizes she has avoided the importance of her family in her life and must make a decision about how she will continue to relate to or NOT to relate to her mother and her siblings.
Leung’s novel is particularly engaging because she masters a kind of tragicomic tonality that leads to a reading experience generously peppered with narrative poignancy and quirky humor. The slightly offbeat storyline occasionally verges on the surreal, which gives the plot the occasional jolt: besides the Gifts of her siblings, her mother also must confront the occasional psychotic break, which alludes to a larger theme of madness that runs through the novel. Coming out of Inanna publications, this novel is clearly originating a publishing industry that fosters experimentation and innovation, reminiscent of the work of other Asian Canadian writers such as the recently reviewed Corinna Chong (recall the mother who studies crop circles). Certainly, a novel that takes its own spin on the model minority narrative and immigrant development.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wondrous-Woo-Carrianne-Leung/dp/1771330686/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395246178&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wondrous+woo
A Review of Na Liu (author) and Andrés Vera Martínez’s (author, illustrator) Little White Duck: A Childhood in China (Graphic Universe, 2012).
Pylduck already reviewed Na Liu (author) and Andrés Vera Martínez’s (author, illustrator) Little White Duck: A Childhood in China (Graphic Universe, 2012) here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/164408.html
Pylduck’s review does a very comprehensive job in reviewing this title and I can’t say that I can add too much. I was immediately struck by the lavish visuals, something that certainly makes this illustrated memoir a notable one. The memoir is narrated in vignettes and each shows Liu’s experiences as a young child. One of the most compelling vignettes occurs in relation to visiting her father’s home village. Liu ends up wearing one of her favorite coats even though her mother suggests that she wear something else. Once she gets to the village, Liu is faced with a clear class difference, which does not become apparent until she realizes that everyone she sees lives a far grittier and dirtier life. At one point, she goes outside to play with some of the children and has brought some books to share, only to find out that none of her peers can read. They also maul her when they see her jacket, transfixed with the “little white duck” monogrammed on the front. As they each touch the little white duck, it becomes smudged with dirt and soon looks black. Liu’s experiences serve to highlight the general life of privilege she has had. There is of course many references to Communism, Chairman Mao, and the ideological beliefs of her parents. Her mother, in particular, benefits from communistic healthcare when she is able to have surgeries that address issues that arise due to the complications from polio. In another vignette, Liu is confused about why everyone is crying, only to discover that Chairman Mao has died and there is an entire nation in mourning. I certainly agree with Pylduck’s stated sentiments here:
“One thing I found interesting was that Liu's memories of China and her childhood are sometimes deceptively simple (or politics-free), but there is a lot of information woven into the stories about the state of China at the time. For instance, in the story about how she planned with her sister how to catch rats for the country (school teachers assigned children the task of bringing her two rats' tails as part of the pest eradication program), the fact that schools were essentially conscripting children into a program to control the pest program suggests other issues. The memoir gives a quick note about how the sparrow, for instance, used to be on the list of pests that children were to help kill, but then when people did kill off sparrows in large numbers, they ended up upsetting the ecological balance, and the insect population skyrocketed and became a big problem (helping to cause the famine earlier in the century).”
As with many other immigrant literatures, the personal and the familial is always a gateway to the political and the social. In almost every single story, there is a larger social context being implicated in a single narrative. For instance, Liu comes from a family with two daughters, a feature that was relatively rare in that generation because of the one child rule. Liu’s mother became pregnant when that law was instituted, so she was able to have the second child without being taxed. This dynamic between the individual and the nation makes this memoir something applicable to all age groups. Children will delight in the spirited stories and beautiful images, while adults can engage with the nuanced representational facets of Liu’s memoir.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Little-White-Duck-Childhood-Single/dp/0761381155/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397098539&sr=8-1&keywords=little+white+duck
As always, with apologies for factual inaccuracies, typographical errors, and grammar mistakes. If you should need to contact me, please send to: sohnlitcrit@gmail.com
In this post, reviews of N.H. Senzai’s Shooting Kabul (Simon & Schuster, Paula Wiseman Books 2010); Saving Kabul Corner (Simon & Schuster, Paula Wiseman Books, 2014); Gary Pak’s Brothers Under a Same Sky (University of Hawaii Press, 2013); Deborah Jiang Stein’s Prison Baby: A Memoir (Beacon Press, 2014); Ovidia Yu’s Aunty Lee’s Delights (William Morrow, 2013); Janie Chang’s Three Souls (William Morrow, 2014); Carrianne Leung’s The Wondrous Woo (Inanna Publications, 2013); A Review of Na Liu (author) and Andrés Vera Martínez’s (author, illustrator) Little White Duck: A Childhood in China (Graphic Universe, 2012).
A Review of N.H. Senzai’s Shooting Kabul (Simon & Schuster, Paula Wiseman Books 2010).
N.H. Senzai’s debut novel Shooting Kabul (a young adult fiction targeted at children who are in grades three to seven) follows the adventures of an 11 year-old-Afghani transnational Fadi who comes to the United States in the wake of turmoil in his home country. His father had originally returned to Afghanistan after having received a PhD in an agricultural field in order to help out with the country’s recovery process. With the emergence of different factions (including the Taliban), Afghanistan is embroiled in internal conflict. To protect his family, Fadi’s father Habib and his ailing wife Zafoona decide to evacuate. A big problem arises when the youngest child in the family, Mariam, is accidentally left behind: each family member believes that he or she was at fault. Fadi, being the one who had been physically closest to Mariam at the time of the accidental separation, seems to harbor the most guilt. The question of whether or not they will be reunited with Mariam becomes increasingly tense, especially when they become refugees and have to travel to the United States. Once in the states, Fadi begins to explore his artistic interests in school, especially developing his photographic skills. There is a photography contest that would give him a chance to win an all-expenses paid trip to India, a country he feels would get him close enough to Afghanistan and Pakistan and perhaps offer him the opportunity to redeem himself by finding his sister. Senzai’s young adult novel also weaves in the events of 9/11, a moment that causes Fadi much strife not only because he realizes it means more instability in Afghanistan, but also because he is targeted for his ethnic difference. Senzai has taken quite a serious topic and shifted the focalization through the eyes of a young boy. To pull off the complexity of the historical contexts, Senzai must employ a third person omniscient narrator, one whose voice and whose scope is broader and deeper than that of the young Fadi. As with most novels targeted at this age group, closure is emphasized, thus potentially obscuring the gravity of family rupture and racial prejudice in light of 9/11 and the ongoing conflicts and wars in the Middle East and Western Asia. Fans of children’s literature will be happy to see Senzai effectively weaving in an extended intertextual reference to The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a favorite read of Fadi’s. Certainly an important addition to children’s literature through its attentive consideration of ethnic and social contexts not often seen in this younger readers’ arena.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Kabul-N-H-Senzai/dp/1442401958/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395205384&sr=8-1&keywords=Senzai+Shooting+Kabul
A Review of N.H. Senzai’s Saving Kabul Corner (Simon & Schuster, Paula Wiseman Books, 2014).
wish a higher res pic were available!
Loosely connected to her debut Shooting Kabul, N.H. Senzai’s sophomore effort explores the adventures of a 12 year old Afghan American named Ariana, who reluctantly must help her cousin, Laila, adjust to her recent migration to the United States. Ariana is part of a family that runs a grocery store—the titular Kabul Corner—which has had a tenuous existence as part of a strip mall in Fremont, California. Though their business has stabilized, Ariana’s family finds it troubling when another Afghan American family opens up a grocery store in the same strip mall. The owner of the strip mall property was pressured into leasing the land to that family due to the need for rental income. Further tensions arise when it is discovered that the competing store, Pamir Market, is siphoning off some of Kabul Corner’s regular customers. Indeed, at one point, the baker who was behind a bread product that was popular at Kabul Corner jumps ship and is hired by the Pamir Market. Complicating matters even further is the fact that the owners of Pamir Market are from an family whose roots are traced back to a feud that was supposedly settled with Ariana’s family sometime back in Afghanistan. Thus, Ariana’s family surmises that the Pamir Market’s emergence is perhaps traceable to the fact that the feud was never actually resolved. When fliers appear decrying the quality of Pamir Market’s groceries, it becomes evident that something fishy is going on. Is the family running Pamir Market trying to gain sympathy by suggesting that Ariana’s family had created those fliers? Or is someone connected to Ariana’s family secretly behind the problematic fliers? The problems between the two stores continue to escalate, as evidenced especially when Kabul Corner is burglarized. Determined to get to the bottom of things, Ariana, along with her cousin Laila, and her school friend Mariam—the very one who was left behind in Afghanistan in Senzai’s debut and who returns here as part of the same fictional universe—and Wali, with whom the three have generated a tentative alliance and who is the son of the Pamir Market’s owners, attempt to unravel the mystery behind the fliers and the burglary. Interspersed between the narrative concerning the competing grocery stores, Senzai generates a transnational subplot when Laila’s father, a translator for the US army, goes missing. How will all these various storylines be resolved? Senzai is certainly game to answer that question and the novel’s twinned detective-type plots push the reader along at a brisk pace. Along the way, Senzai no doubt operates to create a narrative that fleshes out the cultural contours of a diasporic community attempting to make American lives in the shadow of war and conflict. In this sense, as with many other young adult and children’s literature publications, the narrative not only serves as an entertaining story but also a kind of veiled ethnographic apparatus meant to give a partial glimpse into a community’s struggles as well as its triumphs.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Saving-Kabul-Corner-N-Senzai/dp/1442484942/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395460668&sr=8-1&keywords=Saving+Kabul+Corner
A Review of Gary Pak’s Brothers Under a Same Sky (University of Hawaii Press, 2013).
Gary Pak’s fifth publication (after The Watcher of Waipuna and Other Stories, A Ricepaper Airplane, The Language of the Geckos and Other Stories, and Children of a Fireland) is the story of two brothers, Nam Kun (Robert) Han and Nam Ki (Nammy) Han who end up becoming estranged after the Korean War. I’ve read all of Pak’s other work and I found this book to be the most disorienting stylistically of his oeuvre: Pak changes perspective quite often, moving from first to third and back again, often times covering similar ground from a different viewpoint; then the narrative itself is far from chronological. Roughly, the novel begins with a kind of frame narrative in which Nam Kun travels to Southern California. He is temporarily staying with his daughter Shelly (and her husband); Shelly and Nam Kun go to the local state hospital (Sweet Briar). Nam Kun finally finds out that his brother has been institutionalized. Nam Ki does not even remember who Nam Kun is and thus begins the story of estrangement. Nam Kun believes that part of the large distance between them occurred far prior to Nam Ki’s mental illnesses. Indeed, Nam Kun pressures Nam Ki into serving for the American military during the Korean Conflict, even though Nam Ki believes that he should not undergo this route due to his devout religious faith. Once in Korea, Nam Ki must endure the horrors of war, which include questionable orders by commanding officers, outright racism, and of course, grisly killings, some of which are conducted under dubious auspices. Nam Ki eventually comes to a crisis point during a particularly tense battle in which he is the sole survivor of his unit. These collective experiences are part and parcel of Nam Ki’s loss of faith in God and the eventual disintegration of his mental state. A late stage and potential romance with a Korean woman named Margaret ultimately only exacerbates his problems and thus readers come to understand why Nam Ki has come to be in a mental institution. There is a late stage reveal concerning Nam Kun’s own experiences in Korea that serve to catalyze a final arc, but there were some moments where I got confused about what happened to which brother, so be forewarned that there will be perspectival changes coming at you at a rapid rate. In terms of this book’s resonances with others, it obviously adds to the rather small body of work focused on the representational recovery of the Korean War from the perspective of Korean American writers (adding to Susan Choi’s The Foreign Student, Chang-rae Lee’s The Surrendered, Richard E. Kim’s The Martyred, among others). What is absolutely unique about this book is the prospect of a Korean American having to serve in Korea, a possibility that I had not thought could have occurred, but was no doubt possible. As always, Pak’s work is politically textured, making for a novel that will no doubt stimulate discussion.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Under-Same-Sky-Latitude/dp/0824836057/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1387820422&sr=8-2&keywords=Gary+Pak
A Review of Deborah Jiang Stein’s Prison Baby: A Memoir (Beacon Press, 2014).
I read Deborah Jiang Stein’s Prison Baby: A Memoir on a flight to Southern California. At a briskly paced length (the memoir stands at under 200 pages), I devoured this incredible work that explores the narrator’s complicated adoption history as well as the development of her sense of equanimity over her life’s circumstances. Stein details her difficult and tumultuous childhood and early adulthood years, a time in which she acts out, delves into drugs and drug-running, at one point tries to commit suicide and at another, barely evades imprisonment. She also struggles with addiction for a number of years, including one stint in which she almost overdoses. This period of incredible exploration and rebellion is of course part and parcel of a longer history in which she attempts to carve out her own space for understanding her sense of family, belonging, and identity. At the tender age of 12, while snooping in her parents’ room, she ends up discovering that she was adopted from a mother who was serving time for an undisclosed offence. It will only be two decades later that she will begin to consider this origin point with her adoptive family, one which includes an older brother (also adopted), a father who is an academic (a Miltonist) and a very put-together, elegant stay-at home mother. Stein realizes she is different from a very young age, not only because of her multiracial features, but precisely because of her complicated sense of kinship. Once Stein fully engages in some investigation into her mother’s life does she find a sense of purpose that carries her through to the ending point of the memoir. There have been a number of astonishing and incisive adoptee memoirs/ creative publications that have appeared in the last decade and Stein’s work will certainly add its unique intervention in its social contextual representations. There are moments of incredible heartbreak and poignancy that come with Stein understanding the possibility of two mothers, rather than one. Her story calls attention to David L. Eng’s account of “poststructural kinship” from his latest book and reveals the tortuous path toward embracing the possibility and the emergence of alternative social formations. A must-read.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Prison-Baby-Deborah-Jiang-Stein/dp/0807098108/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395009324&sr=8-1&keywords=deborah+jiang+stein
A Review of Ovidia Yu’s Aunty Lee’s Delights (William Morrow, 2013).
Though well known in her home country of Singapore as well as in other former commonwealth countries, Ovidia Yu has not had her American debut until Aunty Lee’s Delights, a frothy murder mystery (intended as a series; the second will be published in 2014) that follows the titular Aunty Lee as she investigates the untimely deaths of two patrons and friends. The novel does not set up the murder mystery until well into the narrative, but we do know rather immediately that the news has reported a dead body found on the island resort of Sentosa. Aunty Lee is putting on a dinner partner with the help of her undocumented worker and friend Nina. Invited are Harry Sullivan, Lucy and Peter Cunningham, Selina and Mark Lim (who is the son from the first marriage of Aunty Lee’s now dead husband), Cherril Lim-Peters, and Carla Saito. One person who is invited but is supposedly not going to show up is Laura Kwee, but it later becomes apparent that the missing body is none other than this dinner guest. Further still, the aforementioned Carla Saito arrives without an official invitation, seeking the whereabouts of Marianne Peters, the daughter of a family that Aunty Lee knows well. Saito’s unexpected appearance only leads to more questions: where is Marianne Peters and how is it that Carla Saito knows about Laura Kwee. With Carla Saito, the novel initiates its first apparent and possible suspect. For her part, Aunty Lee has always been interested in the local news, but this particular case, given its connection to her own life, propels her into her own investigation. Certainly, there are actual officials on the case, but Aunty Lee is obviously the center of this plot and her keen intellectual acumen gives her an ability to generate more leads. Yu’s work is fun and funny, even given the dark topic; the earliest section in the novel concerning the dinner party is the liveliest in part because there are so many shifts in third person perspective that you get a sense of most of the colorful personalities of the invitees. There is also a touch of the Sherlockian investigatory structure, as Aunty Lee’s unofficial inquiry is strongly supported by her ever-loyal employee, Nina (who is of Filipina descent). Yu weaves in a multicultural tapestry, largely indicative of Singapore’s history as a nexus point of trade and capital: the Peters family is of Indian descent; Carla is Japanese American; Lucy, Peter, and Harry all of Anglo backgrounds. Once the mystery is solved, readers might balk at the identity of the killer as well as the killer’s motive, but the comic textures of this particular work are sure to keep you interested.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Aunty-Lees-Delights-Singaporean-Mystery/dp/0062227157/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395941781&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=auntee+lee%27s+delights
A Review of Janie Chang’s Three Souls (William Morrow, 2014).
Janie Chang’s debut Three Souls is a historical fiction that has an immediate hook to its narrative perspective. The young narrator, Leiyin, is telling us the story from beyond the grave. Indeed, she is observing her own funeral. This event gives her the chance and her “three souls” to emerge, which accordingly provide her with a kind of commentary on her own life. From her funeral (which occurs in 1935), we travel back into the past and learn of the secure, but restricted life she leads as a young girl. She is the third daughter in a well-to-do family. She has two older brothers and two older sisters; her father is very stern and follows patriarchal traditions and uses strategy in marriage and matchmaking. Her oldest sister, for instance, is betrothed to a man known to be addicted to opium, a match that is made due to the fact that this individual is connected to a powerful family line. Leiyin’s path becomes complicated when she meets a poet (named Hanchin) who exudes a charismatic, romantic, and political influence over her. Leiyin begins to believe that her life is better served by following her dream of becoming a teacher to those in less fortunate positions. This occupational choice is not one supported by her father. With the help of her sister, she is able to get the funding she needs for tuition and makes a clandestine trip to another city in hopes of enrolling at a college. Her plans are found out and she is forced to return to her home; her father, in an attempt to reform her ideas about her career aspirations, ends up forcing her into a marriage. Though Leiyin is opposed to the marriage at first, she begins developing strong feelings for her husband Baizhen. She soon is pregnant with a child that later turns out to be a girl (Weilan). The novel takes a dramatic turn when Hanchin arrives in town looking for an ally to hide a communist manifesto. Given their almost-romance that occurred years before, he realizes that he might be able to recruit Leiyin into the effort. As the novel moves toward resolution, there are questions of betrayal and political influences that result. It becomes clear, too, why Leiyin has not been able to move beyond the grave and why it is she continues to watch over her family, especially her daughter. As a ghost, she still somehow has the power to influence the actions of those still living by entering their dreams. In this respect, Leiyin knows that she must act with what little time she has in her spiritual limbo in order to protect the ones she loves.
This novel reminded me a lot of Tan’s Saving Fish From Drowning, as both books are narrated from the perspective of a ghost figure. By this point, I’ve seen three novels by Chinese American authors who have used this conceit: Lan Samantha Chang in Hunger, Tan in Saving Fish From Drowning, and now Chang and it’s certainly an appropriate “ethnic form” if we might call it that, especially given that the female ghost figure seems more largely an emblem of lost feminist agency and the hope that something can still be rectified from beyond the grave. The challenge for Chang and others who write in this genre is the complicated nature between individual stories and the political climate and historical texture; for instance, Chang must work to interweave the growing Chinese governmental tensions/ problems with Japan with Leiyin’s desire for independence and romantic agency. It’s certainly why these novels tend to be on the longer side; there are really at least two narratives going on: one about a character and another about a nation (as its own character?). This storytelling approach is not allegory as Fredric James most infamously argued, but simply the desire to mark the individual and the structural alongside each other, a kind of “dialectic” that makes Asian American literature so rich and so challenging to execute. Chang’s heroine is crafty and that’s the biggest strength of this book: we want Leiyin to succeed in her various quests (both in life and in death) because we know so many cards are already stacked against her.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Souls-A-Novel-P-S/dp/0062293192/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396907311&sr=8-1&keywords=Janie+Chang
A Review of Carrianne Leung’s The Wondrous Woo (Inanna Publications, 2013).
I’m going north of the border and reviewing Carrianne Leung’s debut novel The Wondrous Woo, which is told from the perspective of Miramar Woo, the oldest of three children (she has one younger sister, Sophia, and then a younger brother, Darwin), who resides in Scarborough, Canada with her family (her father is the one who convinces his family to immigrate). The novel immediately takes a dark turn when Miramar’s father is hit by a car and succumbs to his injuries. Soon after this moment, Miramar’s brother develops an amazing and prodigious talent in music, while Sophia becomes an incredibly brilliant mathematician. Both are whisked away to various areas: Darwin heads out on a European tour, accompanied by the Woo matriarch, while Sophia heads off to McGill University under the tutelage of a professor. Darwin is a big hit and Sophia is a revelation; both are utter spectacles, and the Woo family becomes known for the two children with The Gifts. Of course, Miramar does not seem to have any talent and this lack of a gift weighs upon her heavily. She attends Carleton College, where she engages in the requisite search for her identity. Much of her time there is spent having sex with her boyfriend Jerry, a cad of a man with obviously rakish intentions. We are not surprised when that relationship fails, but it becomes clear that this romance was sustaining any sense of stability in her life. At that point, she finds herself listing in one job position to the next, eventually deciding to make a rather radical break and moving away from her family without telling them where she is. Indeed, she begins to perceive her family is holding her back: her mother’s budding romantic relationship with another man certainly causes strain upon everyone, while Sophia and Darwin continue to garner accolades for their talents. While on her self-imposed exile, she develops a relationship with a strange Chinese Canadian man by the name of Mouse, who seems to have no real or discernible past. He does have an interest in Kung Fu movies (see the cover of this book for the obvious connection) and Miramar and Mouse begin collaborating on writing film and movie scripts. But Miramar eventually realizes she has avoided the importance of her family in her life and must make a decision about how she will continue to relate to or NOT to relate to her mother and her siblings.
Leung’s novel is particularly engaging because she masters a kind of tragicomic tonality that leads to a reading experience generously peppered with narrative poignancy and quirky humor. The slightly offbeat storyline occasionally verges on the surreal, which gives the plot the occasional jolt: besides the Gifts of her siblings, her mother also must confront the occasional psychotic break, which alludes to a larger theme of madness that runs through the novel. Coming out of Inanna publications, this novel is clearly originating a publishing industry that fosters experimentation and innovation, reminiscent of the work of other Asian Canadian writers such as the recently reviewed Corinna Chong (recall the mother who studies crop circles). Certainly, a novel that takes its own spin on the model minority narrative and immigrant development.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wondrous-Woo-Carrianne-Leung/dp/1771330686/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395246178&sr=8-1&keywords=the+wondrous+woo
A Review of Na Liu (author) and Andrés Vera Martínez’s (author, illustrator) Little White Duck: A Childhood in China (Graphic Universe, 2012).
Pylduck already reviewed Na Liu (author) and Andrés Vera Martínez’s (author, illustrator) Little White Duck: A Childhood in China (Graphic Universe, 2012) here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/164408.html
Pylduck’s review does a very comprehensive job in reviewing this title and I can’t say that I can add too much. I was immediately struck by the lavish visuals, something that certainly makes this illustrated memoir a notable one. The memoir is narrated in vignettes and each shows Liu’s experiences as a young child. One of the most compelling vignettes occurs in relation to visiting her father’s home village. Liu ends up wearing one of her favorite coats even though her mother suggests that she wear something else. Once she gets to the village, Liu is faced with a clear class difference, which does not become apparent until she realizes that everyone she sees lives a far grittier and dirtier life. At one point, she goes outside to play with some of the children and has brought some books to share, only to find out that none of her peers can read. They also maul her when they see her jacket, transfixed with the “little white duck” monogrammed on the front. As they each touch the little white duck, it becomes smudged with dirt and soon looks black. Liu’s experiences serve to highlight the general life of privilege she has had. There is of course many references to Communism, Chairman Mao, and the ideological beliefs of her parents. Her mother, in particular, benefits from communistic healthcare when she is able to have surgeries that address issues that arise due to the complications from polio. In another vignette, Liu is confused about why everyone is crying, only to discover that Chairman Mao has died and there is an entire nation in mourning. I certainly agree with Pylduck’s stated sentiments here:
“One thing I found interesting was that Liu's memories of China and her childhood are sometimes deceptively simple (or politics-free), but there is a lot of information woven into the stories about the state of China at the time. For instance, in the story about how she planned with her sister how to catch rats for the country (school teachers assigned children the task of bringing her two rats' tails as part of the pest eradication program), the fact that schools were essentially conscripting children into a program to control the pest program suggests other issues. The memoir gives a quick note about how the sparrow, for instance, used to be on the list of pests that children were to help kill, but then when people did kill off sparrows in large numbers, they ended up upsetting the ecological balance, and the insect population skyrocketed and became a big problem (helping to cause the famine earlier in the century).”
As with many other immigrant literatures, the personal and the familial is always a gateway to the political and the social. In almost every single story, there is a larger social context being implicated in a single narrative. For instance, Liu comes from a family with two daughters, a feature that was relatively rare in that generation because of the one child rule. Liu’s mother became pregnant when that law was instituted, so she was able to have the second child without being taxed. This dynamic between the individual and the nation makes this memoir something applicable to all age groups. Children will delight in the spirited stories and beautiful images, while adults can engage with the nuanced representational facets of Liu’s memoir.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Little-White-Duck-Childhood-Single/dp/0761381155/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397098539&sr=8-1&keywords=little+white+duck
April 9, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 9, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 9, 2014
In honor of the new Penguin/ Random House merger, a post with Random House/ Penguin titles!
Do recall that Penguin still has the academic service:
http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/services-academic/cfis.html
Through Penguin’s service, I have had the chance to consider many new course adoptions and it’s a wonderful, wonderful resource for educators of all levels. With the Random House merger, I’m not quite sure if the academic service will still be retained, but we can all hope! Now on to the reviews!
In this post, reviews of: Bich Minh Nguyen’s Pioneer Girl (Viking Adult, 2014); Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea (Riverhead Books, 2014); Michelle Sagara’s Touch (Daw Books, 2014); Lydia Kang’s Control (Dial Press, 2013); Yiyun Li’s Kinder than Solitude (Random House, 2013).
A Review of Bich Minh Nguyen’s Pioneer Girl (Viking Adult, 2014).
Bich Minh Nguyen’s second novel and third publication (after Short Girls and Stealing Buddha’s Dinner) explores the life of a newly minted PhD, who is not surprisingly unemployed. We are further not surprised to find out that her degree is in English. Fortunately, the protagonist, Lee, completed a thesis on Edith Wharton, so we know that she might have some marketability, having focused in an area that has widespread institutional legibility and on an writer who most would consider as part of a “broader field” (but I digress). Jobs are good. Job security is of course even better, but Lee isn’t so lucky. She moves back home to suburban Chicago, where she helps out at her mother’s restaurant, the Lotus Leaf Café, and creates tension with her desire to help change the menu design and other such minor details. Lee’s father died when she was just a child and her family life is essentially comprised of her connection to her mother and her grandfather, Ong Hai (who also works at the Café). Lee’s brother Sam is estranged from the family at the start of the novel and it is his arrival that catalyzes the plot: he comes home to demand money. Apparently, Lee and Sam’s mother had been receiving money from years from Hieu, a family friend and a man who had been somehow indirectly involved with their father’s accidental death. Sam does not find any of that money, which he believes is rightfully owed to him and Lee precisely because they were the ones to “lose” their father. Before Sam vacates the area, he leaves behind a pin, one that has a rather legendary story in the family. Indeed, there was a Caucasian woman who used to frequent the café that Ong Hai had owned back in Vietnam, in the days of the war. Through some creative deduction, Lee begins to think that that woman may have been Rose Wilder, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House Books. Since she is essentially not doing anything related to her research, she sets out to discover whether or not Rose Wilder was also the one who ended up in Vietnam and had frequented Ong Hai’s café. For Lee, this quest is particularly important precisely because she had wrapped up so much of her American identity around the Little House books.
Nguyen’s book is essentially a kind of detective plot, so it reads very quickly. Of course, we can read into Lee’s rather obsessive desire as one that is elliptically confronting her second generational, child-to-immigrants identity: to find a narrative in which her Otherness can be ultimately and directly tied to a perceived American-ness. Nguyen’s knowledge of all things Laura Ingalls Wilder is put to effective use here and fans of that series will no doubt find much to celebrate in this inventive re-envisioning of the afterlife of the Little House books from the Vietnamese American perspective. Finally: there is a strange discourse about the “marketability” of ethnic literature in this particular novel that appears in relation to Lee’s job prospects, which I find troubling insofar as the thing so many forget is that ultimately and importantly: Bich Minh Nguyen’s Pioneer Girl is as “American” as Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and should be understood as a novel that is taxonomically configured from multiple literary genealogies: Asian American and otherwise.
Buy the book here:
http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Girl-Bich-Minh-Nguyen/dp/0670025097/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1391190662&sr=8-2&keywords=Pioneer+Girl
A Review of Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea (Riverhead Books, 2014).
spoilers forthcoming
First off: see pylduck’s review here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/164179.html
It is late, I should be in bed, but instead I’m writing some quick thoughts on Chang-rae Lee’s fifth novel, On Such a Full Sea (after Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, The Surrendered, and Aloft). I’ve followed Lee’s work ever since Native Speaker and a new novel is always occasion for a celebration and carving out time to read the novel itself. This time around I had to wait a couple of weeks before I could sit down and finish the book; I read it in about five sittings, which isn’t typical for me as a novel reader in general. The novel is told from an interesting narrative perspective conceit: a kind of disembodied “we” voice, with a vaguely omniscient perspective. The “we” seems to be the common folk of B-Mor, a postapocalyptic town that takes place in what was once known as Baltimore. There were plagues and other such things and Baltimore becomes repopulated by Chinese settlers. It seems as though Lee is working from an alternative timeline that might be counterfactual rather than fully futuristic, as the story itself doesn’t pose super advanced or imaginary technologies that would tell us we’re centuries from the present moment. The “we” is focused on narrating the life of a character, Fan, who leaves B-Mor for the Open Counties, seeking to find her lover, Reg, who has been whisked away from B-Mor. She’s not aware of the reason Reg has been taken, though the “we” is convinced that Reg is part of the magical set of people who are “C” free. That is, he has some sort of genetic anomaly that allows him to avoid getting one of the diseases that still plagues the general population. Lee tiers three main “spaces” in the novel: the Charter “cities,” B-Mor (which seems to be a middle-class, working class suburbia), and then the Open Counties, which functions as the novel’s wide open, rural ghettos. The Open Counties are a kind of no-man’s land, with the absence of structured laws. In Lee’s novel the Open Counties are a place of polyamory, cannibalism, theft, and kidnapping. Fan somehow is able to survive there. In part, she is lucky, but she is also plucky and a tactical individual. She looks far younger than she actually is and uses her diminutive size to evade capture, to mask her pregnancy, and to perform in various roles that allow her to continue her quest to find Reg. Once in the Open Counties, she falls into a makeshift camp led by a man named Quig. Quig eventually sells Fan off to a husband and wife living in a Charter city; Fan is bartered for a drug treatment that will help with some of those living in Quig’s encampment. Of course, Lee makes this moment quite poignant precisely because Fan is sold only after she has saved Quig and Quig’s partner’s life from being eaten by cannibals (and here, I couldn’t help but think of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road). Once Fan is in the home of the Charter couple, she realizes that she not only might be able to find Reg, but she also might be reunited with her brother, Bo Liwei, who as a young child was one of the very few selected from B-Mor to live in a Charter city due to his intellectual gifts. At this point, the novel takes a relatively strange turn. Fan soon discovers that the couple she has become connected with have some dark secrets. Mister Leo seems to have an inclination toward adopting young Asian American women, while Miss Cathy stands idly by as these surrogate daughters become part of Mister Leo’s sadistic harem. Once Mister Leo suffers from a major medical condition, Miss Cathy is able to—however problematically—save these women, as they become part of a living collection of dolls that she harbors in secret. Thus, Fan has been added to this precious grouping. Fan, with the help of the housekeeper Mala, is able to engineer her escape, while also keeping Miss Cathy and her surrogate daughters together. She ultimately realizes that Miss Cathy is not the true enemy. From there, Fan is taken in by Vik, one of the doctors who tended to Miss Cathy’s surrogate daughters. With Vik, Fan attends a party thrown by the wealthy Cheungs (Oliver and Betty) and Oliver ultimately reveals himself as none other than Fan’s brother Bo Liwei. The final arc sees Oliver and Betty welcome Fan into their family and offer to help her find Reg, but these promises ultimately become hollow as Betty sells out Fan and the fact that she is pregnant with Reg’s child to a pharmaceutical company (Asimil). Fan’s child is obviously critically important because the child possesses the genetic heritage of someone who has been C-Free. Vik ends up saving Fan by commandeering one of the vehicles that would have taken her to the pharmaceutical company. The conclusion of the novel sees Fan on the run and still in search of Reg.
I had dinner with an author friend of mine over at a sushi place not long after I finished the novel and the thing I kept coming back to was an element of spirituality. In Lee’s alternate universe, religion and spirituality seem absent. The reverence with which the “we” tell Fan’s story is as if she is a kind of Christ-figure, one who must remain a fugitive because she bears the hope to deliver a new era for those in B-More and beyond. Fan is unlike so many she meets; she’s openly empathetic, she helps people even to her detriment, she’s giving, she’s caring, she loves deeply. In other words, she is someone to emulate. Thus, she moves into a kind of mythic position, giving B-Mor inhabitants the hope that there might be a way to move beyond the rigid class paradigms that constrain them, that there still might be a shred of benevolence left in individuals despite such rigid strata. The “we” seems to be a “we” seeking to believe in someone, something greater than the sum of their biopower-harnessed collective. In some ways, one might think of Lee’s work as a refraction of the current global economy, the growing disparity between rich and poor; perhaps, this is the greatest power of the speculative fiction: it tells us what already has become a kind of horror and that we still need someone to worthy enough to merit survival and then to give us hope.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/On-Such-Full-Sea-Novel/dp/1594486107
A Review of Yiyun Li’s Kinder than Solitude (Random House, 2013).
One of the most anticipated releases (at least for me) has been Yiyun Li’s Kinder than Solitude, her second novel (after the superbly dark novel The Vagrants) and her fourth publication (after A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl). I was torn upon completing the novel precisely because—as with The Vagrants—the narrative is particularly depressing. The premise is a kind of murder mystery. A young woman and political dissident (Shaoai) is deliberately poisoned and almost dies. She suffers severe brain damage and it takes twenty years before the effects of this poisoning result in her death. In that time, three main suspects seem to emerge: Ruyu, Boyang, and Moran, who are all high school aged and had visited a chemical laboratory (of Boyang’s mother) from which the poisoning agent was taken. When the novel opens, Shaoai has just died. Boyang is the only one of the three to have stayed in China and he writes both Ruyu and Moran an e-mail detailing Shaoai’s death. In this time, Ruyu has moved to America and along the way suffered the disintegration of two marriages. She finds herself employed in the Bay Area by a rich, upper class woman named Celia. Moran went on to receive a PhD, married and then divorced a man named Josef. Li toggles the narrative back and forth in time. We discover that Ruyu was an orphan, she was raised by her non-blood relatives who have sent her off to a school. Because that school is far away, she is boarded with an Aunt. She comes to develop a very sour relationship with the Aunt’s daughter who happens to be Shaoai. At school, Ruyu develops tentative connections with Moran and Boyang.
Boyang eventually develops romantic feelings for Ruyu, leaving Moran out in the cold. This love triangle is central to the climactic developments of the novel. About halfway through the narrative, Ruyu suffers a traumatic sexual assault at the hands of Shaoai no less; this experience proves to shatter Ruyu’s illusions about the possibility and promise of her own life. Her generally apathetic disposition turns far more pessimistic after this period and it will mark her character for the rest of her life. The novel’s murder plot is ultimately really secondary to Li’s devoted texturizing of the three main characters, but it is finally Ruyu who takes the real center stage. This prickly, challenging, unsentimental character is one that may generate significant discord among readers. There is a point at which I did wonder if Ruyu was borderline sociopathic in some of her tendencies.
At the core of this novel is a polemic about free speech. Shaoai was involved with the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and never renounces her position or her political views. This rebellious personality filters everything she does and how she treats her family members. At the same time, once Ruyu and Moran are bonded to each other in the secret that Ruyu had taken the poison from the laboratory, a series of presuppositions and conspiracy theories leave readers wondering whether or not Ruyu was suicidal or murderous. Moran’s decision to alert adults about Ruyu’s theft and possible participation in Shaoai’s poisoning leads to the destruction of their fragile friendships. Whether or not she did actively participate in Shaoai’s death, Ruyu seems to show little regret for what occurs to Shaoai, which makes the ending and her reunion—possibly romantic in its nature—with Boyan extremely unsettling. A novel not for the faint of heart.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Kinder-Than-Solitude-A-Novel/dp/1400068142/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392939133&sr=8-1&keywords=kinder+than+solitude
A Review of Michelle Sagara’s Touch (Daw Books, 2014).
Fans of Michelle Sagara’s work in this “necromancer” based supernatural series may be disappointed by the relative lack of action in the follow-up to Silence, but Sagara’s goal is clearly in setting up what will be showdown between the protagonist of the series, Emma Hall, and her main rival for supremacy of those who have died, the so-called Queen of the Dead. In this work, Emma and her ragtag group of friends—the headstrong Allison, the offbeat Michael, the charismatic Amy, the no-nonsense Eric, and the driven Chase—dodge the malevolent forces of the Queen of the Dead, many of whom are necromancers intent on killing Emma and/or her various allies. The novel begins to gain some plotting steam once Emma comes upon a young dead boy, Mark, who is found alone in a ravine and who seeks help going home. Emma must figure out what to do with this boy: should he return him to his family, especially given the possibility that Mark’s mother may have intentionally left him in that ravine? While Emma figures out what to do, another plot concerning a reanimated necromancer from Silence surfaces: Merrick Longland has been sent to connect with Emma, though his intentions and actual motivations are unclear. Sagara adds an extra level of tension through the ghostly presence of Nathan, Emma’s boyfriend who had died previously and who has found his way back to her. There is some telegraphing to this plot and it seems evident that Sagara is moving toward a showdown between Emma and the Queen of the Dead. I’m not quite sure if this book is intended to be a part of a trilogy, but Emma is being set up to be a different kind of necromancer, one that does not draw power willfully from those who have died. Indeed, her approach exists in contrast to the traditional necromancers who bind those who have died and forcibly draw power from those who are essentially enslaved to them. The novel concludes with Emma and her allies realizing that they must break with their families in order to keep them safe. As I mentioned in my opening, this book is not as action-oriented as the first and the plot takes a lot of time to get off the ground.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Touch-Queen-Dead-Michelle-Sagara/dp/0756408008/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1393626370&sr=8-4&keywords=michelle+sagara
A Review of Lydia Kang’s Control (Dial Press, 2013).
I’ve still been consuming young adult fiction at an alarming rate. This novel was one of the most highly anticipated ones from my “to read” pile. I didn’t get my flu shot this year and was appropriately rewarded by a nasty sickness. During the time convalescing, I was able to tackle Kang’s debut novel, which weaves together science, a speculative future, and gene mutations alongside the requisite romance plot. Zelia Benten is our first person narrator and protagonist and the opening sees her in a “magpod crash” that takes the live of her father. She and her sister (Dyl) are soon set to be put into foster care, but Zel does not realize that she will be separated from Dyl and taken by separate foster families. These foster families are far from “normal.” Zel soon discovers that she’ll be living with a group of mutants with a particular “trait” attached to them. Some of these teenage mutants have incredible healing powers, others have multiple body parts, and the matriarch, Marka, has a keen ability to smell basically anything (including emotions). For her part, Zel does not have a “trait,” except for the fact that she cannot breathe on her own all the time, meaning that she has to remember consciously to push air into her lungs (an actual physical issue called Ondine’s Curse). As Zel comes to learn more and more about the “off the grid” location in which she now resides (the Carus House), she begins to realize that Dyl has been taken by a group (the Aureus House) that seeks to harvest her genetic potential. The problem is that they do not know what powers Dyl may or may not have. Thus, Zel aims to free Dyl by any means possible, even if that means endangering herself.
spoilers forthcoming
For fans of the X-Men, this particular novel will be of major interest. The one issue I had was that—at least in my opinion—the whole “trait” issue with Dyl was a little bit too telegraphed and it was easy to see what was being set up. Kang also has an obviously extensively knowledge of science, which lends itself to a certain level of realism that this plot really requires. The major conflict at the novel’s center certainly propels the reader forward and Kang’s work dovetails with the continuing issues that are revolving around genetic engineering and the ethics behind gene selection. Devotees of young adult trilogies and other such ongoing serial forms will be happy to know that Kang’s work will have a follow-up!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/control-Lydia-Kang/dp/0803739044/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389289579&sr=8-1&keywords=lydia+kang
In honor of the new Penguin/ Random House merger, a post with Random House/ Penguin titles!
Do recall that Penguin still has the academic service:
http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/services-academic/cfis.html
Through Penguin’s service, I have had the chance to consider many new course adoptions and it’s a wonderful, wonderful resource for educators of all levels. With the Random House merger, I’m not quite sure if the academic service will still be retained, but we can all hope! Now on to the reviews!
In this post, reviews of: Bich Minh Nguyen’s Pioneer Girl (Viking Adult, 2014); Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea (Riverhead Books, 2014); Michelle Sagara’s Touch (Daw Books, 2014); Lydia Kang’s Control (Dial Press, 2013); Yiyun Li’s Kinder than Solitude (Random House, 2013).
A Review of Bich Minh Nguyen’s Pioneer Girl (Viking Adult, 2014).
Bich Minh Nguyen’s second novel and third publication (after Short Girls and Stealing Buddha’s Dinner) explores the life of a newly minted PhD, who is not surprisingly unemployed. We are further not surprised to find out that her degree is in English. Fortunately, the protagonist, Lee, completed a thesis on Edith Wharton, so we know that she might have some marketability, having focused in an area that has widespread institutional legibility and on an writer who most would consider as part of a “broader field” (but I digress). Jobs are good. Job security is of course even better, but Lee isn’t so lucky. She moves back home to suburban Chicago, where she helps out at her mother’s restaurant, the Lotus Leaf Café, and creates tension with her desire to help change the menu design and other such minor details. Lee’s father died when she was just a child and her family life is essentially comprised of her connection to her mother and her grandfather, Ong Hai (who also works at the Café). Lee’s brother Sam is estranged from the family at the start of the novel and it is his arrival that catalyzes the plot: he comes home to demand money. Apparently, Lee and Sam’s mother had been receiving money from years from Hieu, a family friend and a man who had been somehow indirectly involved with their father’s accidental death. Sam does not find any of that money, which he believes is rightfully owed to him and Lee precisely because they were the ones to “lose” their father. Before Sam vacates the area, he leaves behind a pin, one that has a rather legendary story in the family. Indeed, there was a Caucasian woman who used to frequent the café that Ong Hai had owned back in Vietnam, in the days of the war. Through some creative deduction, Lee begins to think that that woman may have been Rose Wilder, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the Little House Books. Since she is essentially not doing anything related to her research, she sets out to discover whether or not Rose Wilder was also the one who ended up in Vietnam and had frequented Ong Hai’s café. For Lee, this quest is particularly important precisely because she had wrapped up so much of her American identity around the Little House books.
Nguyen’s book is essentially a kind of detective plot, so it reads very quickly. Of course, we can read into Lee’s rather obsessive desire as one that is elliptically confronting her second generational, child-to-immigrants identity: to find a narrative in which her Otherness can be ultimately and directly tied to a perceived American-ness. Nguyen’s knowledge of all things Laura Ingalls Wilder is put to effective use here and fans of that series will no doubt find much to celebrate in this inventive re-envisioning of the afterlife of the Little House books from the Vietnamese American perspective. Finally: there is a strange discourse about the “marketability” of ethnic literature in this particular novel that appears in relation to Lee’s job prospects, which I find troubling insofar as the thing so many forget is that ultimately and importantly: Bich Minh Nguyen’s Pioneer Girl is as “American” as Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and should be understood as a novel that is taxonomically configured from multiple literary genealogies: Asian American and otherwise.
Buy the book here:
http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Girl-Bich-Minh-Nguyen/dp/0670025097/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1391190662&sr=8-2&keywords=Pioneer+Girl
A Review of Chang-rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea (Riverhead Books, 2014).
spoilers forthcoming
First off: see pylduck’s review here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/164179.html
It is late, I should be in bed, but instead I’m writing some quick thoughts on Chang-rae Lee’s fifth novel, On Such a Full Sea (after Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, The Surrendered, and Aloft). I’ve followed Lee’s work ever since Native Speaker and a new novel is always occasion for a celebration and carving out time to read the novel itself. This time around I had to wait a couple of weeks before I could sit down and finish the book; I read it in about five sittings, which isn’t typical for me as a novel reader in general. The novel is told from an interesting narrative perspective conceit: a kind of disembodied “we” voice, with a vaguely omniscient perspective. The “we” seems to be the common folk of B-Mor, a postapocalyptic town that takes place in what was once known as Baltimore. There were plagues and other such things and Baltimore becomes repopulated by Chinese settlers. It seems as though Lee is working from an alternative timeline that might be counterfactual rather than fully futuristic, as the story itself doesn’t pose super advanced or imaginary technologies that would tell us we’re centuries from the present moment. The “we” is focused on narrating the life of a character, Fan, who leaves B-Mor for the Open Counties, seeking to find her lover, Reg, who has been whisked away from B-Mor. She’s not aware of the reason Reg has been taken, though the “we” is convinced that Reg is part of the magical set of people who are “C” free. That is, he has some sort of genetic anomaly that allows him to avoid getting one of the diseases that still plagues the general population. Lee tiers three main “spaces” in the novel: the Charter “cities,” B-Mor (which seems to be a middle-class, working class suburbia), and then the Open Counties, which functions as the novel’s wide open, rural ghettos. The Open Counties are a kind of no-man’s land, with the absence of structured laws. In Lee’s novel the Open Counties are a place of polyamory, cannibalism, theft, and kidnapping. Fan somehow is able to survive there. In part, she is lucky, but she is also plucky and a tactical individual. She looks far younger than she actually is and uses her diminutive size to evade capture, to mask her pregnancy, and to perform in various roles that allow her to continue her quest to find Reg. Once in the Open Counties, she falls into a makeshift camp led by a man named Quig. Quig eventually sells Fan off to a husband and wife living in a Charter city; Fan is bartered for a drug treatment that will help with some of those living in Quig’s encampment. Of course, Lee makes this moment quite poignant precisely because Fan is sold only after she has saved Quig and Quig’s partner’s life from being eaten by cannibals (and here, I couldn’t help but think of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road). Once Fan is in the home of the Charter couple, she realizes that she not only might be able to find Reg, but she also might be reunited with her brother, Bo Liwei, who as a young child was one of the very few selected from B-Mor to live in a Charter city due to his intellectual gifts. At this point, the novel takes a relatively strange turn. Fan soon discovers that the couple she has become connected with have some dark secrets. Mister Leo seems to have an inclination toward adopting young Asian American women, while Miss Cathy stands idly by as these surrogate daughters become part of Mister Leo’s sadistic harem. Once Mister Leo suffers from a major medical condition, Miss Cathy is able to—however problematically—save these women, as they become part of a living collection of dolls that she harbors in secret. Thus, Fan has been added to this precious grouping. Fan, with the help of the housekeeper Mala, is able to engineer her escape, while also keeping Miss Cathy and her surrogate daughters together. She ultimately realizes that Miss Cathy is not the true enemy. From there, Fan is taken in by Vik, one of the doctors who tended to Miss Cathy’s surrogate daughters. With Vik, Fan attends a party thrown by the wealthy Cheungs (Oliver and Betty) and Oliver ultimately reveals himself as none other than Fan’s brother Bo Liwei. The final arc sees Oliver and Betty welcome Fan into their family and offer to help her find Reg, but these promises ultimately become hollow as Betty sells out Fan and the fact that she is pregnant with Reg’s child to a pharmaceutical company (Asimil). Fan’s child is obviously critically important because the child possesses the genetic heritage of someone who has been C-Free. Vik ends up saving Fan by commandeering one of the vehicles that would have taken her to the pharmaceutical company. The conclusion of the novel sees Fan on the run and still in search of Reg.
I had dinner with an author friend of mine over at a sushi place not long after I finished the novel and the thing I kept coming back to was an element of spirituality. In Lee’s alternate universe, religion and spirituality seem absent. The reverence with which the “we” tell Fan’s story is as if she is a kind of Christ-figure, one who must remain a fugitive because she bears the hope to deliver a new era for those in B-More and beyond. Fan is unlike so many she meets; she’s openly empathetic, she helps people even to her detriment, she’s giving, she’s caring, she loves deeply. In other words, she is someone to emulate. Thus, she moves into a kind of mythic position, giving B-Mor inhabitants the hope that there might be a way to move beyond the rigid class paradigms that constrain them, that there still might be a shred of benevolence left in individuals despite such rigid strata. The “we” seems to be a “we” seeking to believe in someone, something greater than the sum of their biopower-harnessed collective. In some ways, one might think of Lee’s work as a refraction of the current global economy, the growing disparity between rich and poor; perhaps, this is the greatest power of the speculative fiction: it tells us what already has become a kind of horror and that we still need someone to worthy enough to merit survival and then to give us hope.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/On-Such-Full-Sea-Novel/dp/1594486107
A Review of Yiyun Li’s Kinder than Solitude (Random House, 2013).
One of the most anticipated releases (at least for me) has been Yiyun Li’s Kinder than Solitude, her second novel (after the superbly dark novel The Vagrants) and her fourth publication (after A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl). I was torn upon completing the novel precisely because—as with The Vagrants—the narrative is particularly depressing. The premise is a kind of murder mystery. A young woman and political dissident (Shaoai) is deliberately poisoned and almost dies. She suffers severe brain damage and it takes twenty years before the effects of this poisoning result in her death. In that time, three main suspects seem to emerge: Ruyu, Boyang, and Moran, who are all high school aged and had visited a chemical laboratory (of Boyang’s mother) from which the poisoning agent was taken. When the novel opens, Shaoai has just died. Boyang is the only one of the three to have stayed in China and he writes both Ruyu and Moran an e-mail detailing Shaoai’s death. In this time, Ruyu has moved to America and along the way suffered the disintegration of two marriages. She finds herself employed in the Bay Area by a rich, upper class woman named Celia. Moran went on to receive a PhD, married and then divorced a man named Josef. Li toggles the narrative back and forth in time. We discover that Ruyu was an orphan, she was raised by her non-blood relatives who have sent her off to a school. Because that school is far away, she is boarded with an Aunt. She comes to develop a very sour relationship with the Aunt’s daughter who happens to be Shaoai. At school, Ruyu develops tentative connections with Moran and Boyang.
Boyang eventually develops romantic feelings for Ruyu, leaving Moran out in the cold. This love triangle is central to the climactic developments of the novel. About halfway through the narrative, Ruyu suffers a traumatic sexual assault at the hands of Shaoai no less; this experience proves to shatter Ruyu’s illusions about the possibility and promise of her own life. Her generally apathetic disposition turns far more pessimistic after this period and it will mark her character for the rest of her life. The novel’s murder plot is ultimately really secondary to Li’s devoted texturizing of the three main characters, but it is finally Ruyu who takes the real center stage. This prickly, challenging, unsentimental character is one that may generate significant discord among readers. There is a point at which I did wonder if Ruyu was borderline sociopathic in some of her tendencies.
At the core of this novel is a polemic about free speech. Shaoai was involved with the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and never renounces her position or her political views. This rebellious personality filters everything she does and how she treats her family members. At the same time, once Ruyu and Moran are bonded to each other in the secret that Ruyu had taken the poison from the laboratory, a series of presuppositions and conspiracy theories leave readers wondering whether or not Ruyu was suicidal or murderous. Moran’s decision to alert adults about Ruyu’s theft and possible participation in Shaoai’s poisoning leads to the destruction of their fragile friendships. Whether or not she did actively participate in Shaoai’s death, Ruyu seems to show little regret for what occurs to Shaoai, which makes the ending and her reunion—possibly romantic in its nature—with Boyan extremely unsettling. A novel not for the faint of heart.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Kinder-Than-Solitude-A-Novel/dp/1400068142/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392939133&sr=8-1&keywords=kinder+than+solitude
A Review of Michelle Sagara’s Touch (Daw Books, 2014).
Fans of Michelle Sagara’s work in this “necromancer” based supernatural series may be disappointed by the relative lack of action in the follow-up to Silence, but Sagara’s goal is clearly in setting up what will be showdown between the protagonist of the series, Emma Hall, and her main rival for supremacy of those who have died, the so-called Queen of the Dead. In this work, Emma and her ragtag group of friends—the headstrong Allison, the offbeat Michael, the charismatic Amy, the no-nonsense Eric, and the driven Chase—dodge the malevolent forces of the Queen of the Dead, many of whom are necromancers intent on killing Emma and/or her various allies. The novel begins to gain some plotting steam once Emma comes upon a young dead boy, Mark, who is found alone in a ravine and who seeks help going home. Emma must figure out what to do with this boy: should he return him to his family, especially given the possibility that Mark’s mother may have intentionally left him in that ravine? While Emma figures out what to do, another plot concerning a reanimated necromancer from Silence surfaces: Merrick Longland has been sent to connect with Emma, though his intentions and actual motivations are unclear. Sagara adds an extra level of tension through the ghostly presence of Nathan, Emma’s boyfriend who had died previously and who has found his way back to her. There is some telegraphing to this plot and it seems evident that Sagara is moving toward a showdown between Emma and the Queen of the Dead. I’m not quite sure if this book is intended to be a part of a trilogy, but Emma is being set up to be a different kind of necromancer, one that does not draw power willfully from those who have died. Indeed, her approach exists in contrast to the traditional necromancers who bind those who have died and forcibly draw power from those who are essentially enslaved to them. The novel concludes with Emma and her allies realizing that they must break with their families in order to keep them safe. As I mentioned in my opening, this book is not as action-oriented as the first and the plot takes a lot of time to get off the ground.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Touch-Queen-Dead-Michelle-Sagara/dp/0756408008/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1393626370&sr=8-4&keywords=michelle+sagara
A Review of Lydia Kang’s Control (Dial Press, 2013).
I’ve still been consuming young adult fiction at an alarming rate. This novel was one of the most highly anticipated ones from my “to read” pile. I didn’t get my flu shot this year and was appropriately rewarded by a nasty sickness. During the time convalescing, I was able to tackle Kang’s debut novel, which weaves together science, a speculative future, and gene mutations alongside the requisite romance plot. Zelia Benten is our first person narrator and protagonist and the opening sees her in a “magpod crash” that takes the live of her father. She and her sister (Dyl) are soon set to be put into foster care, but Zel does not realize that she will be separated from Dyl and taken by separate foster families. These foster families are far from “normal.” Zel soon discovers that she’ll be living with a group of mutants with a particular “trait” attached to them. Some of these teenage mutants have incredible healing powers, others have multiple body parts, and the matriarch, Marka, has a keen ability to smell basically anything (including emotions). For her part, Zel does not have a “trait,” except for the fact that she cannot breathe on her own all the time, meaning that she has to remember consciously to push air into her lungs (an actual physical issue called Ondine’s Curse). As Zel comes to learn more and more about the “off the grid” location in which she now resides (the Carus House), she begins to realize that Dyl has been taken by a group (the Aureus House) that seeks to harvest her genetic potential. The problem is that they do not know what powers Dyl may or may not have. Thus, Zel aims to free Dyl by any means possible, even if that means endangering herself.
spoilers forthcoming
For fans of the X-Men, this particular novel will be of major interest. The one issue I had was that—at least in my opinion—the whole “trait” issue with Dyl was a little bit too telegraphed and it was easy to see what was being set up. Kang also has an obviously extensively knowledge of science, which lends itself to a certain level of realism that this plot really requires. The major conflict at the novel’s center certainly propels the reader forward and Kang’s work dovetails with the continuing issues that are revolving around genetic engineering and the ethics behind gene selection. Devotees of young adult trilogies and other such ongoing serial forms will be happy to know that Kang’s work will have a follow-up!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/control-Lydia-Kang/dp/0803739044/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389289579&sr=8-1&keywords=lydia+kang
April 7, 2014
Book request?
Hey Paul, Stephen, et. al.
Do you know of any Asian American texts out there, particularly memoir or fiction (as opposed to academic essays or studies) that deal with emotional abuse in Asian American families? I couldn't think of any off the top of my head that weren't about physical abuse or Korean adoptee nonfiction, and I have a friend interested in knowing if there's a niche of writing out there on this topic. Any ideas you have would be really helpful!
Thanks,
Kelsay
P.S. Sorry I haven't been around in a long time! I haven't been reading much that isn't psychological theory since I moved to California!!! Yikes...
Do you know of any Asian American texts out there, particularly memoir or fiction (as opposed to academic essays or studies) that deal with emotional abuse in Asian American families? I couldn't think of any off the top of my head that weren't about physical abuse or Korean adoptee nonfiction, and I have a friend interested in knowing if there's a niche of writing out there on this topic. Any ideas you have would be really helpful!
Thanks,
Kelsay
P.S. Sorry I haven't been around in a long time! I haven't been reading much that isn't psychological theory since I moved to California!!! Yikes...
March 14, 2014
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 14, 2014.
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 14, 2014.
(with apologies as always for errors in grammar/ spelling/ formatting etc)
In this post, reviews of: Derek Kirk Kim’s Tune: Still Life (illustrated by Les McClaine) (First Second, 2013); Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (Back Bay Books, 2013); Yvonne Woon’s Love Reborn (Disney Hyperion, 2014); Andrew Lam’s Birds of Paradise Lost (Red Hen Press, 2013); Paula Young Lee’s Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat (Solas House, 2013); Kim Fu’s For Today I Am A Boy (Houghton Mifflin, 2014); Mariko Nagai’s Dust of Eden (Albert & Whitman, 2014); and Crystal Chan’s Bird (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014).
A Review of Derek Kirk Kim’s Tune: Still Life (illustrated by Les McClaine) (First Second, 2013)
Derek Kirk Kim returns the saga started in Tune and Les McClaine is along for the ride to help with the illustrating. Spoilers forthcoming. If you’ve read the first volume, you know that Andy Go is stuck in some sort of exhibit in space, where aliens can view him in his natural habitat (which is a replica of his parents’ home). He does not realize that the contract he has signed makes it so that he must stay there for the duration of his life. Andy makes friends with the exhibit’s caretaker, but the race of aliens he comes into contact with begin to trouble him. Indeed, they do not have a sense of art at all and his caretaker is astonished when she can see that he has created images with the use of a pencil. Thus, Andy begins a friendship with this extraterrestrial being, in part to try to gain his freedom, and also to allow him to bring another individual into the exhibit. Of course, we recall that in the first volume he has developed serious feelings for one of his fellow students at the art institute, a lively young girl named Yumi Kwon. As an exchange for teaching her how to draw, the caretaker takes it upon herself to add Yumi Kwon to the exhibit. The problem arises when it is discovered that the Yumi Kwon that has been added to the exhibit comes actually from a ringer dimension, which is a kind of alternate university that is very similar to the one that Andy inhabits. The problem is that the ringer dimension creates some obvious deviations in the timeline: this version of Yumi has already dated Andy and further still that the other version of Andy in ringer Yumi’s dimension has cheated on her three times. Additionally, the ringer Yumi is a journalist rather than a fellow artist. Thus, the fact that they are in the exhibit together is a problem insofar as the ringer Yumi is not happy about being stuck in that location with Andy (who she at first does not realize is from another dimension). The hijinks of this volume are well illustrated and Kim’s comic plot elements are certain to keep readers interested. The conclusion leaves us wondering whether or not Andy has found a potential ally that will allow him to escape. Will he or won’t he? It seems as we will have to find out in another volume, as Tune: Still Life ends with a cliffhanger.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Tune-Still-Derek-Kirk-Kim/dp/159643760X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385350325&sr=8-1&keywords=derek+kirk+kim
A Review of Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (Back Bay Books, 2013).
I rarely have been reading plays these days, but Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (also the writer of American Dervish, which was already reviewed on Asian American literature fans) was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize in drama, so it seemed to be a good time to pick a play up; correct me if I’m wrong but he may also be the first American writer of Asian descent to have won a Pulitzer Prize for drama? In any case, Disgraced centers on an interracial relationship between a Muslim-Pakistani American lawyer named Amir and his Caucasian wife and artist Emily. The play opens with Emily painting Amir, part of her interest in portraying ethnic cultural contexts within her artistic work. The crux point of the play occurs over an explosive dinner conversation in which Amir and Emily are eating with Amir’s African American colleague, Jory, and her Jewish husband, Isaac. Thus, Akhtar immediately places an eclectic and diverse group together. In the post 9/11 milieu, Amir is especially attuned to racial issues and the dinner conversation often steers toward tricky subject matter, especially as these four debate and explore the meaning of various statements or views that can be found in the Quran. The intensity of the dinner party amplifies over the course of the drama and you are not surprised by its catastrophic conclusion; there is a naturalistic impulse in this play that seems to suggest that we can become the monsters that our societies most fear. Akhtar’s play is so riveting because the drama, though so short, embraces the flaws and the unique textures of its characters and the contours of its crackling dialogue.
Buy the Book here:
http://www.amazon.com/Disgraced-A-Play-Ayad-Akhtar/dp/0316324469/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384325123&sr=8-1&keywords=ayad+akhtar
A Review of Yvonne Woon’s Love Reborn (Disney Hyperion, 2014)
Apparently the Dead Beautiful series comes to an end in Love Reborn, perhaps the most action packed of all three novels and certainly the one that fans have been waiting for: will Renee and Dante BOTH be able to survive? This question is the one that provides the cornerstone for this novel, especially as Dante’s time on earth seems to be coming to an end. Fortunately, they believe they have a solution: they must be able to travel to the Netherworld and in the process restore Dante’s soul. Unfortunately, traveling to the Netherworld endangers humans, as humans must sacrifice parts of their senses in order to gain access to the area. Only when they have lost ALL of their senses will humans or undead be able to purify their souls and be fully healed. The location of the Netherworld is the other problem. Renee and Dante must team up with Anya—from a previous book—and Theo, a talented but wily former monitor in order to follow the clues that will help them gain access to the Netherworld. Along the way, they are aided by a mysterious individual who keeps sending them notes only signed with the name “Monsieur.” It is together that the four will best be able to defeat the hordes of the Undead that are following them (the Liberum) as well as escape the clutches of the Monitors who are seeking to find Dante and end his life.
Woon ramps up the tension in this novel by rooting us within a narrative perspective that is itself troubled by the ways in which characters might be double-dealing. Indeed, Renee realizes that many characters have their secrets and at multiple points, we wonder (along with Renee) whether or not Dante, Anya, or Theo might all eventually turn on her. Further still, it becomes apparent that the Monitors may not all be as virtuous as she once thought them to be. Woon has to accomplish so much in this novel that there’s bound to be a letdown in some sense and the conclusion feels a bit rushed, but devotees of the young adult paranormal fantasy will not be disappointed by this climactic conclusion to the Dead Beautiful trilogy.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Reborn-Dead-Beautiful-Novel/dp/1423171209/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394773390&sr=8-1&keywords=Love+Reborn
A Review of Andrew Lam’s Birds of Paradise Lost (Red Hen Press, 2013).
Red Hen Press always publishes books slightly off the beaten path, ones that are formally experimental and/or contextually odd or unique. Lam contributes to this indie press identity with his first foray into fiction, the loosely connected story collection Birds of Paradise Lost. I recently taught a course which focused primarily or arguably on story cycles and I suppose you could place this collection within that realm only insofar as Lam unites the collection with the themes of Vietnamese American displacements and traumas (mostly set in the San Francisco Bay area), but goes beyond some of the ur-tropes associated with writings of this ethnic group by positioning complicated characters within respective fictional worlds. These oddballs and pariahs include queers, figures with disabilities like Tourette’s syndrome, cannibals (in one grotesque and traumatic case), a woman who seeks revenge, often in tandem with more common figures such as refugees and migrants. Stylistically, Lam avoids sentimentality and overwrought pathos and instead focuses on a kind of rawness that characterizes the lives of those struggling to get by; one of the most compelling stories is actually written from the perspective of the classmate of a newly arrived Vietnamese boy and typifies Lam’s ability to draw out what might be a more mundane story by refiguring it from another’s viewpoint. Lam’s collection is more in line with the work of Linh Dinh (see Fake House: Stories or Blood and Soap: Stories) than something like Nam Le’s the Boat or Angie Chau’s Quiet as They Come. A quirky and provocative work!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Paradise-Lost-Andrew-Lam/dp/1597092681/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387813622&sr=8-1&keywords=birds+of+paradise+lost
A Review of Paula Young Lee’s Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat (Solas House, 2013).
So, this book randomly jives with a lot of research I completed just before the summer ended. I was writing a paper on a novel that had a lot of depictions of game hunting, specifically of deer hunting, so reading Paula Young Lee’s Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat was right up my research alley. Lee is author of a number of other books, but this one takes a much more personal look at her experiences in romance and in relation to the fact that her partner is one avid hunter. Lee—being quite the adventurous soul—is ever willing to embrace the lifestyle of the hunter, but before we get to that part, we’ll back to back up a few steps. The beginning of the memoir is much about Lee’s life growing up as the Korean American daughter of a by the books Christian immigrant pastor. She spends a number of years in her early adulthood living in Paris, France, only to begin a long distance relationship with a man from Maine. Of course, what makes this relationship nominally perfect is that she ends up living in a part of Maine called Paris, so we see her move from Paris, France to Paris, Maine. This man—in some ways, the polar opposite of our memoirist—is the person she falls in love with and thus, she gamely (see what I did there) takes up sport hunting and meat preparation as part of a kind of relational development. Lee’s background in academia breaks through her humorous writerly voice, as we get chapters on moose hunting, deer hunting, rabbit hunting, among others. The ethnographic nature of these chapters serves to reveal the rituals and cultures of Maine hunters, which are distinct from other local communities, as readers discover over the course of the episodic chapters. Lee is also willing to describe scenes of butchery and meat preparation without softening her prose: there are blood, guts, entrails, and organs, and also a desire to make sure the meat and any associated body parts are properly preserved and used. For those who have no interest in these subjects, the memoir might grow tiresome, but regardless of where you stand in relation to predator-prey type relationships, the last three chapters bring an emotional intensity back into the memoir that serves as a nice balance to the more light-hearted sequences that appear in earlier sections. Lee also peppers the memoir with the occasional recipe for those who are more interested in the culinary aspects of game meats. An interesting stylistic choice is the occasional use of hangul without necessarily translating the characters, a detail I very much enjoyed.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunting-Paris-Memoir-Travelers/dp/1609520807/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386907469&sr=8-1&keywords=paula+young+lee
A Review of Kim Fu’s For Today I Am A Boy (Houghton Mifflin, 2014).
Kim Fu’s debut novel For Today I Am A Boy is probably one of the most sustained explorations of a Asian North American transgender character that I’ve read since Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. It is probably no surprise that Fu hails from Canada, as this particular national canon has had what I consider to be far more dynamic and provocative explorations of queer issues (with writers such as Lydia Kwa, Larissa Lai, Shyam Selvadurai, among others) in recent years. The novel is an episodically plotted bildungsroman for our narrator, Peter, who is one of four children in a fairly dysfunctional immigrant family living in Canada. He has two older sisters, Adele and Helen, and then one younger sister, Bonnie. His father looks to Peter as the son who will continue the family line and expects him to act appropriately, which also means that he must perform his masculinity. His mother gambles and does not seem to be very happy in her marriage. The novel quickly shows the dispersal of the children. Adele escapes to Europe; Helen gets an education and leaves for Los Angeles; Bonnie becomes a stripper and lives in an itinerant lifestyle, while Peter seeks to establish a career as a cook. Along the way, Peter struggles to confront the nature of his transgender subjectivity. It isn’t until the final arc of the book that Fu allows Peter some actual closure to this issue. Interestingly enough, it isn’t until Peter’s father unexpectedly dies that the family can begin to heal. His mother finds herself freed from her feelings of powerlessness, while the sisters have had enough time apart to consider their assorted estrangements. And finally: Peter is able to consider the possibility that he can be the fourth sister he has always wanted to be. Fu’s novel is uneven, but its unsentimental depiction gives it great gravitas and it’s a novel I will be sure to incorporate into future classes.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/For-Today-I-Am-Boy/dp/0544034724/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390537733&sr=8-1&keywords=for+today+i+am+a+boy
A Review of Mariko Nagai’s Dust of Eden (Albert & Whitman, 2014).
Mariko Nagai’s Dust of Eden is her debut in the young adult fiction category, though she takes a rather original approach in the representation of a Japanese American girl who is interned at Minidoka by predominantly using the lyric form. The protagonist—if we can call her that—is Mina “Masako” Tagawa and her perspective provides us with a poetic entry into the traumas associated with the Japanese American internment. She is part of a family unit that includes an older brother (Nick), her mother, and her father (who is taken prisoner and questioned by the FBI), as well as her grandfather. Her father eventually joins them in Minidoka, but the reunion is strained. Nick, in particular, sees his father as a traitor. Mina finds a way to pass her time by writing letters to her best friend back in Seattle. Mina’s mother finds a job in the mess hall that requires considerable physical labor. When Nick turns 18, he eventually joins the army and goes against the wishes of his father. The lyric novel takes a much more darker turn in the concluding sections: Mina’s grandfather passes away, Nick writes letters about his experiences as a soldier engaged in combat (one poem concerns his perspective on the German extermination camps), and then of course, the atomic bombings. With such a broad historical tapestry, this novel would require some scaffolding if taught in the classroom. Nagai’s poetic approach of course is both accessible on the one hand (for younger audiences) and also employs a dynamic method to bring to life the internment experience. Nagai’s work easily resonates alongside other poetic works such as Mitsuye Yamada’s Camp Notes and Other Writings and Lawson Inada’s Legends from Camp. The sections I found most complicated appeared when Nagai explored conceptions of what it means to be American. For Mina, she is interpolated by an educational system that attempts to extract patriotism from her, while also denying her her citizenship: a paradox that she certainly comes to understand. For Nick, he spends the ending of the book in Japan, helping out with the American occupation. Once in Japan, he gets of sense of how he is not embraced as a Japanese citizen and in this sense, his identity as an American feels somehow more certain, what he calls “simply American.” These last words ring ironic and perhaps tragically hollow, given all that has occurred to Mina and Nick, their families, and all Japanese American internees.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Dust-Eden-Mariko-Nagai/dp/0807517399/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394090801&sr=8-1&keywords=mariko+nagai
A Review of Crystal Chan’s Bird (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014).
Crystal Chan’s debut YA novel, Bird, takes on a particularly dark topic: the aftermath for one family in the wake of a young boy’s suicide. That boy, John—nicknamed Bird—jumped off a cliff when he was just 5 years old. On that same day, Bird’s little sister Jewel is born. Fast forward to about a decade in the future and Jewel, as the narrator, gives us the present circumstances of her family, one that is trying to make a life in Iowa. Jewel is a mixed race child—of Jamaican, Mexican, and Caucasian backgrounds. One summer, she makes fast friends with a boy named John; John is African American, adopted, and is visiting Iowa for the summer and living with his Uncle. Jewel and John develop a fast friendship. John comes to discover Jewel’s hopes of becoming a geologist and learns of the special ring of stones she has erected near the site where her brother jumped off the cliff. Indeed, she often returns to that location, a kind of spiritual place that fills her with a sense of stability and center. John has his own hideout in a tree nicknamed the Event Horizon. Not surprisingly, his aim is to become an astronaut. For Jewel, things at home are far from perfect. Her mom still suffers from bouts of depression and her paternal grandfather was rendered mute in the wake of Bird’s suicide. Strangely enough, when Jewel brings John home for the first time, the grandfather becomes agitated and physically violent. It becomes clear that the grandfather might be trying to protect her from John because he perceives that John may be a “duppy,” which is another word for a spirit (a Jamaican cultural reference). The introduction of Jamaican spiritualism is key to establishing the continued issues that surface in the shadow of Bird’s suicide. Jewel’s father actually forbids her to go to the cliff, fearing that she may be somehow influenced negatively by duppies, which he thinks are rampant in that location. His beliefs also put major strain on his marriage, as Jewel’s mother does not believe in duppies.
Chan’s debut is especially impressive in its exploration of melancholia, depression, and coming-of-age. Jewel is very spirited character and we can see immediately that her persistence and resilience are integral in establishing a possible future for this fractured family. Another element that I really appreciated was the complicated, but organic friendship that develops between Jewel and John, both benefitting from the struggles that the other must face. This novel is certainly one I would recommend to readers of all ages.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Crystal-Chan/dp/1442450894/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393373264&sr=8-1&keywords=Crystal+Chan+Bird
(with apologies as always for errors in grammar/ spelling/ formatting etc)
In this post, reviews of: Derek Kirk Kim’s Tune: Still Life (illustrated by Les McClaine) (First Second, 2013); Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (Back Bay Books, 2013); Yvonne Woon’s Love Reborn (Disney Hyperion, 2014); Andrew Lam’s Birds of Paradise Lost (Red Hen Press, 2013); Paula Young Lee’s Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat (Solas House, 2013); Kim Fu’s For Today I Am A Boy (Houghton Mifflin, 2014); Mariko Nagai’s Dust of Eden (Albert & Whitman, 2014); and Crystal Chan’s Bird (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014).
A Review of Derek Kirk Kim’s Tune: Still Life (illustrated by Les McClaine) (First Second, 2013)
Derek Kirk Kim returns the saga started in Tune and Les McClaine is along for the ride to help with the illustrating. Spoilers forthcoming. If you’ve read the first volume, you know that Andy Go is stuck in some sort of exhibit in space, where aliens can view him in his natural habitat (which is a replica of his parents’ home). He does not realize that the contract he has signed makes it so that he must stay there for the duration of his life. Andy makes friends with the exhibit’s caretaker, but the race of aliens he comes into contact with begin to trouble him. Indeed, they do not have a sense of art at all and his caretaker is astonished when she can see that he has created images with the use of a pencil. Thus, Andy begins a friendship with this extraterrestrial being, in part to try to gain his freedom, and also to allow him to bring another individual into the exhibit. Of course, we recall that in the first volume he has developed serious feelings for one of his fellow students at the art institute, a lively young girl named Yumi Kwon. As an exchange for teaching her how to draw, the caretaker takes it upon herself to add Yumi Kwon to the exhibit. The problem arises when it is discovered that the Yumi Kwon that has been added to the exhibit comes actually from a ringer dimension, which is a kind of alternate university that is very similar to the one that Andy inhabits. The problem is that the ringer dimension creates some obvious deviations in the timeline: this version of Yumi has already dated Andy and further still that the other version of Andy in ringer Yumi’s dimension has cheated on her three times. Additionally, the ringer Yumi is a journalist rather than a fellow artist. Thus, the fact that they are in the exhibit together is a problem insofar as the ringer Yumi is not happy about being stuck in that location with Andy (who she at first does not realize is from another dimension). The hijinks of this volume are well illustrated and Kim’s comic plot elements are certain to keep readers interested. The conclusion leaves us wondering whether or not Andy has found a potential ally that will allow him to escape. Will he or won’t he? It seems as we will have to find out in another volume, as Tune: Still Life ends with a cliffhanger.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Tune-Still-Derek-Kirk-Kim/dp/159643760X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385350325&sr=8-1&keywords=derek+kirk+kim
A Review of Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (Back Bay Books, 2013).
I rarely have been reading plays these days, but Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (also the writer of American Dervish, which was already reviewed on Asian American literature fans) was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize in drama, so it seemed to be a good time to pick a play up; correct me if I’m wrong but he may also be the first American writer of Asian descent to have won a Pulitzer Prize for drama? In any case, Disgraced centers on an interracial relationship between a Muslim-Pakistani American lawyer named Amir and his Caucasian wife and artist Emily. The play opens with Emily painting Amir, part of her interest in portraying ethnic cultural contexts within her artistic work. The crux point of the play occurs over an explosive dinner conversation in which Amir and Emily are eating with Amir’s African American colleague, Jory, and her Jewish husband, Isaac. Thus, Akhtar immediately places an eclectic and diverse group together. In the post 9/11 milieu, Amir is especially attuned to racial issues and the dinner conversation often steers toward tricky subject matter, especially as these four debate and explore the meaning of various statements or views that can be found in the Quran. The intensity of the dinner party amplifies over the course of the drama and you are not surprised by its catastrophic conclusion; there is a naturalistic impulse in this play that seems to suggest that we can become the monsters that our societies most fear. Akhtar’s play is so riveting because the drama, though so short, embraces the flaws and the unique textures of its characters and the contours of its crackling dialogue.
Buy the Book here:
http://www.amazon.com/Disgraced-A-Play-Ayad-Akhtar/dp/0316324469/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384325123&sr=8-1&keywords=ayad+akhtar
A Review of Yvonne Woon’s Love Reborn (Disney Hyperion, 2014)
Apparently the Dead Beautiful series comes to an end in Love Reborn, perhaps the most action packed of all three novels and certainly the one that fans have been waiting for: will Renee and Dante BOTH be able to survive? This question is the one that provides the cornerstone for this novel, especially as Dante’s time on earth seems to be coming to an end. Fortunately, they believe they have a solution: they must be able to travel to the Netherworld and in the process restore Dante’s soul. Unfortunately, traveling to the Netherworld endangers humans, as humans must sacrifice parts of their senses in order to gain access to the area. Only when they have lost ALL of their senses will humans or undead be able to purify their souls and be fully healed. The location of the Netherworld is the other problem. Renee and Dante must team up with Anya—from a previous book—and Theo, a talented but wily former monitor in order to follow the clues that will help them gain access to the Netherworld. Along the way, they are aided by a mysterious individual who keeps sending them notes only signed with the name “Monsieur.” It is together that the four will best be able to defeat the hordes of the Undead that are following them (the Liberum) as well as escape the clutches of the Monitors who are seeking to find Dante and end his life.
Woon ramps up the tension in this novel by rooting us within a narrative perspective that is itself troubled by the ways in which characters might be double-dealing. Indeed, Renee realizes that many characters have their secrets and at multiple points, we wonder (along with Renee) whether or not Dante, Anya, or Theo might all eventually turn on her. Further still, it becomes apparent that the Monitors may not all be as virtuous as she once thought them to be. Woon has to accomplish so much in this novel that there’s bound to be a letdown in some sense and the conclusion feels a bit rushed, but devotees of the young adult paranormal fantasy will not be disappointed by this climactic conclusion to the Dead Beautiful trilogy.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Reborn-Dead-Beautiful-Novel/dp/1423171209/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394773390&sr=8-1&keywords=Love+Reborn
A Review of Andrew Lam’s Birds of Paradise Lost (Red Hen Press, 2013).
Red Hen Press always publishes books slightly off the beaten path, ones that are formally experimental and/or contextually odd or unique. Lam contributes to this indie press identity with his first foray into fiction, the loosely connected story collection Birds of Paradise Lost. I recently taught a course which focused primarily or arguably on story cycles and I suppose you could place this collection within that realm only insofar as Lam unites the collection with the themes of Vietnamese American displacements and traumas (mostly set in the San Francisco Bay area), but goes beyond some of the ur-tropes associated with writings of this ethnic group by positioning complicated characters within respective fictional worlds. These oddballs and pariahs include queers, figures with disabilities like Tourette’s syndrome, cannibals (in one grotesque and traumatic case), a woman who seeks revenge, often in tandem with more common figures such as refugees and migrants. Stylistically, Lam avoids sentimentality and overwrought pathos and instead focuses on a kind of rawness that characterizes the lives of those struggling to get by; one of the most compelling stories is actually written from the perspective of the classmate of a newly arrived Vietnamese boy and typifies Lam’s ability to draw out what might be a more mundane story by refiguring it from another’s viewpoint. Lam’s collection is more in line with the work of Linh Dinh (see Fake House: Stories or Blood and Soap: Stories) than something like Nam Le’s the Boat or Angie Chau’s Quiet as They Come. A quirky and provocative work!
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Paradise-Lost-Andrew-Lam/dp/1597092681/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387813622&sr=8-1&keywords=birds+of+paradise+lost
A Review of Paula Young Lee’s Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat (Solas House, 2013).
So, this book randomly jives with a lot of research I completed just before the summer ended. I was writing a paper on a novel that had a lot of depictions of game hunting, specifically of deer hunting, so reading Paula Young Lee’s Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat was right up my research alley. Lee is author of a number of other books, but this one takes a much more personal look at her experiences in romance and in relation to the fact that her partner is one avid hunter. Lee—being quite the adventurous soul—is ever willing to embrace the lifestyle of the hunter, but before we get to that part, we’ll back to back up a few steps. The beginning of the memoir is much about Lee’s life growing up as the Korean American daughter of a by the books Christian immigrant pastor. She spends a number of years in her early adulthood living in Paris, France, only to begin a long distance relationship with a man from Maine. Of course, what makes this relationship nominally perfect is that she ends up living in a part of Maine called Paris, so we see her move from Paris, France to Paris, Maine. This man—in some ways, the polar opposite of our memoirist—is the person she falls in love with and thus, she gamely (see what I did there) takes up sport hunting and meat preparation as part of a kind of relational development. Lee’s background in academia breaks through her humorous writerly voice, as we get chapters on moose hunting, deer hunting, rabbit hunting, among others. The ethnographic nature of these chapters serves to reveal the rituals and cultures of Maine hunters, which are distinct from other local communities, as readers discover over the course of the episodic chapters. Lee is also willing to describe scenes of butchery and meat preparation without softening her prose: there are blood, guts, entrails, and organs, and also a desire to make sure the meat and any associated body parts are properly preserved and used. For those who have no interest in these subjects, the memoir might grow tiresome, but regardless of where you stand in relation to predator-prey type relationships, the last three chapters bring an emotional intensity back into the memoir that serves as a nice balance to the more light-hearted sequences that appear in earlier sections. Lee also peppers the memoir with the occasional recipe for those who are more interested in the culinary aspects of game meats. An interesting stylistic choice is the occasional use of hangul without necessarily translating the characters, a detail I very much enjoyed.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunting-Paris-Memoir-Travelers/dp/1609520807/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386907469&sr=8-1&keywords=paula+young+lee
A Review of Kim Fu’s For Today I Am A Boy (Houghton Mifflin, 2014).
Kim Fu’s debut novel For Today I Am A Boy is probably one of the most sustained explorations of a Asian North American transgender character that I’ve read since Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. It is probably no surprise that Fu hails from Canada, as this particular national canon has had what I consider to be far more dynamic and provocative explorations of queer issues (with writers such as Lydia Kwa, Larissa Lai, Shyam Selvadurai, among others) in recent years. The novel is an episodically plotted bildungsroman for our narrator, Peter, who is one of four children in a fairly dysfunctional immigrant family living in Canada. He has two older sisters, Adele and Helen, and then one younger sister, Bonnie. His father looks to Peter as the son who will continue the family line and expects him to act appropriately, which also means that he must perform his masculinity. His mother gambles and does not seem to be very happy in her marriage. The novel quickly shows the dispersal of the children. Adele escapes to Europe; Helen gets an education and leaves for Los Angeles; Bonnie becomes a stripper and lives in an itinerant lifestyle, while Peter seeks to establish a career as a cook. Along the way, Peter struggles to confront the nature of his transgender subjectivity. It isn’t until the final arc of the book that Fu allows Peter some actual closure to this issue. Interestingly enough, it isn’t until Peter’s father unexpectedly dies that the family can begin to heal. His mother finds herself freed from her feelings of powerlessness, while the sisters have had enough time apart to consider their assorted estrangements. And finally: Peter is able to consider the possibility that he can be the fourth sister he has always wanted to be. Fu’s novel is uneven, but its unsentimental depiction gives it great gravitas and it’s a novel I will be sure to incorporate into future classes.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/For-Today-I-Am-Boy/dp/0544034724/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390537733&sr=8-1&keywords=for+today+i+am+a+boy
A Review of Mariko Nagai’s Dust of Eden (Albert & Whitman, 2014).
Mariko Nagai’s Dust of Eden is her debut in the young adult fiction category, though she takes a rather original approach in the representation of a Japanese American girl who is interned at Minidoka by predominantly using the lyric form. The protagonist—if we can call her that—is Mina “Masako” Tagawa and her perspective provides us with a poetic entry into the traumas associated with the Japanese American internment. She is part of a family unit that includes an older brother (Nick), her mother, and her father (who is taken prisoner and questioned by the FBI), as well as her grandfather. Her father eventually joins them in Minidoka, but the reunion is strained. Nick, in particular, sees his father as a traitor. Mina finds a way to pass her time by writing letters to her best friend back in Seattle. Mina’s mother finds a job in the mess hall that requires considerable physical labor. When Nick turns 18, he eventually joins the army and goes against the wishes of his father. The lyric novel takes a much more darker turn in the concluding sections: Mina’s grandfather passes away, Nick writes letters about his experiences as a soldier engaged in combat (one poem concerns his perspective on the German extermination camps), and then of course, the atomic bombings. With such a broad historical tapestry, this novel would require some scaffolding if taught in the classroom. Nagai’s poetic approach of course is both accessible on the one hand (for younger audiences) and also employs a dynamic method to bring to life the internment experience. Nagai’s work easily resonates alongside other poetic works such as Mitsuye Yamada’s Camp Notes and Other Writings and Lawson Inada’s Legends from Camp. The sections I found most complicated appeared when Nagai explored conceptions of what it means to be American. For Mina, she is interpolated by an educational system that attempts to extract patriotism from her, while also denying her her citizenship: a paradox that she certainly comes to understand. For Nick, he spends the ending of the book in Japan, helping out with the American occupation. Once in Japan, he gets of sense of how he is not embraced as a Japanese citizen and in this sense, his identity as an American feels somehow more certain, what he calls “simply American.” These last words ring ironic and perhaps tragically hollow, given all that has occurred to Mina and Nick, their families, and all Japanese American internees.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Dust-Eden-Mariko-Nagai/dp/0807517399/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394090801&sr=8-1&keywords=mariko+nagai
A Review of Crystal Chan’s Bird (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014).
Crystal Chan’s debut YA novel, Bird, takes on a particularly dark topic: the aftermath for one family in the wake of a young boy’s suicide. That boy, John—nicknamed Bird—jumped off a cliff when he was just 5 years old. On that same day, Bird’s little sister Jewel is born. Fast forward to about a decade in the future and Jewel, as the narrator, gives us the present circumstances of her family, one that is trying to make a life in Iowa. Jewel is a mixed race child—of Jamaican, Mexican, and Caucasian backgrounds. One summer, she makes fast friends with a boy named John; John is African American, adopted, and is visiting Iowa for the summer and living with his Uncle. Jewel and John develop a fast friendship. John comes to discover Jewel’s hopes of becoming a geologist and learns of the special ring of stones she has erected near the site where her brother jumped off the cliff. Indeed, she often returns to that location, a kind of spiritual place that fills her with a sense of stability and center. John has his own hideout in a tree nicknamed the Event Horizon. Not surprisingly, his aim is to become an astronaut. For Jewel, things at home are far from perfect. Her mom still suffers from bouts of depression and her paternal grandfather was rendered mute in the wake of Bird’s suicide. Strangely enough, when Jewel brings John home for the first time, the grandfather becomes agitated and physically violent. It becomes clear that the grandfather might be trying to protect her from John because he perceives that John may be a “duppy,” which is another word for a spirit (a Jamaican cultural reference). The introduction of Jamaican spiritualism is key to establishing the continued issues that surface in the shadow of Bird’s suicide. Jewel’s father actually forbids her to go to the cliff, fearing that she may be somehow influenced negatively by duppies, which he thinks are rampant in that location. His beliefs also put major strain on his marriage, as Jewel’s mother does not believe in duppies.
Chan’s debut is especially impressive in its exploration of melancholia, depression, and coming-of-age. Jewel is very spirited character and we can see immediately that her persistence and resilience are integral in establishing a possible future for this fractured family. Another element that I really appreciated was the complicated, but organic friendship that develops between Jewel and John, both benefitting from the struggles that the other must face. This novel is certainly one I would recommend to readers of all ages.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Crystal-Chan/dp/1442450894/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393373264&sr=8-1&keywords=Crystal+Chan+Bird
