Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 54

Asian American Literature Fans Megareview for March 12 2014

Always with apologies for formatting/ grammatical/ typographical/ spelling errors).

A Review of Peter Tieryas Liu’s Watering Heaven (Signal 8 Press, 2012).



Another book on my to-read list: Peter Tieryas Liu’s quirky and impressionistic debut Watering Heaven: A Collection of Short Stories. Though these stories are disparate in their contexts and characterizations, Liu’s collection generally coheres around the unpredictable nature of (romantic) relationships, especially as they unfold during an era of increased transnational mobility. Liu is especially keyed into the hypermodernization of China, with wonderful passages concerning the density of cities such as Beijing. In this regard, he is part of a new generation of Asian Anglophone writers who have been considering China’s shifts in the recent decades (see for instance, Tash Aw’s Five Star Billionaire). Watering Heaven is also a work that could easily be taught/ read alongside short story collections such as Wena Poon’s Lions in Winter, Xu Xi’s Access, Wang Ping’s The Last Communist Virgin, and Ha Jin’s A Good Fall. Many of the characters live highly transnational lives, moving between China and the United States with such plasticity that we are always recalling Aihwa Ong’s now already classic work on the flexible citizen (see also Xu Xi’s Habit of a Foreign Sky for a great novel that dramatizes the flexible citizen). The first story “Chronology of an Egg” is quite illustrative in this regard: the narrator Ethan Zhou meets Sarah Chao at a gaming conference in China. She promises to keep in touch and she eventually contacts Ethan when she visits Los Angeles. Formalistically dynamic, the story is told through specific times in the night, therefore giving us the “chronology” of their Southern California misadventures. The “egg” portion of the title involves the fact that Sarah Chao says she lays an egg anytime she has sex. As readers, we’re in a similar position as Ethan: we simply disregard Sarah’s comment as something spouted out of a free-spirited young woman’s mouth. Later, after Ethan and Sarah do have sex, Sarah does in fact lay an egg. What are we to make of this moment? At once comic and speculative, this strange conclusion pushes the entire collection onto a different plane and we’re meant to read the following stories through a slightly refracted eye: what kind of stories are going to emerge from this off-kilter shell we wonder? We are accordingly not surprised to see oddballs all throughout this collection: those who are disabled, psychically traumatized, others who are socially marginalized. References to diseases, technology, engineering and scientific discourses are threaded throughout generating another level of narrative unity that continually pushes the reader to consider the poles of healthfulness and pathology, normativity and idiosyncrasy, the human and the nonhuman. These stories tend to be impressionistic with a kind of poetic intertextuality because Liu effectively employs primarily first person narrators who have a wonderfully keen eye for observation and detail. The best stories, in my opinion, are the ones that move slightly away from a purely realist registers, such as the opening story, and others including a strange woman who falls in love with specific parts of the body and a documenter of urban legends. In these planes of the almost-surreal, Liu’s stories find move into a generative level of creative experimentation, directly evoking the whimsical title. For those craving more from Liu in this whimsical way, see his upcoming publication Bald New World (Perfect Edge): a book which riffs off of Aldous Huxley, we won’t be able to read soon enough!

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Watering-Heaven-Peter-Tieryas-Liu/dp/9881553911/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=13946022

On Bald New World:

http://www.amazon.com/Bald-New-World-Peter-Tieryas/dp/1782795081/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394645254&sr=8-1&keywords=Bald+New+World


A Review of Ellen Oh’s Warrior (HarperTeen, 2013).



By the end of Ellen Oh’s Warrior (the second book in the Dragon King Chronicles), you’ll immediately realize that there’s a third installment on the way, revealing that the Dragon King Chronicles are taking the format of the tried-and-true trilogy that seems to be dominating the YA fiction market right. Warrior avoids the sophomore slump by doing what it did best: creating a feminist updating of a fantasy kingdom based upon ancient Korea and supercharging it with action sequences, including a colorful monster menagerie and some romantic intrigue for good measure. Our heroine and the titular warrior Kira returns with the intent of fulfilling the prophecy as outlined in the first book (see my earlier review here):

http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/153877.html

The beginning of Warrior sees the kingdom of Hansong thrown into chaos after some untimely assassinations. The bulk of this plot involves Kira and her comrades embarking on a long journey that requires them to go to Mount Baekdu, the site wherein Kira might be able to locate a famed dagger. Kira and her allies (the young Taejo, her brother Kwan, her possible romantic foil Jaewon, Taejo’s companion dog Jindo, among others) must confront and defeat a horde of new villains and monsters, including half-breeds, evil cavern maidens, a fox-demon, a dragon, amongst others in order to find one of two key treasures that will allow Kira to bring peace back to Hansong. By the conclusion, you’re already ready and willing to read the third installment. Though you know you’re rooting for Kira to complete the quest, it is the journey—of course—that will prove to be the reader’s most tantalizing treasure.
For the purposes of my own scholarly interests, I’ve actually been revising an article that explores depictions of kitsune, or fox-demon/trickster figures. It was with much interest that I read Oh’s Warrior, which includes a very prominent portrayal of the Korean version, also known as the kumiho. Oh is intent in revising this myth to a certain extent, providing the kumiho with qualities that many traditional folklorists would say deviates from source materials. Of course, this revision is exactly the kind that Oh is already mapping with her dynamic construction of the feudal Korean superheroine we have in Kira, the enterprising demonslayer. The pairing of the kumiho and Kira proves to be one of the most compelling aspects of this novel.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Warrior-The-Dragon-King-Chronicles/dp/0062091123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394520679&sr=8-1&keywords=Ellen+Oh

A Review of Amy Sueyoshi’s Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi (University of Hawaii Press, 2012).


(fantastic cover!)

I’ve been really behind on my reading and I finally was able to get around to Amy Sueyoshi’s Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi utterly fantastic scholarly monograph. It’s quite clear that an incredible amount of research went into this fascinating biography, which focuses on the complicated ways that Noguchi negotiated his social difference. The fluidity with which Noguchi treated his national background, racial difference, and queerness is evidence of a kind of tactician intent on making the most of his time in America: “While Yone cringed from the abuses and exclusions that markers of racial difference brought, he maximized what benefits he could reap from Japanese stereotypes to cushion him from the hardships of living as an Asian immigrant in the United States” (76). Such contextual considerations make Sueyoshi’s monograph nuanced, powerful, and absolutely indispensable in overturning blanket categorizations of Asian immigrant artists as potential sell-outs or at worst neoconservative traitors. Sueyoshi’s work is incredibly instructive in revealing how much immigrants had to work around ossified notions of the foreign and the exotic in order to gain any measure of social legibility or legitimacy. Sueyoshi’s excavation reveals a figure also quite carried away in various love affairs and friendships, including a same sex intimacy with the writer Charles Stoddard. As Sueyoshi explains the larger stakes in this book project, “Among histories of sexuality as well, Queer Compulsions more aggressively suggests the presence of Asians particularly in the United States who engaged in same-sex affairs. Studies on late Victorian American center largely on white and to some extent African Americans of marginalized sexualities who carved out vibrant communities. In cities where Noguchi resides such as San Francisco and New York, subcultures appeared to offer numerous venues that tolerated varied sexualities and intimacies” (4). In this respect, Sueyoshi does much to reorder the terrain of queer American histories and cultural studies in the in-depth examination of one particular life, a testament to the importance of a continuing eye toward addressing scholarly lacunae. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Sueyoshi’s book reads almost as a kind of creative work itself, written with a grasp of sequencing and plotting that makes this scholarship both rigorous AND readable: a devastatingly rare combination.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Queer-Compulsions-Sexuality-Affairs-Noguchi/dp/0824834976/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1394516986&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=amy+sueyoshi

A Review of Min Hyoung Song’s The Children of 1965 (Duke University Press, 2013).



Min Hyoung Song’s The Children of 1965: On Writing, and Not Writing, as an Asian American provides an important, timely, and exciting intervention in the fields of cultural criticism, American literature, and race/ ethnic studies, especially in its evocation of the complicated positionality of the minority writer. Perhaps the most crucial and dynamic aspect of this monograph is the socioanthropological methodology that Song deploys by interviewing a score of Asian American writers and directly delving into the importance of authorial intentionality and identity politics. Song thus deftly mines the fertile and complex divide between cultural producers (professional authors) and cultural critics (professional readers) and in so doing relates the myriad formal and political impulses behind the construction and reception of so-called Asian American literature. On another note, Song’s style is especially refreshing; often times, he eschews critical distance from the writing process for a more approachable tone. In the conclusion to the book, he argues that “Namely, what I am coming around to as an important project for literary studies is the need for us to get over our hang-ups about making aesthetic judgments. It seems to me now, after much self-debate, that we need to be assertive about making our preferences for some literary works over others more explicit and to be able to articulate what guides these preferences” (222). Given the diversity of formal and contextual issues at hand in Asian American writing and literature, Song’s clarion call is of paramount concern. With an area that is expanding so rapidly that it is simply impossible to keep up with the sheer volume of output from American writers of Asian descent, Song is dutifully marking out what cultural critics have to do as part of their work: place some sort of value—however it may be defined—in what it is we decide to study. A must-read for any scholar or reader of cultural, literary, race/ethnic, Asian American studies.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Children-1965-Writing-American/dp/0822354519/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394687257&sr=8-1&keywords=Min+Song

Ryka Aoki's Seasonal Velocities

In the collection of poems, stories, and essays, Seasonal Velocities (Trans-Genre Press, 2012), Ryka Aoki offers an impassioned exploration of transgender identity, politics, and activism, with a strong focus on the importance of writing and creative expression for trans folks.



The essays in the collection, many of which were originally presentations, performance pieces, and keynote addresses at various venues (particularly the Day of Remembrance gatherings and other transgender rights conferences), were the most powerful pieces for me. In these essays, Aoki articulates her sense of activism for the trans community and transgender individuals, focusing often on the idea of a full humanity and reminding others in queer communities not to further oppress trans individuals. Aoki offers some thoughtful comments about the differences between trans politics and other queer politics which might be more entrenched in the idea and practice of sex and sexuality. Trans identity, linked more to non-normative gender identity than non-normative sexual identity, can seem illegible to queer folks who are otherwise cis-gendered (meaning those who identify with normative definitions of gender or at least with queer versions of gender identity such as butch lesbianism).

Aoki draws heavily on her own experiences, including abuse from her father (and negligence on the part of her mother) while she was a child, and her narration of these situations is raw and startling. This aspect of the writing--particularly in the essays and some of the poems--importantly entrenches more theoretical discussions of trans politics to her own lived experiences.

I would've liked to have read more (fictional) short stories in the collection. In these stories, Aoki creates characters who are vulnerable yet often still full of hope. A story at the end of the collection centers on a man who has worked at a pig slaughterhouse all his life, mixing with the muck of the pigs' waste, blood, and other refuse of the industry. He develops an illness from working in that environment, coughing up blood, and is let go by the company as a result. Furthermore, he is often shunned by people in town because he smells of pig shit despite constant cleaning. Despite all of this, he remains open to people and willing to see that their dismissal of him or even outright mistreatment of him likely stems from their own difficult lives (as migrant workers, for instance, or put-upon librarians in un-air conditioned libraries). In one encounter, he comes across an older Chinese woman in the hospital who, though at first startled by his appearance, gives him a golden paper crane that she had been folding. This gesture resonates for him profoundly and leads to the powerful ending scene of the story.

Seasonal Velocities is published by Trans-Genre Press, a publisher dedicated to promoting the work of trans artists. I'm not sure if they have other publications out yet, but I'd be interested in reading more of their list!

Na Liu and Andrés Vera Martínez's Little White Duck

Na Liu and Andrés Vera Martínez's Little White Duck: A Childhood in China (Graphic Universe, 2012) is a memoir in graphic narrative form about Na Liu's childhood in Wuhan in Hubei Province in China in the late 1970s. The illustrator is Liu's husband.



As Liu puts it, her childhood coincided with a particular moment in China's modern history, when the closed world of Mao's China, with its revolutionary politics and intent to erase class hierarchies as well as various traditions, began to transform with increased connections with other parts of the world and global changes in political, economic, social, and technological systems. Her parents lived through the sweeping changes of Mao's regime and a country-wide famine. In contrast, Liu and her sister grew up in a rapidly urbanizing area and lived in more comfort than her cousins who were still in rural areas.

The memoir unfolds in a series of short vignettes from her childhood, from the day Liu learns about Chairman Mao's death to her creative plans to catch rats with her sister (for the country's goals of ridding areas of pests like rats, cockroaches, flies, and mosquitoes). In one vignette, she goes with her father to visit his mother (her grandmother) in the rural village where he grew up. She turns out to be a very mean-spirited old lady, and Liu spends the day outside with her cousins and other village children. She learns in that experience that people in China are still living in great poverty when the children are fascinated by her clean and well-made new coat on which her other grandmother had sewn a little white duck made of velvet.

The illustrations are quite beautiful, and Martínez has captured the look of a young girl's exuberance as well as some of the bleaker scenes about China's difficulties. This mix of the author's fairly pleasant memories about China and some historical details about more difficult moments like her father's hunger during the famine which drove him to eat leaves from that he could not identify is well done. (Some reviews I glanced at online by readers suggested that this mix, however, may make the graphic memoir not quite appropriate for young children, even though the publisher pitches it as a book for elementary school aged children.)

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).

It was also nice that the memoir did not end as many immigrant stories do with a triumphant arrival in the United States, with a kind of sense of salvation simply because she escaped a horrible past. In fact, she seems very much to cherish her childhood. For Liu, the choice not to end with her arrival in the United States may simply have been because she did not immigrate to the United States until she was an adult to work as a research scientist, and she wanted in this memoir to focus just on her childhood in China. However, she does end the memoir with a comment that her parents survived through much adversity in order to make a better life for her and her sister, and in much the same way, she hoped to create an even better life for her daughter.

Chang-rae Lee's On Such a Full Sea

Chang-rae Lee's foray into speculative fiction takes the form of a dystopian novel: On Such a Full Sea (Penguin Books, 2014).



Taking its title from Brutus's lines in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (On such a full sea are we now afloat;
/ And we must take the current when it serves, / Or lose our ventures.), which also serve as one of two epigraphs, the novel circles around the idea of people's fortune and fate. The most immediate and overarching detail of the novel is the narration in the collective first person point of view--the "we" of B-Mor, a production colony in a future America. This world is highly stratified, with the rich and powerful living in Charter villages, the somewhat well-off in production/labor colonies like B-Mor, and the rest of people in the open counties where there is no governing body except in an ad hoc way. This setup crystallizes something that is becoming increasingly clear in today's America--where class distinctions and discussions of the 1% who hold most of the wealth in the country are commonplace--the idea that the country is not egalitarian nor meritocratic except in the thinnest of veneers.

One detail that is particularly interesting is that the people of B-Mor and the Charters are largely refugees from China, a place that somehow became uninhabitable through some kind of environmental disaster or degradation. Many of the characters in the novel are Chinese with Chinese names. As the largest population of people in this future America, they have displaced "natives" who are described as of European descent.

Another significant detail, and one that is equally left somewhat unexplained, is that everyone in this new world suffers from C-illness. There is no cure, but it is a disease that can be managed or treated, at ever greater cost the longer a person suffers. The enigma of this disease is one of the driving forces of the narrative, as the main character Fan goes in search of her boyfriend Reg who reputedly was tested as being C-free before disappearing (possibly to a research laboratory for testing).

The narrative focuses on the collective we explaining about Fan, a young woman of B-Mor, a fish tank cleaner, who leaves the colony in search of Reg, at least in the collective people's understanding. The book is a picaresque in a sense, following the adventures of Fan as she leaves B-Mor, gets hit by a car, falls in with a group of people in the open counties in the Smokies, ends up in a very strange Charter household, and eventually finds her way to another Charter household that promises a resolution to her quest.

What I found most interesting about the novel was the understated way that the narrative creates this future world, one where Chinese refugees have repopulated the East Coast of America and where wealth, riches, education, and comfortable living are clearly limited to the elite Charters while the working class people in B-Mor and other production colonies provide the food and other resources necessary for survival. The collective first person perspective is, I think, a brilliant way to narrate this world, where the voice projects the assumptions and understandings of the working class people while offering conjectures about the thoughts and feelings of Fan, who ultimately remains elusive as a figure.

Here is a selection of some of the many reviews of the novel:
Los Angeles Times review by Porochista KhakpourNational Public Radio reviewsWashington Post reviewNew Yorker reviewThe Guardian review by Ursula K. LeGuinNew York Times review by Andrew Sean GreerNew York Times review by Michiko KakutaniSeattle Times review

David Henry Hwang's Chinglish

David Henry Hwang's recent play Chinglish (Theatre Communications Group, 2012) follows in the footsteps of many of his early plays that examine contrasts between Western and Chinese worldviews.



The context of Chinglish is contemporary China and involves a white American businessman, Daniel Cavanaugh, in the sign-making business who tries to drum up business with the local government with the consulting help of a British expatriate who has in many ways "gone native." Daniel meets with a local official, Minister Cai Guoliang, and his assistant Xi Yan, about brokering a deal to produce bilingual signs. As you might be able to guess from this set up, the play is very much about exploring translation and cross-cultural communication. The play is a comedy, playing up the humorous side of mistranslation and misinterpretation (rather than the more tragic side such as in Hwang's earlier M. Butterfly). As with his earlier plays, too, Hwang brings to Chinglish a very insightful and cheeky exploration of how sexual politics intertwine with racial politics. There's a fair amount of good old fashioned cultural misunderstanding and language issues as well as outright deception by some characters, all of which raise questions about our (American) willingness to perceive Chinese in certain ways.

I would be very interested to see this play performed because much of the dialogue is in Chinese, and everything (according to the published stage directions) is captioned in both English and Chinese. The ideal audience for this play would be someone who is fluent in both languages as well as in the particular critical perspective of an Asian American who sees the humor in both Chinese cultural self-presentation as well as American/Western perceptions of Chinese people. In many ways, I love this very specific perspective but also feel like it is probably not really understood by most audiences (something I felt particularly to be true of Hwang's previous play, Yellowface, especially in the context of watching a performance in Minneapolis, MN, with a predominantly white, Midwestern audience).

Eugene Gloria's Drivers at the Short-Time Motel

Eugene Gloria's poetry collection Drivers at the Short-Time Motel (Penguin Books, 2000) is part of the National Poetry Series of books.



Gloria's poems were selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as one of the 1999 winners of the national poetry competition. These poems are suffused with a sense of the sacred (with Catholic/Christian imagery) while addressing family relationships memories of the past, and the poet's relationship to some key figures or moments in Asian American history like Carlos Bulosan and the Vietnam War.

The poems are mostly short, lyrical verses of a page or two in length, focused on a single character or idea. At times, foreign Filipino words pop up in italics, as when the speaker of the opening poem, "In Language," teaches his lover his grandmother's words. In terms of the landscape of the poems, the most present locations seem to be places in the Philippines, viewed at times through the memories of the speaker's relatives (rather than direct experience), and some locations are in the United States though these places are less fully realized on the page.

Ranbir Singh Sidhu's Good Indian Girls

Ranbir Singh Sidhu's Good Indian Girls (Soft Skull Press, 2013) offers fascinating and quirky short stories with a touch of surrealism and a solid dose of insightful critique of people in the Indian diaspora.



The biographical info about Sidhu in the book notes that he was born in London and grew up in California but also that, as a trained archaeologist, he has been all over Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. This worldliness is evident in Sidhu's stories, where the characters often are recent Indian transplants to the United States from other locations in the diaspora (and hence not direct immigrants from India, a difference that the stories often address).

The stories demonstrate an interesting breadth of characters and narrative perspectives (young, old, male, female) as well as some quite disturbing situations as with a woman confronting a serial killer ("Good Indian Girls"), a diplomat's wife's erotic relationship with their pet python ("The Consul's Wife"), and a dead man's ruminations on collecting his scattered corpse in the ocean after an airplane bombing ("Neanderthal Tongues").

Some of the stories, like the one narrated after the narrator's death, take on a surreal quality that points at mental breakdowns with provocative implications about the world in which we live. In "The Discovery," for instance, a man begins to realize that words around him are referencing nonexistent places and things, such as notIndia. What starts as a kind of refusal to acknowledge how countries and objects are defined by people (the political nature of what exists) quickly devolves into mental insanity.

What I really liked about this collection was the startling way that Sidhu created slightly-askew worldviews in his narrators and other characters' perspectives. This skewedness allows for thinking about the usual types of Indian American characters and immigrant stories, foregrounding the ability of people who might be demographically identifiable to remain elusive in their full human complexity. The narrator in "Solzhenitsyn in Vermont," is a prime example--the story wraps the college-educated Indian American man in the sensibilities of Russian giants of literature like Solzhenitsyn and Dostoyevsky, whispers of political critique and existential crisis, even as his life unfolds in an almost stereotypical narrative of the suburban man who cheats on his wife and watches his life fall apart.

Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for December 8, 2013.

Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for December 8, 2013.

In this post, reviews of Jane Mai’s Sunday in the Park with Boys (Koyama Press, 2012); Sita Brahmachari’s Mira in the Present Tense (Albert & Whitman, 2013); Nikita Lalwani’s The Village (Random House, 2013); Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians (Doubleday, 2013); Cynthia Kadohata’s The Thing about Luck (illustrated by Julia Kuo) (Atheneum, 2013); M. Evelina Galang’s Angel de La Luna and the Fifth Glorious Mystery (Coffee House Press, 2013); Andrew Fukuda’s The Trap (St. Martin’s, 2013); Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (Vintage Reprint Paperback, 1993, originally published in 1989).

A Review of Jane Mai’s Sunday in the Park with Boys (Koyama Press, 2012)



I’m not sure what to call Jane Mai’s Sunday in the Park with Boys: a serialized comic in bound form? A graphic novel? For the first time I read a graphic novel in e-reader form (PDF) and I definitely will not do this again; there is something about physically turning a page that I enjoy, then also the reading experience felt different. I felt hurried for whatever reason. In any case, fortunately: Mai’s work is exceptionally illustrated (thus distracting me often from the fact of e-readerness) and is a particularly complex look at depression. The main character is subsisting in an unfulfilled post-undergraduate life, working an office job that is at once desultory and imprisoning. There is a sense that she is descending into mental illness and depression, but there is no one there to really offer her much support. Further still, she begins to actively isolate herself from others, thereby exacerbating her existential despair. Mai makes frequent use of metaphor and appropriate images for depression: drowning becomes a common motif, as does dark circles and panels that sweep across the page. There is a black whole from which the protagonist cannot seem to claw here wave out of and there is a tidal wave of melancholy. It’s unclear exactly how the main character exits depression, but there is a bifurcated self that emerges late in the comic serials that suggests that the main character is more willing to look introspectively in order to diagnose the problem. Therein lies the terrain of possibility and potential for a tomorrow worth waking up for.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Sunday-Park-Boys-Jane-Mai/dp/0987963058/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386476004&sr=8-1&keywords=jane+mai

A Review of Sita Brahmachari’s Mira in the Present Tense (Albert & Whitman, 2013).



Though Sita Brahmachari’s Mira in the Present Tense is targeted at readers nine to thirteen years of age, its main narrative is a particularly complicated one related to death and mourning. Our main character and narrator is Mira Levenson, a mixed race British youth who is of Jewish and South Asian backgrounds. Her grandmother, Nana Josie, is suffering from metastatic breast cancer and the bulk of the narrative revolves around Mira and her family’s (there are her parents, her younger brother Krish, and her infant sister Laila) preparation for Nana Josie’s impending death. For her part, Nana Josie, an artist and painter, has a rather direct response to her condition: she buys her own casket and enlists Mira to help her paint it. The rather matter-of-fact nature of Nana Josie’s inevitable death is tackled head on and readers will see Nana Josie’s eventual progression from living at home, to moving to a hospice, and finally to the dying room. The other subplot involves Mira’s development as a writer under the tutelage of Pat Print, who holds a kind of creative writing workshop for young teens. It is in this group that Mira finds herself attracted to Jide, her classmate and a victim of the violence that occurred in Rwanda and who is later adopted by a British family. As the title implies, the novel proceeds in the present tense and this conceit works very well in this case precisely because there is a sense of urgency that slowly emerges as it is clear that Nana Josie will not have much time. Brahmachari’s narrator is one who must mature quite quickly and it is no accident that Mira also experiences the challenges of menstruation at the beginning of the novel, the signal then that she is—however ambivalently—growing up. I appreciate Brahmachari’s deft depiction of these difficult topics, especially as they are focalized through the eyes of an adolescent.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Mira-Present-Tense-Sita-Brahmachari/dp/080755149X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385842547&sr=8-1&keywords=mira+in+the+present+tense

A Review of Nikita Lalwani’s The Village (Random House, 2013).



Nikita Lalwani’s follow-up to Gifted is a dark, social critique concerning the documentary representation of wayward communities. Told in the third person perspective, the novel mainly follows the misadventures of Ray Bhullar, a documentary filmmaker affiliated with the British media company BBC who travels to a prison community to depict life there and to create the “real life” story. The prison community, Ashwer, is located in India and it is well-known for its rather lax security: the prisoners can move about on the compound and can even occasionally leave its confines, knowing full well that they can never be free of that location until they have served out their sentence. This rather utopian approach to detention serves as the canvas that Ray hopes to employ for documentary inspiration. She is aided by two others: Serena, a veteran of the television and film industry but who exists in a rather caustic relationship with Ray, and then Nathan, a bawdy cameraman and general associate of the production. Ray realizes that much is at stake in this production and looks to some of the prisoners as the opportunity to tell compelling stories and generate narratives that can be routed into the documentary. In particular, she develops a strong relationship with Nandini, one of the female prisoners, who offers her support to other inmates. Nandini’s personal story becomes a narrative that Ray attempts to mold, so too, does Serena and Nathan encourage Ray to exploit another set of inmates (in which the husband is soon to be diagnosed as HIV positive; they are looking to capture the moment on camera). Thus, Lalwani employs this narrative to explore how media and production teams can negatively impact the very communities whose authenticity they had hoped to depict. At stake of course is the artifice underlying such authentic narratives; Ray, Serena, and Nathan are especially flawed characters that Lalwani painstakingly draws out, but the plot itself does not generate much momentum. In this case, Lalwani’s social critique is far more impactful than the development of this particular story.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Village-Novel-Nikita-Lalwani/dp/1400066492/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385702977&sr=8-1&keywords=nikita+lalwani

A Review of Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians (Doubleday, 2013)



For something a little bit on the lighter side, you might try out Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, which follows the (mis)adventures of one “crazy rich” Asian /American extended family that hails from the Malaysian-Singaporean region of the world. There are a multitude of characters in Kwan’s novel, but the central romance plot is really concerning Nicholas Young, the heir apparent to the Young family fortune. He is not yet married and there is concern from most in his family about what kind of girl he will eventually settle with. Enter Rachel Chu, assistant professor of economics at NYU and a colleague of Young’s (who is also an assistant professor at NYU); Rachel is friendly, charming, and most of all, entirely unaware of Nick’s fortune. At the beginning of the novel, they have been dating about two years and Nick convinces Rachel to travel to Asia for the wedding of Colin Khoo, a close friend. Of course, Nick also plans to unveil Rachel to his family. Though Rachel is certainly educated enough and hails from a reasonable background (her mother is a successful realtor), she is nothing like the billionaire socialites that populate Nick’s extended family’s lives. Fortunately, Rachel is very grounded, has an amazing friend (Peik Lin), and does not cower easily in the face of the Singaporean elite class version of the “game of thrones.” Thus, the novel stages a kind of satirical take on Rachel’s experiences while in Singapore, Malaysia and other countries (such as Indonesia, where Colin Khoo’s bride-to-be stages her bachelorette party on a secluded island). Nick’s mother Eleanor is entirely against the marriage and hires a private investigator to dig up dirt on Rachel’s past. At first, there seems nothing of note, but the investigator does discover a family secret which will become an issue in the novel’s concluding arc. The other major romance plot is given to Nick’s cousin Astrid Leong, who is dealing with a potential crisis in her marriage to Michael Teo. It seems as though he might be engaging in an affair and thus Astrid continues to do her own unofficial investigation into Michael’s dalliances and later confronts him for his alleged infidelities. Kwan’s comedic novel shines most when he pokes fun at his characters. For those involved in transnational studies, Kwan’s novel certainly calls attention to the elites that Aihwa Ong has called the “flexible citizen.” Characters like Astrid can take yearly trips to Paris to catch up on the latest fashions, while others are horrified to learn that Rachel Chu has no “blood” connection to the larger Chu dynasty that own a successful plastics company in Taiwan. With such focus on money and upward mobility, can there be a genuine romance? Nick’s no Darcy (though there are references here to Jane Austen), but you’ll still be rooting for Rachel by the novel’s conclusion, the one character that actually seems to see through the ridiculousness of the transnational Asian “crazy rich” elite.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Rich-Asians-Kevin-Kwan/dp/0385536976/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383674716&sr=8-1&keywords=Crazy+Rich+Asians

A Review of Cynthia Kadohata’s The Thing about Luck (illustrated by Julia Kuo) (Atheneum, 2013).



Cynthia Kadohata’s The Thing About Luck was recently awarded the National Book Award for children’s literature. The novel is told from the first person perspective of a 12 year-old Japanese American girl named Summer, who grows up in Kansas. The year has turned out pretty bad for her: her parents have traveled to Japan to take care of ailing relatives; she still suffers from bad memories of her bout with malaria. As the harvest season approaches, Summer and the rest of her family members work with the Parkers, as part of their combine driving team. Summer helps Obaachan (her grandmother) with the cooking, while her grandfather Jiichan drives one of the combines that will help harvest wheat. Summer’s little brother, Jaz, who also happens to be dealing with some sort of disorder (OCD seems likely), accompanies them. They must travel through various Midwestern states and work around storms and other weather phenomena in order to make sure they are able to make the most of the farmers’ harvests. Things start to get tricky when Jiichan gets sick and the Parkers realize that Summer’s family may not be holding up their end of the labor bargain. Thus, Summer must consider stepping up to the plate. Kadohata is always so wonderfully in tune with her youthful narrators: here, there is the sense that there may be some retrospective storytelling going on. There are particularly important moments where Kadohata must use Summer as a kind of figural mouthpiece to discuss the more technical aspects of harvesting; thus, the novel does serve a didactic purpose. As with many of her previous works, Kadohata places a dog figure as an important element in the narrative, as Summer has a very close relationship to her canine, Thunder. On a personal note, I have always had an interest in regionalist literatures and The Thing about Luck is especially beautifully rendered on the level of Midwestern imagery. Finally, there is a fledgling friendship that develops between Summer and an adult laborer named Mick that is especially poignant and entirely unsentimental.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Thing-About-Luck-Cynthia-Kadohata/dp/1416918825/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385190242&sr=8-1&keywords=the+thing+about+luck

A Review of M. Evelina Galang’s Angel de La Luna and the Fifth Glorious Mystery (Coffee House Press, 2013).



With YA fiction titles being so strongly tilted toward the paranormal and the speculative, M. Evelina Galang’s Angel de La Luna and the Fifth Glorious Mystery (after Her Wild American Self and One Tribe) provides a refreshing change of pace in the field with its focus on its young, rebellious, and spirited titular protagonist. The novel begins with a mystery: Angel’s father cannot be located; her family spends much time trying to find him, and eventually it is discovered that he has been killed in a tragic road accident, his body only being recovered in a remote area in the Philippines. Soon after Angel’s mother identifies his body, she goes into a period of melancholic depression. In this time, Angel must fend for herself and her family members; she begins to develop a strong progressive impulse that comes primarily from her desire to root out social inequalities (especially as connected to the World War II atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese on Filipino women who were sexually conscripted as comfort women). Angel’s family happens to hail from a modest background, and Angel’s mother soon immigrates to the United States, with the intent of securing some financial stability for her children. Once she is able to settle down with a new husband in the U.S., she sends for Angel, who comes to the United States without fully understanding the reason. She especially feels betrayed that her mother has remarried and finds her home situation to be less than optimal. She attempts to assert some control in her life by developing some artistic hobbies and continuing with her activist interests, but much of her exploits grate against her parents and she must find a happy medium if she is to be able to build a new life in the United States. Though targeted at the young adult reading audience, Galang’s novel is certainly one that is not necessarily tied to that specific group. Indeed, as the novel draws closer to its conclusion, we see not only how much trauma that Angel has suffered personally, but that the family members and people she cares so much about have their own scars and historical injuries to address. In this sense, Galang’s novel complicates the ethnoracial bildungsroman, revealing the tortuous trajectory of young and older migrants and the hauntings that come with transnational movements.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Angel-Luna-5th-Glorious-Mystery/dp/156689333X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384157772&sr=8-1&keywords=m.+evelina+galang

A Review of Andrew Fukuda’s The Trap (St. Martin’s, 2013).



spoilers in this review

Andrew Fukuda’s conclusion to The Hunt series is The Trap, which is—to put it mildly—a brutalizing read. The first two in the series were already fairly dark, but the third, in my mind, is relentlessly violent, so much so that my reaction to this novel is highly polarized. On the one hand, I completed the book in one sitting, tensely turning one page after another. On the other hand, I wondered about the nature of death as it is configured in horror fictions (such as this one) and how we are to regard to such a high body count. Within the first fifty pages, an untold number of young women are slaughtered, as Gene, Sissy, Epap, David, and Cassie are the only ones who are able to exit the train and enter a facility where they are being housed as a kind of human cattle, waiting to be chosen as the next meal. From here, the novel gets into high conspiracy mode, as it becomes evident that everything is not as it as it seems. Gene and Sissy, in particular, being two halves of the Origin, presumably hold the key to reversing the effects of vampire-turning. Thus, their blood might be used to secure the survival of humanity. These plans go awry when Gene and Sissy are summoned by the Ruler, who is looking to use Gene as a pawn to kill an upstart vampire living in the faraway metropolis. Indeed, this upstart vampire is none other than Ashley June, Gene’s once paramour-turned-fanged monster. Ashley June holds information about the presence of hepers at the facility Gene and Sissy are in and her information, when disseminated in the metropolis, could lead to all-out pandemonium. Gene is forced by the ruler to try to assassinate Ashley June; he is allowed to take one captive with him and he chooses Sissy, believing that he might be able to sacrifice Sissy in order to turn Ashley June back into a human. By this point, Epap has already been dispatched to try to off Ashley June, but when the Ruler cannot establish contact, it is assumed Epap has failed and thus they send Gene (and Sissy). David remains as a food source for the Ruler and his survival is dependent upon their collective success. From here, Gene and Sissy are about to engage their assassination plot, when Epap is able to contact them and lets them know that they are have walked into a trap. Thus, begins the quest to survive as humans in the metropolis, to try to find Epap, and then to make their way out of the city and somehow to find David. If all of these various activities sound close to impossible, it is because it is and as the novel turns closer and closer to its final pages, there is something of a naturalistic impulse that emerges, making you wonder if there is no other choice but for Gene and Sissy to give up and to kill themselves AND/OR become vampire fodder. On the level of tension and high anxiety, Fukuda no doubt succeeds and the surprise conclusion is sure to be of great interest to reading audiences (recalling the narrative of works like I am Legend). At the same time, there was a point where I did find the terror emanating from every chapter to be almost overwhelming and suffocating, so this book is certainly not for the faint of heart, nor would I necessarily recommend it to any teens I know!

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Trap-Hunt-Trilogy-Andrew-Fukuda/dp/1250005124/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383541130&sr=8-1&keywords=andrew+fukuda

A Review of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (Vintage Reprint Paperback, 1993, originally published in 1989).



Most have heard of The Remains of the Day; it is probably Kazuo Ishiguro’s most critically acclaimed novel and was also adapted into a Merchant Ivory film (garnering 8 Academy Award nominations, but winning none). I’m thinking of adding an Ishiguro work to my Narrative and Narrative Theory course and it has been about ten years since I last read this novel. I didn’t remember much, but it’s interesting how a work becomes so different after you have aged and have had different life experiences. The narrative is rather meditative, told from the viewpoint of Mr. Stevens, a butler who has worked for many years at Darlington Hall. At the start of the novel, he is traveling to see an old co-worker, once known as Miss Kenton. He aims to request that Miss Kenton return to her work at Darlington Hall, especially as it seems evident that her marriage is over. From there, the novel proceeds through various flashbacks, which are then intercut by Mr. Stevens’s travels closer and closer to his destination. The novel stages not only the complications of memory and narration, but also the nature of functionality and politics. Mr. Stevens upholds a particular philosophy as a butler, one that precludes workplace romance or opinions on political goings-on in the world at large. He remains supremely dedicated to his service. Yet, the novel also begins to question this die-hard philosophy, as it becomes increasingly evident that much romantic tension exists between Miss Kenton and Mr. Stevens, while both were working at Darlington Hall. Mr. Stevens thus travels not only with the intent to visit an old friend, but to see whatever there may be of this once complicated connection. The other major backdrop is the pre-WWII period, which sees Darlington Hall transformed into an important political nexus point, where debates concerning British involvement in European diplomacy is debated. Lord Darlington, as we come to discover, casts his support with the rising German political party, thus in part leading to his eventual downfall. Mr. Stevens, with his unflagging loyalty to his job and to his employer, thus must question his occupational
faith.” When leveraged against the love he never actively pursued, his faith seems more questionable, but the novel ends with the possibility of a kind of tentative rebirth even in his older age. Ishiguro always does wonders with first person narration and this book strikes me as particularly deft nuanced in its depiction of character, which commands our attention over and above any plot details.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Remains-Day-Kazuo-Ishiguro/dp/0679731725/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383621990&sr=8-1&keywords=the+remains+of+the+day

Kristiana Kahakauwila's This Is Paradise: Stories

Kristiana Kahakauwila's debut short story collection This Is Paradise: Stories (Hogarth, 2013) contains six stories all set in Hawai'i and featuring a multiethnic cast of characters as well as both local and mainland figures.



I think this collection would lend itself well to studies in critical multiculturalism. Kahakauwila's sensibility is very much about looking beyond the narrative of celebratory multiculturalism to understand the dynamics of Native Hawaiian communities and their diasporas within the context of the United States. I'll touch on just a few of the stories in this review....

The opening story, "This Is Paradise," reminded me of Julie Otsuka's latest novel, The Buddha in the Attic , with its collective first person point of view. The "we" of the story traces the perspectives of a few groups of Native Hawaiian women across class divides, occupations, and experiences living on and off the islands. The plot charts these women's encounters over the course of a day with a haole woman from the mainland, who while seemingly friendly and in some ways more sympathetic to the working lives of Native women than other tourists, ultimately still romanticizes the islands and people to her own detriment. Although this tension between haole and Native is at the heart of the story, the exploration of Native women with different class and educational backgrounds is perhaps the most interesting and complex aspect of the story. The women's different jobs, such as maids in tourist hotels, police on the island, or lawyers with degrees from mainland universities, mark their different mobility and economic opportunities. The resultant collective "we" is thus both remarkably refracted as well as unified in seeing the paradise of the island as Native Hawaiian women.

The second story, "Wanle," centers on the title character, a woman whose father named her "Wanle," meaning "It is gone" in Chinese. The story centers on the underground culture of cockfighting, with Wanle's father as a central figure in that culture prior to this death and Wanle's narrative trajectory focused on obtaining some kind of revenge for his untimely death. Interestingly, the story also concerns Wanle's relationship with "the Indian," a man from a South Dakota reservation (from which he fled to escape a certain kind of violence, never quite fully explained in the story) who embodies a different perspective on cockfighting, aggressiveness, and trust in relationships.

The last story, "The Old Paniolo Way," concerns Pili, a gay man returning to the islands and his father's horse farm as his father is on his deathbed. The story considers Pili's closeted life on the islands in contrast to how he lives his sexuality openly in California. The story is thoughtfully not just about the silence of homosexuality, though, but very much about Pili's relationship with his sister Maile, who has remained on the islands and has worked on the farm with their father in the last few years. Into this trio of father, son, and daughter comes the presence of a hospice nurse, Albert, whose care for the father spurs both Pili and Maile to reconsider how they relate to one another and others.

I don't know if we've reviewed any Native Hawaiian writers on this community yet though Pacific Islander writers are often studied alongside or in tension with Asian American writers (especially Asian Hawaiian writers). I've been reading around more standard Asian American texts lately, so I'll be posting more brief reviews of a few of these books in the coming weeks. For more reviews of Hawaiian writing, see stephenhongsohn 's omnibus reviews of books from three Hawaiian publishers, Hawaii Calling, Part 1 and Hawaii Calling, Part 2. For a brief review of other Pacific Islander writing (Guamanian), see my review of Chamorro writer Craig Santos Perez's from unincorporated territory .

Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for November 4, 2013

Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for November 4, 2013

In this post, reviews of Eri Hotta’s Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy (Knopf, 2013); Helen Wan’s The Partner Track (St. Martin’s Press, 2013); Paul Yoon’s Snow Hunters (Simon & Schuster, 2013); Sujata Massey’s The Sleeping Dictionary (Gallery Books, 2013); Tash Aw’s Five Star Billionaire (Spiegel and Grau, 2013); Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride (William Morrow, 2013); Maurene Goo’s Since You Asked (Scholastic Press, 2013); Kat Zhang’s Once We Were (HarperTeen, 2013).

As always, apologies for any egregious typographical or grammatical errors!

A Review of Eri Hotta’s Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy (Knopf, 2013).



I rarely review historical studies, but Eri Hotta’s Japan: 1941 peaked my interest, as I am teaching a book set during WW II this quarter (Sabina Murray’s darkly brilliant story cycle The Caprices). Hotta’s study takes an idiosyncratic and dynamic approach to a period that has seen a multitude of publications devoted to it. Hotta focuses on the ideological position of Japanese superiors, high level government and military personnel, and other important figures in the lead-up to the War. She argues that Japan was quite aware that it would likely lose, but a complicated matrix of decisions went into the decision to pursue violent conflict. One of the most important aspects of Japan’s seemingly aggressive stance is, as Hotta indicates, the fact that Japan’s leaders actually perceived the country to be under sustained threat from outside forces. In other words, they took a pre-emptive approach to war. Hotta’s study is finely nuanced, showing the incredible ambivalence of those involved in warmongering and she employs a diverse archive to make her case. She forcefully reframes how we should consider the Japanese with respect to their positions as emerging world powers in a highly contentious era of international turmoil. I would certainly encourage any interested in this historical period, and specifically the Pacific Theater of World War II, to read this work.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Japan-1941-Countdown-Eri-Hotta/dp/0307594017/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382327878&sr=8-1&keywords=Eri+Hotta

A Review of Helen Wan’s The Partner Track (St. Martin’s Press, 2013).



Helen Wan’s debut novel, The Partner Track, takes an incisive look at the glass ceiling barring the advancement of Asian American professional women. The protagonist and first person narrator—Ingrid Yung—is an up and coming associate for Parsons Valentine, a corporate law firm with big name clients. We are not perhaps entirely surprised to learn that Ingrid faces casual sexism and racism in the workplace and is one of the few minorities and women still working there as an associate. Yung is on the titular “partner track” and only a handful of others are really seen as true competitors to her eventual and seemingly assured promotion to partner. Of course, one of these competitors—Murphy—also happens to be someone that Yung finds attractive and thus, Wan adds an important workplace romance into the narrative. From the very beginning of the novel, Wan is intent on making clear that Yung is struggling to understand her place in a corporate culture in which her racial and gender identity become paradoxical markers. On the one hand, she is perceived to receive special treatment as a twofer, someone who makes the company look more diverse since she is Asian American AND a woman. On the other, Yung struggles to be valued for her intellectual and legal acumen and yet understands that the old boys network that still runs the company will prove to be a barrier to her advancement. Thus, Wan stages the glass ceiling that Yung must somehow break through. Along the way, Yung begins to realize that her dream of becoming a partner may have resulted in her having to forgo particular political aspirations that she once held as a law student. The success of this novel appears in Wan’s commitment to Yung’s spirited characterization and understanding of the vicissitudes of corporate culture. Yung must confront whether or not she has ultimately become a sellout in pursuit of her increasingly nightmarish dream to become a (deracinated) partner. A choice intertextual reference to Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior further clarifies the literary lineage at stake here.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Partner-Track-A-Novel/dp/1250019575/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379038431&sr=8-1&keywords=helen+wan+the+partner+track

A Review of Paul Yoon’s Snow Hunters (Simon & Schuster, 2013)



Paul Yoon’s debut collection, Once the Shore, is one of my favorite short story collections. I have taught it a number of times for a course I teach on Transnational Asia/Pacific. It was with HIGHEST anticipation that I saw Yoon’s debut novel, Snow Hunters, was set to be released this year and it does not disappoint. The stylistics of this short novel, perhaps a novella, are not unlike the stories found in Once the Shore. Yoon chooses short, sparse prose with a lyrical edge, something most reminiscent of the work of le thi diem thuy in The Gangster we Are All Looking For. The story follows Yohan, a former North Korean POW, who travels to Brazil to make a new life. Though he begins to achieve a measure of stability as an apprentice to a tailor named Kiyoshi, there are obvious indications that he suffers from some traumas sustained during the war. Yohan goes about making some community ties, but when Kiyoshi dies, it becomes evident that Yohan’s life is lacking and his existing connections seem fragile. The conclusion sees him take a chance at something perhaps more lasting, a fitting ending for a novel filled with silences and unspoken desire. One of the most poignant elements about this novel is how patient Yoon is in attending to the ways that people cannot ultimately seem to ask for the things that they want and need, how people flee each other rather than face the people that they come to love, and then finally: how in the ruins of war, perhaps the only family one can make is the one that is electively constructed. An exquisite novelistic debut.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Hunters-Novel-Paul-Yoon/dp/1476714819/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1376528356&sr=8-1&keywords=snow+hunters

A Review of Sujata Massey’s The Sleeping Dictionary (Gallery Books, 2013).



Sujata Massey takes a break from her popular Rei Shimura mystery series to write a sprawling, Victorian era inspired novel The Sleeping Dictionary. The title refers to the slang term given to prostitutes of British men who traveled to India during the colonial period. These local women were called “sleeping dictionaries” for their skills as translators, on the one hand, and then for their sex work duties, on the other. Massey weaves together many intertextual references throughout this novel, which starts out rather castrophically for our narrator who attains various names over the course of the narrative (Pom, Sarah, Pamela, etc). Pom, as she is first called, survives a tidal wave that kills off her family members. She then is shipped off to a Christian boarding school and christened Sarah. There she develops a friendship with a higher caste girl named Bidushi who eventually dies of Malaria. A misunderstanding and false accusation leads to Sarah’s expulsion from the school and she makes her way to the city, hoping to find a job. Of course, a young teen woman going to the city by herself is a recipe for potential disaster and ruin and this period sees Sarah fall into the clutches of a brothel. She is renamed Pamela at this point and endures a period of time where she is a sex worker. Finally able to escape the brothel, but also sacrificing a child (Kabita) in the process, Pamela is able to get a job with a British man working in his library and helping to organize it for him. At this point, Pom/ Sarah/ Pamela changes her name yet again and becomes Kamala Mukherjee. This period sees Kamala navigate her new job, while coming into contact with a young man—Pankaj—someone she knew from her childhood friendship with Bidushi. Pankaj has become part of the local political movement for an independent India; his fervor and the potential romance here is enough for Kamala to consider her place in the modernizing country and she begins to help him through various subversive activities. (spoiler alert) From here, Kamala discovers that the man she is working for (Simon) may be spying on the locals to get more information concerning any insurrectional conduct. Thus, Kamala must consider where to place her loyalties: in her growing affection for her employer or the possible political revolutionary figure who comes from her past. Massey peppers in references to Jane Eyre, Pamela, Mrs. Dalloway, and other such works to place this novel firmly within the British tradition; its length (almost 500 pages) as well as its focus ultimately on the romance plot reveals a strong Victorian influence. At the same time, there is also a picaresque quality to this work—somehow Pom/ Sarah/ Pamela/ Kamala always survives from one situation to nexts. Fans of British literature should be engrossed by this epic postcolonial romance.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Sleeping-Dictionary-Sujata-Massey/dp/1476703167/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380131539&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Sleeping+Dictionary

A Review of Tash Aw’s Five Star Billionaire (Spiegel and Grau, 2013).



Tash Aw’s Five Star Billionaire—his third novel after The Harmony Silk Factory and The Map of the Invisible World—is a sprawling account of a new global city, Shanghai, and four individuals who look to find their place there. There is Justin Lim, the son of a hugely successful family, who looks to escape the expectation that he retain the wealth and influence of his predecessors; Yinghui, a self-made businesswoman who is looking for the perfect opportunity to shift her business interests; Phoebe, a working class migrant from Malaysia, who is looking to find some sort of upper crust boyfriend; and Gary, a hugely successful pop star, who suffers from a loss of reputation and travels to Shanghai in order to re-launch his career. These four characters are quite disparate in their class backgrounds and that is Aw’s point: despite their differences, they all still find (sometimes subtle) ways into each other’s lives. For instance, Lim harbors an unrequited love for Yinghui. Phoebe will engage in an internet dating service that will put her in contact with Gary, who does not reveal his identity until late into the novel, at which point Phoebe cannot believe who he actually is. Phoebe, for her part, also ends up an employee at one of Yinghui’s businesses. And Justin ends up becoming friends with Phoebe’s roommate Yanyan, though Phoebe does not realize this connection. These four characters are all in some way connected to Walter Chao, whose first person perspective figures as the intercuts that will cohere the novel diffusely together. Chao is the titular billionaire of the novel, though his motivations and his various projects are not entirely clear. Aw’s works is an ambitious one that occasionally suffers from its multifaceted use of narrative perspective; our attentions are distributed among five very different characters and so there is that inevitable difficulty that arises when one particular arc seems more interesting than the others. Aw doesn’t force these lives together, and at the end of the narrative, we begin to see that their alienation and their isolations can be quite profoundly connected, despite their incredibly different backgrounds.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Five-Star-Billionaire-A-Novel/dp/0812994345/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383546247&sr=8-1&keywords=tash+aw

A Review of Yangsze Choo’s The Ghost Bride (William Morrow, 2013).



Yangsze Choo’s debut novel The Ghost Bride is a whimsical, entertaining, and magical realist story that delves into the spiritual realms of Malaysia, as envisioned through the eyes of a young woman. Our narrator, heroine, and protagonist is none other than Li Lan; the novel opens with a half-joke offered up by her father about her entering into something called a ghost marriage. While the ghost marriage might itself seem like something imaginary, this practice actually did occasionally occur, as Choo reveals in the note accompanying the novel. In this particular case, Li Lan’s father is only half-joking because he had once promised to marry Li Lan off to and into a family—the powerful Lims—and coincidentally, the particular groom she would have been married to dies a tragic death. From there, the novel opens up the central romance triangle. Li Lan finds herself drawn to another one of the Lims, a young man by the name Tian Bai. At the same time, her dreams are plagued with visitations by none other than the dead man who she could have been married to, but these are not merely dreams as we begin to discover. There are larger and perhaps more sinister plans to draw Li Lan into an extensive spirit world which will ultimately unite her with this spectral groom. Choo obviously has a fun time creating this alternative spirit realm in which ox-headed demons, dragon guides, and hungry ghosts exist. If there is one element that remains relatively untapped in the novel, it is the weaving together of the longer colonial and postcolonial history that Choo gestures to so effectively at the novel’s opening. Here, that particular texture eventually becomes secondary to the plotting, especially as we are concerned with whether or not Li Lan will ultimately survive her journey into the spirit world and return firmly to the land of the living.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Ghost-Bride-A-Novel/dp/0062227327/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375718232&sr=8-1&keywords=Yangsze+Choo

A Review of Maurene Goo’s Since You Asked (Scholastic Press, 2013).



At first, I really hated the protagonist of Maurene Goo’s Since You Asked. Our mischievous narrator is none other than Holly Kim, who is forced into becoming the columnist of her school newspaper as a kind of punishment for a re-editing a piece written by another student (which created an inflammatory, but still humorous look at high school social morphologies). Holly is an agent provocateur, a little bit bored, and looking to generate some fun in her otherwise B+ grade social life. Of course, she eventually grows to understand more of the intricacies of the writing process and ostensibly of the social circles she runs in, navigating the perils of interviewing high school jocks and covering the lives of the high school queen bees. For the most part, Goo’s novel is episodic, structured in chapter narratives in which Holly must deal with one problem or another; a late stage romance plot brings more focus to the plot. Goo also makes sure to weave in elements of Holly’s Korean American background, but nothing is too forced and the relationship she has with her parents also undergoes an important change, as they must navigate Holly’s growing sense of social responsibility. Goo’s rather logical ending makes this novel ultimately a winning one, sure to be an excellent addition to the young adult genre that is all the rage these days.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Since-You-Asked-Maurene-Goo/dp/0545448212/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1380396287&sr=8-1

A Review of Kat Zhang’s Once We Were (HarperTeen, 2013).



I’ve been trying to catch up on YA fiction in preparation for what is probably going to be a “horrific” paper at the MLA on the undead. I’ve generally been reading anything with the “paranormal” as part of the plot. In this regard, you have to give Kat Zhang some kudos for the simple fact of the difficulty posed by her narrative conceit, which requires her to switch consistently between first person and first person plural perspectives. In Once we Were, the second installment of the Hybrid Chronicles, the adventures of Addie and Eva continue. You might recall that Addie and Eva are part of one body and are considered to be a kind of genetic abomination because there are two souls housed in one physical shell. Eva was to be the recessive soul, the one that would eventually wither away over time, but somehow, Eva never went away and they, along with a select number of other hybrids, still exist in the world, living out their adolescence as these biological anomalies. In the sequel, Addie and Eva are living in the big city, residing in secret alongside a number of other “fugitive” hybrids. Their situation becomes perilous when it is discovered that one of the leading figures (Jenson) that had once imprisoned them in book 1 is going to be a bigger presence in their city. Further still, the opening of an institute meant to find a cure for the hybrid “condition,” means that more hybrid souls would be in danger, potentially and unfairly expunged by individuals like Jenson. On the more personal side, Addie and Eva are experimenting with sharing the individual body without the presence of the other soul. By this statement, I mean to say that there is a way for one of the souls to become semi-dormant, while the other takes full control of consciousness. Thus, Addie and Eva do not have to share every physical or sensual experience. Developing this skill also allows Addie and Eva to pursue individual romances with a modicum of privacy. Zhang’s sequel finds its largest political import in the development of subversive activities. Indeed, Addie and Eva reluctantly take part in a plan to bomb the institute when it is empty. Not surprisingly, the plans begin to take on other insidious characteristics that begin to make Addie and Eva question the ideological underpinnings of their activities. Zhang must take time to develop the everyday world of Addie and Eva in the city and the plot initially flags from this sort of exposition, but the briskly paced conclusion does pack an entertaining punch. Fans of young adult fiction should be pleased with Zhang’s latest effort.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Once-We-Were-Hybrid-Chronicles/dp/0062114905/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382406876&sr=8-1&keywords=Once+we+Were