Stephen Hong Sohn's Blog, page 58
May 31, 2013
Asian American Literature Fans Megapost for May 31 2013
Asian American Literature Fans Megapost for May 31 2013
In this post, reviews of: Gish Jen’s Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and The Interdependent Self (Harvard University Press, 2013); Yoon Sun Lee’s Modern Minority: Asian American Literature and Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2013); A Review of Rocío G. Davis’s Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs (University of Hawaii Press, 2011); Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir (B&H Books, 2010); Andrew Fukuda’s The Prey (St. Martin’s Press, 2013); Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Wasteland (HarperTeen 2013); Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir (Spiegel and Grau, 2013); Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl (Simon & Schuster, 2013).
A Review of Gish Jen’s Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and The Interdependent Self (Harvard University Press, 2013).
Gish Jen was selected to be guest lecturer of the distinguished Massey lectures in 2012; the product of this lectureship is Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and The Interdependent Self. This lecture series once also invited Maxine Hong Kingston and her work, To be the Poet (2000), resulted from that period. It is always a treat to read about a writer’s level of thinking that goes into the creative process. Of course, Jen and her marketers wisely chose a controversial title, bringing to mind the already infamous book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua. Frankly, Jen’s lectures have actually very little to do with Asian parenting per se, but more closely track a rough differentiation in Eastern and Western modes of thinking and of creative production. Jen distinguishes between an independent—more Western—thinking and an interdependent—more Eastern—thinking; I use the word “more” quite deliberately, as Jen herself acknowledges the murkiness and the essentialization she must engage in order to conceive of this general binary. The point of Jen’s lectures seems to be an articulation of a kind of hybridity that she herself explores in her cultural productions; certainly there is the importance of the figure, or the character, but equally so is the context or the great frame of social relations in which the character finds herself enmeshed and often entangled. Jen is not out to say one mode is better or more enlightened than the other, but this sort of meditation is also an opportunity to get a better sense of her own trajectory as a writer, how she relates to her parents, and how even her parents might relate to their ancestors. The first lecture spends a great deal of time exploring Jen’s father’s life and his way of speaking about himself, which is ultimately a way of speaking around himself. By the last of the three lectures, Jen firmly roots her exploration of independence and interdependence from interpretations of her own fiction. It is an absolute treat to see this kind of exploration here and it makes me crave more of these kinds of publications—where writers are given an opportunity to explain some of the intentionality in their work and to engage in cultural analysis.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Writing-Interdependent-Lectures-Civilization/dp/0674072839/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363915326&sr=8-1&keywords=tiger+writing
A Review of Yoon Sun Lee’s Modern Minority: Asian American Literature and Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2013); A Review of Rocío G. Davis’s Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs (University of Hawaii Press, 2011)
There is certainly a risk in writing a book on the everyday, given its potential association with the banal, and yet Yoon Sun Lee’s Modern Minority focuses on that very subject in her enterprising study of Asian American literature in relation what we might call “all things quotidian.” For those engaged in Asian American cultural studies, Lee’s archive is certainly not new or novel. In this respect, we might even call her selections part of the “everyday” of Asian Americanist critique, with chapters focused on Carlos Bulosan and Younghill Kang (chapter 1), Mine Okubo and Hisaye Yamamoto (chapter 2), Jade Snow Wong and Maxine Hong Kingston (chapter 3), Joy Kogawa, Nora Okja Keller, Ha Jin, and Lan Samantha Chang (chapter 4), Chang-rae Lee (chapter 5), and Frank Chin and Lois-Ann Yamanaka (chapter 6). At the same time, Lee’s approach shows the dynamic nature of common practices, familial object and experiences, revealing how Asian Americans have a necessarily vexed relationship to the everyday, in part mediated by the complicated nature and contours of racial formation. In this way, Lee helps us to rethink these canonical works and provides innovative readings in the process. Readings of the everyday within Asian American literature consequently makes for a lush and transformative scholarly study. My personal favorite chapter is the second, which focuses on the “uncanny” nature of the Japanese American internment experience in relation to the ways that internees attempted to reconstruct familiar environments even within the confines of what was a form of a prison. Thus, the familiar becomes slightly off-kilter, out of focus, and finally uncanny, as it becomes increasingly evident that the everyday cannot seamlessly be replicated in such inhospitable environments as the ones depicted in the aforementioned Okubo and Yamamoto. If there is a limit to Lee’s work, it is one common to most monographs: there simply is not enough time or space to cover all the possible works one might or possibly could. Indeed, her very short reading of Lahiri’s fiction in the conclusion makes us thirst for more.
The “racial formalism” phase of Asian American cultural critique continues with Rocío G. Davis’s Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs, which forms a sort of second volume and companion to her earlier book, Begin Here: Reading Asian North American Autobiographies of Childhood. The shift from autobiography to memoir is deliberate precisely because, as Davis reveals, the memoirs she reads employ a collective standpoint (rather than the autobiographical self) of the family to deploy the narrative involved in life-writing. Of course, as with so many texts rooted in Asian ethnic contexts, these family stories are consistently a way to convey a larger tapestry. Davis contends: “The relational model of auto/biographical identity, I argue, functions on two levels in family memoirs: first, within the tet itself, as the author draws upon the stories of family members to complete her own, and, second, because these texts very consciously interpellate an audience. Asian American family memoirs manifestly present the individual author’s self as discursively constituted, as issues of literary traditions, immigrant history, identity politics, and cultural contingencies participate in the construction of the text” (11). As with Begin Here and Davis’s other book on the short story cycle, her knowledge of a given subfield is far-reading and visionary. She is one of the literary critics I can always go to get recommendations on books I have not even heard of and to expand the archive known more broadly as Asian American literature and culture. Indeed, most of the works she explores have not been reviewed here on Asian American literature fans and further still, most have not received much critical or literary attention elsewhere; these primary texts include: Jael Silliman’s Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames, Bruce Edward Hall’s Tea that Burns, and Mira Kamdar’s Motiba’s Tattoos. As with many other books in cultural criticism, Davis’s monograph remains in the hardcover form, but that should not deter anyone from requesting the title be added to a local university library.
Buy the Books Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Minority-American-Literature-Everyday/dp/0199915830/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362341383&sr=8-1&keywords=modern+minority
http://www.amazon.com/Relative-Histories-Mediating-History-American/dp/0824834585/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370056063&sr=8-1&keywords=relative+histories+rocio+davis
A Review of Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir (B&H Books, 2010).
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I’ve been dealing with an apocalyptic respiratory illness for the last three days; my primary ailment is a brutal sore throat that is making it difficult to sleep at night. Nevertheless, the byproduct of staying in bed more often is that you get to read more books, as sickness-induced insomnia becomes your frequent bed partner. Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir was a book that called out to me for the simple fact of its title. The story is a clever metafiction that seeks to explore the motivations behind why demons would want to torture humans so much. Our narrator is a man named Clay, who also happens to be an editor and who is still reeling from his divorce. One day he happens to bump into Lucian, a demon, who pushes him to tell Lucian’s tale about the Fall. Clay, at first completely horrified by his association with a demon, later comes to realize that this demonic story might actually serve to be a marketable narrative, one that could be consumed a reading public hungry for the spiritual and the supernatural. Lucian is drawn to be an obvious trickster figure; he assumes the guises of a number of different people and Clay is continually caught off guard when he appears. Once he does appear, Lucian provides Clay with another bit of the story of Lucifer’s fall from God’s grace and God’s shift in attention from these fallen angels to humans, who are continually referred to by Lucian as the “clay people.” As Lucian eventually details his story, readers also realize that Clay is revealing more and more about himself: the fallout from his divorce from Audrey, his connections to his coworkers, and his desire to find a sense of personal fulfillment. Tosca Lee provides some extra source material at the book’s conclusion which helps fill in some of the gaps left in by philosophically unclosed ending, but I tended to read this narrative far more metaphorically in relation to the process of writing itself and the demon being a kind of symbol of writing difficulties and blockages. Further still, there is an entire section devoted to Lee’s reconsideration of Biblical passages in her reconstruction of Lucian’s story. Certainly, Lee is able to effectively render the jealousy and the astonishment of the fallen angels over the many ways that the clay people are embraced and redeemed by God. At the same time, Lucian’s appearance as a kind of character who holds the reigns over Clay’s ability to write a manuscript seems to be more largely suggestive of that Higher Power, which plagues writers everywhere as they attempt to find a resolution to their stories and to their research projects.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Demon-A-Memoir-Tosca-Lee/dp/1433668807/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1365876892&sr=8-4&keywords=tosca+lee
A Review of Andrew Fukuda’s The Prey (St. Martin’s Press, 2013).
So, this was the second book I finished during a stint while I was sick. This novel got me through a particularly bad part of my illness and part of it is simply attributable to the fact that Andrew Fukuda’s novel, The Prey, has such a smart concept built into it that even when the plotting might stall or our suspension of disbelief might waver, we still want to know how the various mysteries will be revealed. In Fukuda’s debut, The Hunt, he set up the basic guidelines to a world in which humans are called hepers and have been basically wiped out. The few that remain are in hiding, passing among the vampire-like beings who suspect that more hepers may indeed be out there. The second novel sees Fukuda opening up the story so that we get a better sense of the vampire-like beings and the possibility that more hepers have survived. With that in mind, I issue my “spoiler” warning here and continue.
In The Prey, Gene, along with the humans who had been housed in the dome from book 1 (Sissy, Epap, David, Jacob, and Ben), are still attempting to flee from the vampire-like beings, who are tracking them. Using a boat, they are able to escape by crossing over a waterfall; after some days traveling, they come upon a cabin and are soon spotted by a young girl, who happens to be human. This girl Claire asks them if they have the Origin; they are confused, but later Claire takes them to a small village community filled with humans—a place called the Mission—where they believe they might have been saved. Of course, we are not surprised when all is not as it seems. There is a strict division in gender roles and women are not often allowed to mingle with the men; the elders and Krugman—the so-called leaders—reek of conspiracy and it is not long before Sissy and Gene team up to find out about the secrets that are hidden in the Mission’s history. Fukuda uses this novel to link this fantastical narrative to a realist referents and there is some sense that Sissy and Gene have come to a place that is a post-apocalyptic version of our own world, now having been repopulated and having survived the accidental creation of the duskers, otherwise known as super soldiers and the term for our vampire-like beings. But, even as Sissy and Gene are set to move from the rural outpost to a place called Civilization, they realize that there are still unanswered questions and their pursuit of these questions allows Fukuda to stage a rather bloody ending in which some of our favorite human characters may not survive. As with many other supernatural trilogies being published, we come to discover that our seemingly normal protagonist, Gene, is more of a hero than we ever realized. Fukuda concludes with a cliffhanger ending that will make you immediately wish book 3 was already published. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait too long as it has a November 2013 listing.
Buy the Book here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Prey-Hunt-Andrew-Fukuda/dp/1250005116/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366081743&sr=8-1&keywords=the+prey
A Review of Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Wasteland (HarperTeen 2013).
So, this book was the third one I read during what I am calling my 2013 plague period. Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan have already collaborated together on a set of graphic novels and this novel is their debut for the young adult paranormal urban fantasy romance fiction genre. Not surprisingly, Wasteland is planned as a trilogy. The novel is set in some postapocalyptic future in a landscape reminiscent of MadMax or Cherry2000. By this, I mean to say, water and food are scarce. The sun beats down mercilessly, and there are roving bands of baddies. People die by the time they are 19. Esther is 15. You do the math. If you thought it was rough being in the Logan’s Run world, well, Kim and Klavan have taken that up by 11 annual notches. Early on, our hero, Esther, is going about playing in the “wasteland” that is Prin, the town in which she and a few hardy others have decided to settled. She has a little friend named Skar, who is actually a creature called a Variant, beings who are born hermaphroditic, are roughly humanoid, and are generally hated and distrusted by humans. The feelings are mutual from the Variant side, so Esther and Skar’s friendship is already a kind of transgressive relationship. Because there are so few resources, townspeople are forced to work in groups to engage in various acts such as gleaning and harvesting. These acts are getting more difficult because the Variants, for whatever reason, have been staging more attacks against humans. Prin’s leader is a feckless man by the name of Rafe; he bows at the heels of another figure, Levi, who is the actual figurehead (and despot) of the entire region. Levi lives in a compound known as the Source, plays by his own rules, and apparently possesses a cache of goods that he exchanges with Prin’s townsfolk at exorbitant rates. Esther has one sister named Sarah, who reads and is generally a do-gooder. Finally, Esther has one friend in Joseph who lives in another remote part of town by himself with ten cats; he’s an eccentric, so his contact with anyone is pretty much limited to Esther. The novel starts moving toward its ending arc when Caleb comes into town, looking for vengeance. His wife was murdered and his child abducted by a group of variants; he believes that by tracking down the person who sold the variants a type of accelerant that he will be able to enact his own retribution. Of course, we soon discover that Levi is wrapped up in all of this chaos. He’s been pitting the Variants and the Humans against each other, to direct attention away from his true goal: finding a source of water beneath Prin. Kim and Klavan’s first book in the series is quite bleak, though they do manage to provide a conclusion that gives some of its major characters a reprieve. Yet, when Esther leaves readers with the sentiments that she is unsure how much longer anyone can stay in Prin, we realize that the sequel is already in the works.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Wasteland-Trilogy-Susan-Kim/dp/006211851X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366172293&sr=8-1&keywords=Laurence+Klavan+Susan+Kim
A Review of Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir (Spiegel and Grau, 2013)
Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir was the fourth book I read during what I am calling my 2013 plague period. I wasn’t entirely prepared for the “narrative” voice in this work, which is sort of a mix of slang and Huang’s comedic take at his own upbringing and his movement into the world of restaurant cuisine. He is the proprietor of a restaurant called Baohaus (a fun punning of those lovely Bao bun type dishes):
http://www.baohausnyc.com/menu.html
Take a gander at that menu and you can see that Huang streamlines in order to focus on the essentials. In any case, Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir does provide us with a unique comic narrative of acculturation. Eddie begins his tale with an obvious love of food and draws himself out to be a kind of anti-model minority figure, invested in African American popular culture and football. Eddie grows up primarily in a Southern state, Florida, where his father tries his luck at an American-type restaurant. He is raised alongside his two brothers, Emery and Evan, with the spirit of his mother’s desire for them to achieve economic stability. Indeed, it is his mother’s desire for financial success that is a looming presence in Eddie’s life. As the memoir continues, Eddie comes of age, which involves, among other things: taking English classes in college, selling weed, getting busted for selling weed, traveling to Taiwan on a language and culture program, attending school in Pittsburgh, getting a law degree, selling more weed for awhile, going on a reality television cooking competition, and then finally deciding to open up a restaurant. Though Huang’s memoir is humorous, the underlying impulse about what it means to be an ethnic minority in America is clear, especially as focused through his desire to find personal and professional fulfillment. This memoir is certainly one that could be paired well with a more traditional memoir, such as Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter. And I am certainly going to add this book to my teachable texts list.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Fresh-Off-Boat-A-Memoir/dp/0679644881/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366215680&sr=8-1&keywords=Eddie+Huang
A Review of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl (Simon & Schuster, 2013).
Of the Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni works I’ve had the chance to read, Oleander Girl, her latest, is definitely my favorite. Divakaruni is the author of numerous publications, including but not limited to Arranged Marriage: Stories (1995); The Mistress of Spices (1997), Sister of my Heart (1999). For me, Oleander Girl rises to the top based upon the surprise reveal given about two thirds of the way through. But, I am getting ahead of myself. Oleander Girl is the story of Korobi Roy, who is raised by her grandparents, Sarojini and Bimal. She is engaged to be married to a young man of affluent background name Rajat Bose. Though Korobi is herself of a more modest, upper middle-class background, Rajat falls madly in love with her and makes it clear that Korobi is the woman for him. As the date for the wedding draws close, Korobi and her grandfather get in a verbal spat over what she is wearing. Before Korobi is able to reconcile with him, he dies from an acute heart attack. Grief stricken and wracked with guilt, Korobi finds herself completely unmoored and seeking direction. It is during this period that Korobi discovers the true story behind her parentage. Her mother Anu Roy traveled to the United States to attend college and had fallen in love with an American, someone out of caste and out of class. This marriage obviously was not supported by Anu’s parents (Korobi’s grandparents) and resulted in considerable strain among the family members at large. When Anu falls pregnant, a momentary rapprochement occurs and she is allowed to visit her parents; during that period, there is a tragic accident and Anu is killed. Because she was so late into the pregnancy, doctors are able to save Korobi. Bimal—who is a lawyer—is able to stage it to make it seem as if Korobi has died, thus effectively cutting of Korobi’s father from claiming her. After Korobi learns of the truth behind what happened to her mother and her father, she realizes she cannot yet marry Rajat and embarks on a hasty trip to America, with the goal of finding her biological father. Enlisting help from new found friends—Desai and Vic—Korobi is relentless in her quest, even as her relationship to Rajat suffers under the strain of their physical separation. Rajat begins to wonder whether or not he is truly in love with Korobi and begins to entertain and to welcome the attentions of an old flame named Sonia. Complicating matters is that the Rajat’s family is facing financial crises within their business dealings. Sarojini, too, must consider what to do with the family’s limited finances and whether or not she must sell the home. There are many plot strands to cover in this novel and Divakaruni is always game to engage them and to tidy them up in the end. The novel is told from alternating first (in Korobi’s perspective) and third person perspectives (following a number of different characters, including Rajat, Mrs. Bose, Sarojini, among others). There is a Victorian courtship impulse to this novel and it ends exactly as you might expect, but Divakuni’s late stage surprise is what raises this novel to another level. Oleander Girl is as much about race relations in America as it is about the modern Indian woman who is struggling to find her independence. A truly transnational fictional work.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Oleander-Girl-Chitra-Banerjee-Divakaruni/dp/1451695659/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366435488&sr=8-1&keywords=oleander+girl
In this post, reviews of: Gish Jen’s Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and The Interdependent Self (Harvard University Press, 2013); Yoon Sun Lee’s Modern Minority: Asian American Literature and Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2013); A Review of Rocío G. Davis’s Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs (University of Hawaii Press, 2011); Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir (B&H Books, 2010); Andrew Fukuda’s The Prey (St. Martin’s Press, 2013); Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Wasteland (HarperTeen 2013); Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir (Spiegel and Grau, 2013); Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl (Simon & Schuster, 2013).
A Review of Gish Jen’s Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and The Interdependent Self (Harvard University Press, 2013).
Gish Jen was selected to be guest lecturer of the distinguished Massey lectures in 2012; the product of this lectureship is Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and The Interdependent Self. This lecture series once also invited Maxine Hong Kingston and her work, To be the Poet (2000), resulted from that period. It is always a treat to read about a writer’s level of thinking that goes into the creative process. Of course, Jen and her marketers wisely chose a controversial title, bringing to mind the already infamous book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, by Amy Chua. Frankly, Jen’s lectures have actually very little to do with Asian parenting per se, but more closely track a rough differentiation in Eastern and Western modes of thinking and of creative production. Jen distinguishes between an independent—more Western—thinking and an interdependent—more Eastern—thinking; I use the word “more” quite deliberately, as Jen herself acknowledges the murkiness and the essentialization she must engage in order to conceive of this general binary. The point of Jen’s lectures seems to be an articulation of a kind of hybridity that she herself explores in her cultural productions; certainly there is the importance of the figure, or the character, but equally so is the context or the great frame of social relations in which the character finds herself enmeshed and often entangled. Jen is not out to say one mode is better or more enlightened than the other, but this sort of meditation is also an opportunity to get a better sense of her own trajectory as a writer, how she relates to her parents, and how even her parents might relate to their ancestors. The first lecture spends a great deal of time exploring Jen’s father’s life and his way of speaking about himself, which is ultimately a way of speaking around himself. By the last of the three lectures, Jen firmly roots her exploration of independence and interdependence from interpretations of her own fiction. It is an absolute treat to see this kind of exploration here and it makes me crave more of these kinds of publications—where writers are given an opportunity to explain some of the intentionality in their work and to engage in cultural analysis.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Tiger-Writing-Interdependent-Lectures-Civilization/dp/0674072839/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363915326&sr=8-1&keywords=tiger+writing
A Review of Yoon Sun Lee’s Modern Minority: Asian American Literature and Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2013); A Review of Rocío G. Davis’s Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs (University of Hawaii Press, 2011)
There is certainly a risk in writing a book on the everyday, given its potential association with the banal, and yet Yoon Sun Lee’s Modern Minority focuses on that very subject in her enterprising study of Asian American literature in relation what we might call “all things quotidian.” For those engaged in Asian American cultural studies, Lee’s archive is certainly not new or novel. In this respect, we might even call her selections part of the “everyday” of Asian Americanist critique, with chapters focused on Carlos Bulosan and Younghill Kang (chapter 1), Mine Okubo and Hisaye Yamamoto (chapter 2), Jade Snow Wong and Maxine Hong Kingston (chapter 3), Joy Kogawa, Nora Okja Keller, Ha Jin, and Lan Samantha Chang (chapter 4), Chang-rae Lee (chapter 5), and Frank Chin and Lois-Ann Yamanaka (chapter 6). At the same time, Lee’s approach shows the dynamic nature of common practices, familial object and experiences, revealing how Asian Americans have a necessarily vexed relationship to the everyday, in part mediated by the complicated nature and contours of racial formation. In this way, Lee helps us to rethink these canonical works and provides innovative readings in the process. Readings of the everyday within Asian American literature consequently makes for a lush and transformative scholarly study. My personal favorite chapter is the second, which focuses on the “uncanny” nature of the Japanese American internment experience in relation to the ways that internees attempted to reconstruct familiar environments even within the confines of what was a form of a prison. Thus, the familiar becomes slightly off-kilter, out of focus, and finally uncanny, as it becomes increasingly evident that the everyday cannot seamlessly be replicated in such inhospitable environments as the ones depicted in the aforementioned Okubo and Yamamoto. If there is a limit to Lee’s work, it is one common to most monographs: there simply is not enough time or space to cover all the possible works one might or possibly could. Indeed, her very short reading of Lahiri’s fiction in the conclusion makes us thirst for more.
The “racial formalism” phase of Asian American cultural critique continues with Rocío G. Davis’s Relative Histories: Mediating History in Asian American Family Memoirs, which forms a sort of second volume and companion to her earlier book, Begin Here: Reading Asian North American Autobiographies of Childhood. The shift from autobiography to memoir is deliberate precisely because, as Davis reveals, the memoirs she reads employ a collective standpoint (rather than the autobiographical self) of the family to deploy the narrative involved in life-writing. Of course, as with so many texts rooted in Asian ethnic contexts, these family stories are consistently a way to convey a larger tapestry. Davis contends: “The relational model of auto/biographical identity, I argue, functions on two levels in family memoirs: first, within the tet itself, as the author draws upon the stories of family members to complete her own, and, second, because these texts very consciously interpellate an audience. Asian American family memoirs manifestly present the individual author’s self as discursively constituted, as issues of literary traditions, immigrant history, identity politics, and cultural contingencies participate in the construction of the text” (11). As with Begin Here and Davis’s other book on the short story cycle, her knowledge of a given subfield is far-reading and visionary. She is one of the literary critics I can always go to get recommendations on books I have not even heard of and to expand the archive known more broadly as Asian American literature and culture. Indeed, most of the works she explores have not been reviewed here on Asian American literature fans and further still, most have not received much critical or literary attention elsewhere; these primary texts include: Jael Silliman’s Jewish Portraits, Indian Frames, Bruce Edward Hall’s Tea that Burns, and Mira Kamdar’s Motiba’s Tattoos. As with many other books in cultural criticism, Davis’s monograph remains in the hardcover form, but that should not deter anyone from requesting the title be added to a local university library.
Buy the Books Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Minority-American-Literature-Everyday/dp/0199915830/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362341383&sr=8-1&keywords=modern+minority
http://www.amazon.com/Relative-Histories-Mediating-History-American/dp/0824834585/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370056063&sr=8-1&keywords=relative+histories+rocio+davis
A Review of Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir (B&H Books, 2010).
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I’ve been dealing with an apocalyptic respiratory illness for the last three days; my primary ailment is a brutal sore throat that is making it difficult to sleep at night. Nevertheless, the byproduct of staying in bed more often is that you get to read more books, as sickness-induced insomnia becomes your frequent bed partner. Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir was a book that called out to me for the simple fact of its title. The story is a clever metafiction that seeks to explore the motivations behind why demons would want to torture humans so much. Our narrator is a man named Clay, who also happens to be an editor and who is still reeling from his divorce. One day he happens to bump into Lucian, a demon, who pushes him to tell Lucian’s tale about the Fall. Clay, at first completely horrified by his association with a demon, later comes to realize that this demonic story might actually serve to be a marketable narrative, one that could be consumed a reading public hungry for the spiritual and the supernatural. Lucian is drawn to be an obvious trickster figure; he assumes the guises of a number of different people and Clay is continually caught off guard when he appears. Once he does appear, Lucian provides Clay with another bit of the story of Lucifer’s fall from God’s grace and God’s shift in attention from these fallen angels to humans, who are continually referred to by Lucian as the “clay people.” As Lucian eventually details his story, readers also realize that Clay is revealing more and more about himself: the fallout from his divorce from Audrey, his connections to his coworkers, and his desire to find a sense of personal fulfillment. Tosca Lee provides some extra source material at the book’s conclusion which helps fill in some of the gaps left in by philosophically unclosed ending, but I tended to read this narrative far more metaphorically in relation to the process of writing itself and the demon being a kind of symbol of writing difficulties and blockages. Further still, there is an entire section devoted to Lee’s reconsideration of Biblical passages in her reconstruction of Lucian’s story. Certainly, Lee is able to effectively render the jealousy and the astonishment of the fallen angels over the many ways that the clay people are embraced and redeemed by God. At the same time, Lucian’s appearance as a kind of character who holds the reigns over Clay’s ability to write a manuscript seems to be more largely suggestive of that Higher Power, which plagues writers everywhere as they attempt to find a resolution to their stories and to their research projects.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Demon-A-Memoir-Tosca-Lee/dp/1433668807/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1365876892&sr=8-4&keywords=tosca+lee
A Review of Andrew Fukuda’s The Prey (St. Martin’s Press, 2013).
So, this was the second book I finished during a stint while I was sick. This novel got me through a particularly bad part of my illness and part of it is simply attributable to the fact that Andrew Fukuda’s novel, The Prey, has such a smart concept built into it that even when the plotting might stall or our suspension of disbelief might waver, we still want to know how the various mysteries will be revealed. In Fukuda’s debut, The Hunt, he set up the basic guidelines to a world in which humans are called hepers and have been basically wiped out. The few that remain are in hiding, passing among the vampire-like beings who suspect that more hepers may indeed be out there. The second novel sees Fukuda opening up the story so that we get a better sense of the vampire-like beings and the possibility that more hepers have survived. With that in mind, I issue my “spoiler” warning here and continue.
In The Prey, Gene, along with the humans who had been housed in the dome from book 1 (Sissy, Epap, David, Jacob, and Ben), are still attempting to flee from the vampire-like beings, who are tracking them. Using a boat, they are able to escape by crossing over a waterfall; after some days traveling, they come upon a cabin and are soon spotted by a young girl, who happens to be human. This girl Claire asks them if they have the Origin; they are confused, but later Claire takes them to a small village community filled with humans—a place called the Mission—where they believe they might have been saved. Of course, we are not surprised when all is not as it seems. There is a strict division in gender roles and women are not often allowed to mingle with the men; the elders and Krugman—the so-called leaders—reek of conspiracy and it is not long before Sissy and Gene team up to find out about the secrets that are hidden in the Mission’s history. Fukuda uses this novel to link this fantastical narrative to a realist referents and there is some sense that Sissy and Gene have come to a place that is a post-apocalyptic version of our own world, now having been repopulated and having survived the accidental creation of the duskers, otherwise known as super soldiers and the term for our vampire-like beings. But, even as Sissy and Gene are set to move from the rural outpost to a place called Civilization, they realize that there are still unanswered questions and their pursuit of these questions allows Fukuda to stage a rather bloody ending in which some of our favorite human characters may not survive. As with many other supernatural trilogies being published, we come to discover that our seemingly normal protagonist, Gene, is more of a hero than we ever realized. Fukuda concludes with a cliffhanger ending that will make you immediately wish book 3 was already published. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait too long as it has a November 2013 listing.
Buy the Book here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Prey-Hunt-Andrew-Fukuda/dp/1250005116/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366081743&sr=8-1&keywords=the+prey
A Review of Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan’s Wasteland (HarperTeen 2013).
So, this book was the third one I read during what I am calling my 2013 plague period. Susan Kim and Laurence Klavan have already collaborated together on a set of graphic novels and this novel is their debut for the young adult paranormal urban fantasy romance fiction genre. Not surprisingly, Wasteland is planned as a trilogy. The novel is set in some postapocalyptic future in a landscape reminiscent of MadMax or Cherry2000. By this, I mean to say, water and food are scarce. The sun beats down mercilessly, and there are roving bands of baddies. People die by the time they are 19. Esther is 15. You do the math. If you thought it was rough being in the Logan’s Run world, well, Kim and Klavan have taken that up by 11 annual notches. Early on, our hero, Esther, is going about playing in the “wasteland” that is Prin, the town in which she and a few hardy others have decided to settled. She has a little friend named Skar, who is actually a creature called a Variant, beings who are born hermaphroditic, are roughly humanoid, and are generally hated and distrusted by humans. The feelings are mutual from the Variant side, so Esther and Skar’s friendship is already a kind of transgressive relationship. Because there are so few resources, townspeople are forced to work in groups to engage in various acts such as gleaning and harvesting. These acts are getting more difficult because the Variants, for whatever reason, have been staging more attacks against humans. Prin’s leader is a feckless man by the name of Rafe; he bows at the heels of another figure, Levi, who is the actual figurehead (and despot) of the entire region. Levi lives in a compound known as the Source, plays by his own rules, and apparently possesses a cache of goods that he exchanges with Prin’s townsfolk at exorbitant rates. Esther has one sister named Sarah, who reads and is generally a do-gooder. Finally, Esther has one friend in Joseph who lives in another remote part of town by himself with ten cats; he’s an eccentric, so his contact with anyone is pretty much limited to Esther. The novel starts moving toward its ending arc when Caleb comes into town, looking for vengeance. His wife was murdered and his child abducted by a group of variants; he believes that by tracking down the person who sold the variants a type of accelerant that he will be able to enact his own retribution. Of course, we soon discover that Levi is wrapped up in all of this chaos. He’s been pitting the Variants and the Humans against each other, to direct attention away from his true goal: finding a source of water beneath Prin. Kim and Klavan’s first book in the series is quite bleak, though they do manage to provide a conclusion that gives some of its major characters a reprieve. Yet, when Esther leaves readers with the sentiments that she is unsure how much longer anyone can stay in Prin, we realize that the sequel is already in the works.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Wasteland-Trilogy-Susan-Kim/dp/006211851X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366172293&sr=8-1&keywords=Laurence+Klavan+Susan+Kim
A Review of Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir (Spiegel and Grau, 2013)
Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir was the fourth book I read during what I am calling my 2013 plague period. I wasn’t entirely prepared for the “narrative” voice in this work, which is sort of a mix of slang and Huang’s comedic take at his own upbringing and his movement into the world of restaurant cuisine. He is the proprietor of a restaurant called Baohaus (a fun punning of those lovely Bao bun type dishes):
http://www.baohausnyc.com/menu.html
Take a gander at that menu and you can see that Huang streamlines in order to focus on the essentials. In any case, Fresh off the Boat: A Memoir does provide us with a unique comic narrative of acculturation. Eddie begins his tale with an obvious love of food and draws himself out to be a kind of anti-model minority figure, invested in African American popular culture and football. Eddie grows up primarily in a Southern state, Florida, where his father tries his luck at an American-type restaurant. He is raised alongside his two brothers, Emery and Evan, with the spirit of his mother’s desire for them to achieve economic stability. Indeed, it is his mother’s desire for financial success that is a looming presence in Eddie’s life. As the memoir continues, Eddie comes of age, which involves, among other things: taking English classes in college, selling weed, getting busted for selling weed, traveling to Taiwan on a language and culture program, attending school in Pittsburgh, getting a law degree, selling more weed for awhile, going on a reality television cooking competition, and then finally deciding to open up a restaurant. Though Huang’s memoir is humorous, the underlying impulse about what it means to be an ethnic minority in America is clear, especially as focused through his desire to find personal and professional fulfillment. This memoir is certainly one that could be paired well with a more traditional memoir, such as Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter. And I am certainly going to add this book to my teachable texts list.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Fresh-Off-Boat-A-Memoir/dp/0679644881/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366215680&sr=8-1&keywords=Eddie+Huang
A Review of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Oleander Girl (Simon & Schuster, 2013).
Of the Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni works I’ve had the chance to read, Oleander Girl, her latest, is definitely my favorite. Divakaruni is the author of numerous publications, including but not limited to Arranged Marriage: Stories (1995); The Mistress of Spices (1997), Sister of my Heart (1999). For me, Oleander Girl rises to the top based upon the surprise reveal given about two thirds of the way through. But, I am getting ahead of myself. Oleander Girl is the story of Korobi Roy, who is raised by her grandparents, Sarojini and Bimal. She is engaged to be married to a young man of affluent background name Rajat Bose. Though Korobi is herself of a more modest, upper middle-class background, Rajat falls madly in love with her and makes it clear that Korobi is the woman for him. As the date for the wedding draws close, Korobi and her grandfather get in a verbal spat over what she is wearing. Before Korobi is able to reconcile with him, he dies from an acute heart attack. Grief stricken and wracked with guilt, Korobi finds herself completely unmoored and seeking direction. It is during this period that Korobi discovers the true story behind her parentage. Her mother Anu Roy traveled to the United States to attend college and had fallen in love with an American, someone out of caste and out of class. This marriage obviously was not supported by Anu’s parents (Korobi’s grandparents) and resulted in considerable strain among the family members at large. When Anu falls pregnant, a momentary rapprochement occurs and she is allowed to visit her parents; during that period, there is a tragic accident and Anu is killed. Because she was so late into the pregnancy, doctors are able to save Korobi. Bimal—who is a lawyer—is able to stage it to make it seem as if Korobi has died, thus effectively cutting of Korobi’s father from claiming her. After Korobi learns of the truth behind what happened to her mother and her father, she realizes she cannot yet marry Rajat and embarks on a hasty trip to America, with the goal of finding her biological father. Enlisting help from new found friends—Desai and Vic—Korobi is relentless in her quest, even as her relationship to Rajat suffers under the strain of their physical separation. Rajat begins to wonder whether or not he is truly in love with Korobi and begins to entertain and to welcome the attentions of an old flame named Sonia. Complicating matters is that the Rajat’s family is facing financial crises within their business dealings. Sarojini, too, must consider what to do with the family’s limited finances and whether or not she must sell the home. There are many plot strands to cover in this novel and Divakaruni is always game to engage them and to tidy them up in the end. The novel is told from alternating first (in Korobi’s perspective) and third person perspectives (following a number of different characters, including Rajat, Mrs. Bose, Sarojini, among others). There is a Victorian courtship impulse to this novel and it ends exactly as you might expect, but Divakuni’s late stage surprise is what raises this novel to another level. Oleander Girl is as much about race relations in America as it is about the modern Indian woman who is struggling to find her independence. A truly transnational fictional work.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Oleander-Girl-Chitra-Banerjee-Divakaruni/dp/1451695659/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366435488&sr=8-1&keywords=oleander+girl
May 1, 2013
Asian American Literature Megapost for May 1 2013
Asian American Literature Megapost for May 1 2013
In this MYSTERY THEMED post reviews of: Steph Cha’s Follow Her Home (Minotaur Books, 2013); Tess Gerritsen’s Last to Die (Ballantine Books, 2012); .S. Lee’s, The Agency 1: A Spy in the House (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 2: The Body at the Tower (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 3: The Traitor in the Tunnel (Candlewick Press, 2012).
A Review of Steph Cha’s Follow Her Home (Minotaur Books, 2013).
Steph Cha’s debut novel Follow Her Home reveals a writer keenly aware and inspired by the subgenre of American noir fiction. With repeated references to Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, we know we are moving into a seedy underworld that is best set in a city like Los Angeles. Cha’s narrator is the indefatigable Juniper Song, a twenty-something who in her spare time can apparently moonlight as an unofficial investigator. A request from a close friend named Luke—who hails from a very upper crust background—requires Song to follow a young Korean American woman named Lori Lim, who may or may not be involved in an affair with Luke’s father, the business magnate known as William Cook. We are not surprised when we begin to discover that the mystery surrounding Lori is bigger and messier than Song could ever realize. Indeed, Song will soon be intimidated into keeping silent regarding everything she might have seen regarding Lori; a dead body found in the trunk of her car also alerts her to the fact that the shadowy figures involved in Lori’s life are not to be trifled with. Of course, Song is not about to back down; she enlists the friend of a former flame turned legal expert, Diego, and begins to find out what she can about Lori, in the hopes that she can protect herself and her family. Cha uses a very effective doubled narrative here that moves Song back into the past; we begin to see that Song’s interest in Lori is not merely related to this mystery. Indeed, Lori in some ways reminds Song of her connection to her younger sister, Iris. In that particular subplot, Song realizes that she does not know as much about her sister as she had thought and her efforts to find out more about Iris’s romantic history leads to a very climactic reveal late in the narrative that provides the main story arc more texture. As with any noir, motivations and first impressions are never directly transparent and many of the characters introduced know much more than they are willing at first to admit. As the body count begins to pile up, Song realizes that the stakes of this investigation have moved into a register where she knows she must see this mystery to its end, else she herself may be the next one to be found dead. Cha’s debut novel would fit very well into any American detective fiction course and would especially pair well with Walter Mosley, in her exploration of race, ethnicity, and the urban metropolis known as Los Angeles. The novel would also serve as a kind of effective contrast with another novel I love, Suk Kim’s Interpreter, in the exploration of the Korean American woman turned unofficial detective.
For another glowing review of this title please do see this link:
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-steph-cha-20130407,0,3256154.story
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Follow-Her-Home-Steph-Cha/dp/1250009626/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365353857&sr=8-1&keywords=Steph+Cha
A Review of Tess Gerritsen’s Last to Die (Ballantine Books, 2012).
I was saving this book to read for a point where I needed something a little bit more plot-driven to consume my time and on a trip to visit some family, it provided some much needed frivolity. Last to Die is the latest installment in Tess Gerritsen’s long running and very popular Rizzoli & Isles series, which has been adapted into a television serial. The premise is spooky enough. It seems as though there are children being targeted repeatedly, so much so that any family they are connected with—first biological, then later adoptive—are killed off. Thus, the three main children in this novel have all suffered family massacres not once, but twice. Gerritsen adds yet another interesting element into the equation by uniting these three characters at a special school, The Evensong Boarding School, for children who have been subjected to major traumas. The school, located in Maine, and away from the Boston locale that grounds the series itself, is the perfect venue for this mystery plot to begin taking on other interesting textures. For those who are knowledgeable about the series, the fact that the Evensong Boarding School is run by the Mephisto Society is already potential cause for concern. Further still, once the school psychologist is found dead, having jumped from a high building and under suspicious circumstances, it becomes clear that that all is not well at the school. Gerritsen also uses enigmatic intercuts that ramp up the tension in the plotting—a narrative device I recall from Silent Girl, the last novel in the series. Readers are pushed to make sense of that narrative against the main plotting and the connections don’t become clear until late into the mystery. Gerritsen also manages to balance the detective plot against the personal trials of its two female protagonists, who are struggling still to rebuild their friendship due to past events. Rizzoli’s parents in particular are the subject of considerable romantic complications, so that subplot gives readers much needed space to breathe, especially because the body count begins to pile up. Even animals are sacrificed in ritualistic killings. Fans of the series and of the mystery genre should be more than happy with this offering.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Die-Rizzoli-Isles-Novel/dp/0345515633/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367339453&sr=8-1&keywords=Tess+Gerritsen
A Review of Y.S. Lee’s, The Agency 1: A Spy in the House (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 2: The Body at the Tower (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 3: The Traitor in the Tunnel (Candlewick Press, 2012).
In Y.S. Lee’s deliciously fun The Agency series, our heroine is Mary Quinn, a young girl of a questionable background who is saved at the beginning of the novel by the mysterious Agency, who is sort of devoted to the recovery and reformulation of a women’s lives. The Agency is set in the Victorian era and the writer, Y.S. Lee, is no stranger to this period. As our faithful amazon webpage tells us: “Y. S. Lee has a PhD in Victorian literature and culture and says her research inspired her to write A SPY IN THE HOUSE, ‘a totally unrealistic, completely fictitious antidote to the fate that would otherwise swallow a girl like Mary Quinn.’ Y. S. Lee lives in Ontario, Canada.” In this respect, the “agency” enables girls like Mary Quinn a second chance because she lives on the margins of society as a petty thief. The Agency allows Mary to develop other skills, but there’s still limited options: should be become a wife, a governess, or servant; the other unsavory options being bandied about include becoming a prostitute or mistress. So, Lee creates an alternative job trajectory for Mary in this counterfactual, “totally unrealistic,” but nevertheless super fun speculative fiction wherein Mary can become a spy and report upon a particular household as a companion to the daughter of the prime suspect: a one Mr. Thorold, who may or may not be involved with the theft of priceless Indian subcontinent artifacts. At this point, it’s important to pause to say that one of the Lee’s great strengths in the strongly transnational and postcolonial tinge to her collection. Goods and services are being shipped all over the world in the novel, linking the Victorian era London to different nodal points for colonial capitalistic investments. Lee, of course, wants to make sure that even if there isn’t a tried and true marriage plot or courtship plot afloat, that there could be an alternative romance plot as Mary must deal with James Easton, a man who is researching the Thorold’s business dealings to find out whether or not they are as upstanding as they purport to be. James is a worthy counterpart to Mary insofar as he immediately notices how different she is. Her difference is, of course, another aspect that Lee plays with in one of the big surprises mid-way through the novel, which I will refuse to spoil for you. Suffice it to say that Lee’s first book in the Agency is that rare young adult work with a historical texture, a fantasy register, a detective fiction, and a courtship/romance all rolled into one.
[image error]
In the second book in the series, we found our heroine Mary Quinn, going under very deep cover, but this time as a young boy (renamed as Mark Quinn), working at a building site. She’s been dispatched to discover more details concerning the suspicious circumstances of a worker who was found dead, having fallen from the titular tower. Though Mary is game for this job, her overseers at the Agency are wary that such a duty might have psychological ramifications. You see: before Mary was saved and reformed by the Agency, she lived on the streets as a petty thief and hoodlum; she was able to survive in part, often relying upon disguises and passing as a man. Her elders wonder if such a job might trigger unsavory past experiences that could compromise her surveillance activities. Despite this warning, Mary decides that she can do the job, even requesting that she take residence at a working class type facility wherein she would not have the comforts or even the advantages of decent food. Mary’s work is at first not too difficult; she is able to get a job through Harkness, the site engineer, and begins working for the various people below him, which include the imposing and rather spiteful, Keenan, as well as his colleague, Reid. Of course, this series would not be complete with its central romance and fortunately, Lee sees fit to have James Easton, from book 1, return from his travels in India. He’s hired by Harkness to begin an independent assessment of the building site that would be conducted in order to clear him or any of his employees from wrongdoing in the death of Wick. When Mary—as Mark—accidentally bumps into him, James is one of the few to see so easily through the disguise, but he chooses not to break her cover. Indeed, this sequel sees James Easton willing to engage yet another partnership with Mary, presumably of course because of his strong feelings for her. There are of course the occasional issues related to Mary’s complicated identity background, which adds yet another wrinkle to the many dilemmas that arise in the course of the plotting. Lee’s narrative here occasionally flags as it attempts to retain tension throughout, but overall, the book is a spirited, if counterfactual look at an undercover women’s agency during the Victorian era.
In the latest installment, The Traitor in the Tunnel, Mary Quinn is actually undercover in Buckingham Palace! She is dispatched by the Agency in order to find out about a thief that may be pilfering precious items from the royal household. Of course, Lee is never intent to keep the first mystery the only one and soon other issues arise. Most importantly, the Prince of Wales is caught up in a murder scandal in which a close friend might have been killed in an opium den. Interestingly enough, the accused murdered actually may have ties to Mary herself, which ends up complicating and stretching out Mary’s own investments in her sleuthing. I am deliberately being cagey about the potential connection between Mary and the murderer precisely because I’ve attempted to keep a major plot point unspoiled that is revealed from the first book. Finally, Mary’s romance-nemesis, James Easton, returns yet again, as he is contracted to help with the building of a sewer system below London. As Mary soon discovers, the sewer and its connection to Buckingham Palace is a matter of national security. Fans of mystery and of YA historical will again be delighted by this title. Lee clearly has fun with her characters in this spirited third in the series. Fortunately, there are apparently plans for a fourth to appear sometime soon!
Buy the Books Here
http://www.amazon.com/The-Agency-House-Y-S-Lee/dp/076365289X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1359052764&sr=8-2&keywords=Y.S.+Lee
http://www.amazon.com/The-Agency-Body-Tower/dp/0763656437/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1361139912&sr=8-3&keywords=Y.S.+Lee
http://www.amazon.com/The-Agency-Traitor-Tunnel/dp/0763663441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367416563&sr=8-1&keywords=Y.S.+Lee
In this MYSTERY THEMED post reviews of: Steph Cha’s Follow Her Home (Minotaur Books, 2013); Tess Gerritsen’s Last to Die (Ballantine Books, 2012); .S. Lee’s, The Agency 1: A Spy in the House (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 2: The Body at the Tower (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 3: The Traitor in the Tunnel (Candlewick Press, 2012).
A Review of Steph Cha’s Follow Her Home (Minotaur Books, 2013).
Steph Cha’s debut novel Follow Her Home reveals a writer keenly aware and inspired by the subgenre of American noir fiction. With repeated references to Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, we know we are moving into a seedy underworld that is best set in a city like Los Angeles. Cha’s narrator is the indefatigable Juniper Song, a twenty-something who in her spare time can apparently moonlight as an unofficial investigator. A request from a close friend named Luke—who hails from a very upper crust background—requires Song to follow a young Korean American woman named Lori Lim, who may or may not be involved in an affair with Luke’s father, the business magnate known as William Cook. We are not surprised when we begin to discover that the mystery surrounding Lori is bigger and messier than Song could ever realize. Indeed, Song will soon be intimidated into keeping silent regarding everything she might have seen regarding Lori; a dead body found in the trunk of her car also alerts her to the fact that the shadowy figures involved in Lori’s life are not to be trifled with. Of course, Song is not about to back down; she enlists the friend of a former flame turned legal expert, Diego, and begins to find out what she can about Lori, in the hopes that she can protect herself and her family. Cha uses a very effective doubled narrative here that moves Song back into the past; we begin to see that Song’s interest in Lori is not merely related to this mystery. Indeed, Lori in some ways reminds Song of her connection to her younger sister, Iris. In that particular subplot, Song realizes that she does not know as much about her sister as she had thought and her efforts to find out more about Iris’s romantic history leads to a very climactic reveal late in the narrative that provides the main story arc more texture. As with any noir, motivations and first impressions are never directly transparent and many of the characters introduced know much more than they are willing at first to admit. As the body count begins to pile up, Song realizes that the stakes of this investigation have moved into a register where she knows she must see this mystery to its end, else she herself may be the next one to be found dead. Cha’s debut novel would fit very well into any American detective fiction course and would especially pair well with Walter Mosley, in her exploration of race, ethnicity, and the urban metropolis known as Los Angeles. The novel would also serve as a kind of effective contrast with another novel I love, Suk Kim’s Interpreter, in the exploration of the Korean American woman turned unofficial detective.
For another glowing review of this title please do see this link:
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-steph-cha-20130407,0,3256154.story
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Follow-Her-Home-Steph-Cha/dp/1250009626/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365353857&sr=8-1&keywords=Steph+Cha
A Review of Tess Gerritsen’s Last to Die (Ballantine Books, 2012).
I was saving this book to read for a point where I needed something a little bit more plot-driven to consume my time and on a trip to visit some family, it provided some much needed frivolity. Last to Die is the latest installment in Tess Gerritsen’s long running and very popular Rizzoli & Isles series, which has been adapted into a television serial. The premise is spooky enough. It seems as though there are children being targeted repeatedly, so much so that any family they are connected with—first biological, then later adoptive—are killed off. Thus, the three main children in this novel have all suffered family massacres not once, but twice. Gerritsen adds yet another interesting element into the equation by uniting these three characters at a special school, The Evensong Boarding School, for children who have been subjected to major traumas. The school, located in Maine, and away from the Boston locale that grounds the series itself, is the perfect venue for this mystery plot to begin taking on other interesting textures. For those who are knowledgeable about the series, the fact that the Evensong Boarding School is run by the Mephisto Society is already potential cause for concern. Further still, once the school psychologist is found dead, having jumped from a high building and under suspicious circumstances, it becomes clear that that all is not well at the school. Gerritsen also uses enigmatic intercuts that ramp up the tension in the plotting—a narrative device I recall from Silent Girl, the last novel in the series. Readers are pushed to make sense of that narrative against the main plotting and the connections don’t become clear until late into the mystery. Gerritsen also manages to balance the detective plot against the personal trials of its two female protagonists, who are struggling still to rebuild their friendship due to past events. Rizzoli’s parents in particular are the subject of considerable romantic complications, so that subplot gives readers much needed space to breathe, especially because the body count begins to pile up. Even animals are sacrificed in ritualistic killings. Fans of the series and of the mystery genre should be more than happy with this offering.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Die-Rizzoli-Isles-Novel/dp/0345515633/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367339453&sr=8-1&keywords=Tess+Gerritsen
A Review of Y.S. Lee’s, The Agency 1: A Spy in the House (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 2: The Body at the Tower (Candlewick Press, 2010); The Agency 3: The Traitor in the Tunnel (Candlewick Press, 2012).
In Y.S. Lee’s deliciously fun The Agency series, our heroine is Mary Quinn, a young girl of a questionable background who is saved at the beginning of the novel by the mysterious Agency, who is sort of devoted to the recovery and reformulation of a women’s lives. The Agency is set in the Victorian era and the writer, Y.S. Lee, is no stranger to this period. As our faithful amazon webpage tells us: “Y. S. Lee has a PhD in Victorian literature and culture and says her research inspired her to write A SPY IN THE HOUSE, ‘a totally unrealistic, completely fictitious antidote to the fate that would otherwise swallow a girl like Mary Quinn.’ Y. S. Lee lives in Ontario, Canada.” In this respect, the “agency” enables girls like Mary Quinn a second chance because she lives on the margins of society as a petty thief. The Agency allows Mary to develop other skills, but there’s still limited options: should be become a wife, a governess, or servant; the other unsavory options being bandied about include becoming a prostitute or mistress. So, Lee creates an alternative job trajectory for Mary in this counterfactual, “totally unrealistic,” but nevertheless super fun speculative fiction wherein Mary can become a spy and report upon a particular household as a companion to the daughter of the prime suspect: a one Mr. Thorold, who may or may not be involved with the theft of priceless Indian subcontinent artifacts. At this point, it’s important to pause to say that one of the Lee’s great strengths in the strongly transnational and postcolonial tinge to her collection. Goods and services are being shipped all over the world in the novel, linking the Victorian era London to different nodal points for colonial capitalistic investments. Lee, of course, wants to make sure that even if there isn’t a tried and true marriage plot or courtship plot afloat, that there could be an alternative romance plot as Mary must deal with James Easton, a man who is researching the Thorold’s business dealings to find out whether or not they are as upstanding as they purport to be. James is a worthy counterpart to Mary insofar as he immediately notices how different she is. Her difference is, of course, another aspect that Lee plays with in one of the big surprises mid-way through the novel, which I will refuse to spoil for you. Suffice it to say that Lee’s first book in the Agency is that rare young adult work with a historical texture, a fantasy register, a detective fiction, and a courtship/romance all rolled into one.
[image error]
In the second book in the series, we found our heroine Mary Quinn, going under very deep cover, but this time as a young boy (renamed as Mark Quinn), working at a building site. She’s been dispatched to discover more details concerning the suspicious circumstances of a worker who was found dead, having fallen from the titular tower. Though Mary is game for this job, her overseers at the Agency are wary that such a duty might have psychological ramifications. You see: before Mary was saved and reformed by the Agency, she lived on the streets as a petty thief and hoodlum; she was able to survive in part, often relying upon disguises and passing as a man. Her elders wonder if such a job might trigger unsavory past experiences that could compromise her surveillance activities. Despite this warning, Mary decides that she can do the job, even requesting that she take residence at a working class type facility wherein she would not have the comforts or even the advantages of decent food. Mary’s work is at first not too difficult; she is able to get a job through Harkness, the site engineer, and begins working for the various people below him, which include the imposing and rather spiteful, Keenan, as well as his colleague, Reid. Of course, this series would not be complete with its central romance and fortunately, Lee sees fit to have James Easton, from book 1, return from his travels in India. He’s hired by Harkness to begin an independent assessment of the building site that would be conducted in order to clear him or any of his employees from wrongdoing in the death of Wick. When Mary—as Mark—accidentally bumps into him, James is one of the few to see so easily through the disguise, but he chooses not to break her cover. Indeed, this sequel sees James Easton willing to engage yet another partnership with Mary, presumably of course because of his strong feelings for her. There are of course the occasional issues related to Mary’s complicated identity background, which adds yet another wrinkle to the many dilemmas that arise in the course of the plotting. Lee’s narrative here occasionally flags as it attempts to retain tension throughout, but overall, the book is a spirited, if counterfactual look at an undercover women’s agency during the Victorian era.
In the latest installment, The Traitor in the Tunnel, Mary Quinn is actually undercover in Buckingham Palace! She is dispatched by the Agency in order to find out about a thief that may be pilfering precious items from the royal household. Of course, Lee is never intent to keep the first mystery the only one and soon other issues arise. Most importantly, the Prince of Wales is caught up in a murder scandal in which a close friend might have been killed in an opium den. Interestingly enough, the accused murdered actually may have ties to Mary herself, which ends up complicating and stretching out Mary’s own investments in her sleuthing. I am deliberately being cagey about the potential connection between Mary and the murderer precisely because I’ve attempted to keep a major plot point unspoiled that is revealed from the first book. Finally, Mary’s romance-nemesis, James Easton, returns yet again, as he is contracted to help with the building of a sewer system below London. As Mary soon discovers, the sewer and its connection to Buckingham Palace is a matter of national security. Fans of mystery and of YA historical will again be delighted by this title. Lee clearly has fun with her characters in this spirited third in the series. Fortunately, there are apparently plans for a fourth to appear sometime soon!
Buy the Books Here
http://www.amazon.com/The-Agency-House-Y-S-Lee/dp/076365289X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1359052764&sr=8-2&keywords=Y.S.+Lee
http://www.amazon.com/The-Agency-Body-Tower/dp/0763656437/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1361139912&sr=8-3&keywords=Y.S.+Lee
http://www.amazon.com/The-Agency-Traitor-Tunnel/dp/0763663441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367416563&sr=8-1&keywords=Y.S.+Lee
April 21, 2013
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 21, 2013
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for April 21, 2013
In this post, reviews of Kashmira Sheth’s My Dadima Wears a Sari (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi) (Peachtree Publishers, 2007) and Kashmira Sheth’s Monsoon Afternoon (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi (Peachtree Publishers, 2008); Paul Yee’s What Happened This Summer (Tradewind Books, 2006); Elsie Chapman’s Dualed (Random House Books for Young Readers, 2013); and Justina Chen Headley’s Return to Me (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2013).
A Review of Kashmira Sheth’s My Dadima Wears a Sari (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi) (Peachtree Publishers, 2007) and Monsoon Afternoon (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi (Peachtree Publishers, 2008).
It’s been awhile since I reviewed any children’s picture books and I recently had a chance to read the gorgeously illustrated and spirited narratives found in the collaborative publications produced by Yoshiko Jaeggi and Kashmira Sheth out of Peachtree Publishers. Sheth has already been reviewed on Asian American literature fans; please see, for instance, pylduck’s post on Sheth’s (and Pearce’s) most recent offering:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/141128.html
The picture book form is reliant upon a delicate balance between text and illustration. Jaeggi’s work in both books is absolutely exquisite; it seems as though the pictures have been produced in watercolor, giving both books a kind of dream-like quality that is perhaps perfect for the youthful reader. My Dadima Wears a Sari gives Sheth an opportunity to explore the cross-cultural and transnational dynamics of the titular piece of clothing. Here, the more Americanized young children, presumably of South Asian descent, receive a lesson from their “dadima” (a Gujarati term for grandmother) about the nature and personal history of her saris. As with other books that explore race and ethnicity, these children’s narratives are instructional in their approach, giving young readers the chance to understand what might be to them a foreign culture, but at the same time, Sheth and Jaeggi’s work will appeal to ethnically specific populations as well, who might be dealing with youth undergoing acculturation. This particular book also has a fun addition at the end, showing young readers how a sari can be worn. Whereas My Dadima Wears a Sari takes place the United States, Monsoon Afternoon is set in India. In that story, a young boy asks various members of his family to go outside and play, but everyone seems to be busy except for his grandfather, otherwise known as “dadaji.” The narrative thus reveals their bonding time on the arrival of the monsoon season. Here, the pedagogical conceit appears in the guise of the difference in weather patterns and Sheth does take time to explain the importance of the monsoon to her personal life in an author’s note the surfaces at the conclusion of this picture book.
Buy the Books Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Monsoon-Afternoon-Kashmira-Sheth/dp/1561454559/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1364148646&sr=8-4&keywords=kashmira+sheth
http://www.amazon.com/Dadima-Wears-Sari-Kashmira-Sheth/dp/1561453927/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1364148646&sr=8-7&keywords=kashmira+sheth
A Review of Paul Yee’s What Happened This Summer (Tradewind Books, 2006).
We reviewed a number of Paul Yee titles on Asian American literature fans, including some of his children’s books and a handful of his young adult titles. Plyduck’s latest review of a Paul Yee title was Ghost Train, posted here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/152518.html
What Happened This Summer is part of Yee’s work in the young adult genre; this publication is a curious one insofar as it is not listed as a collection of short stories or a novel per se, though it seems to be marketed as a general fictional work (set primarily in and around Vancouver, Canada). Since characters do recur across the stories, it seems best described as a story cycle or sequence. Because all of the stories are told in the first person perspective and most from the viewpoint of a Chinese Canadian youth, there is a kind of repetitive quality to the work that can detract from the important political contexts that Yee aims to convey. Indeed, the strength of What Happened This Summer is the thematic focus on generational ruptures between parents and their children, the lack of community building among immigrant youth, and the general malaise facing individuals as they struggle to acculturate to a new land and place. Yee is deft at weaving in particular historical and social contexts, including histories of Chinese migration, the continuing tensions among Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, the rise of China as a global economic power, and the ever-present lens of suspicion cast upon Asian immigrants due to emerging viruses from that region (like SARS). The strongest stories show Yee’s attentive consideration of form: one story employs the journal format and enhances the distinctiveness of its teenage narrator. In another, the narrator is studying for the TOEFL exam and finds himself struggling with the proper use of articles and Yee draws attention to the terrain of language as a kind of minefield, especially as certain words become bolded. For those looking for a grittier depiction of Chinese Canadian teenagers, Yee’s What Happened This Summer is certainly a good choice.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Happened-this-Summer-Paul/dp/1896580882/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363157361&sr=8-1&keywords=what+happened+this+summer
A Review of Elsie Chapman’s Dualed (Random House Books for Young Readers, 2013).
Elsie Chapman’s debut novel Dualed leads us back into the young adult fiction world in the subgenre known as the paranormal urban fantasy romance. Our narrator is West Grayer, a teenage girl, who lives in a speculative fictional world, Kersh, in which each individual is born with a double living in another city. Yes, there are TWO of each individual living in the same fictional world. Once these individuals reach a certain age, the Alts must battle to the death. The one that survives is called a Complete. Of course, everything isn’t so simple with the process. There are Strikers, assassins hired to help kill off one’s Alt. Those with more money and living in better areas inevitably have higher rates of completion. West Grayer, as we might expect, is an underdog. Her parents are dead; her siblings have in one way or another either been killed by their alts or have been accidentally killed. Her closest friend, Chord, completes, but West loses her brother Luc when he gets inadvertently drawn into the combat. Chapman’s premise is first-rate for the simple fact that it is so philosophical. How does one go about killing the person that looks exactly like oneself? Will that other person hold the same values, the same motivations? The amazon page takes the issue a little bit further by asking the question about the world itself in which children and teens are pitted against each other along with the tagline that assumes that the one that survives is “more worthy.” This moniker is interesting insofar as it suggests that the individual who is more efficient and skilled at killing the other is better. What kind of society would this be? This question is never actually fully explored in the novel. We get a sense of a shadowy governing system known as the Board, but we do not know why they devised this system or if indeed they are the ones in actual power. Fortunately, Chapman has at least one more novel in this series coming out, tentatively entitled Divided. Given the rather definitive ending of this novel, it will be interesting to see what road Chapman takes. In terms of the broader subgenre that we’ve reviewed here, Dualed would pair incredibly well with Zhang’s What’s Left of Me. The cultural critic in me can’t help but think a little bit imaginatively about these two writers and their fictional worlds, both which involve characters who ultimately have to deal with a kind of split in the self. Are we not in some kind of metaphorical consideration of Asian American identity? Haha! Yea, a bit of a stretch, but Chapman leaves enough room in her physical descriptions of West to wonder if there is a racial background to be discerned. Indeed, in these speculative fictional worlds, it is the question of social difference which remains a question mark and the intellectual work we must do to yoke such worlds to our own.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Dualed-Elsie-Chapman/dp/0307931544/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364621649&sr=1-1&keywords=elsie+chapman
A Review of Justina Chen Headley’s Return to Me (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2013).
Though I have a great love for the young adult/ paranormal/ urban/ romance/ fantasy genre, as demonstrated by my incessant reading of authors like Melissa de la Cruz, Yvonne Woon, Malinda Lo, and others, there is something absolutely refreshing about reading a YA fiction that is not so steeped in the supernatural. To be sure, Headley, perhaps in a nod to the shift in the speculative, does give her some of these characters a kind of sixth-sense, an ability at times to see visions that will mark the future (an intuitional skill arguably). Yet, Headley’s focus has always been—in this fourth novel as in her three previous ones—to contour the quite complicated nature of adolescent maturity. In Return to Me, our protagonist and first person narrator is Rebecca Muir, an aspiring teenage architect living in Seattle, who has just been accepted to Columbia University. When her father receives a promotion in the New York City area, all seems perfectly aligned for her entire family to stay together, which also includes a devoted mother and a rambunctious younger brother (named Reid). Not all is so perfect of course. Rebecca (also nicknamed Reb, or Rebel) is in a serious relationship (with Jackson) and must consider whether or not to continue it. With counsel from her father, she decides to give it a shot, but the novel immediately shifts gears once they have arrived in New York. Reb’s Dad is away on a business trip and does not answer his phone; they soon discover that he is having an affair and that he is separating from their mother. Headley thus uses this novel to explore how one family recovers and heals from this kind of rift and the process is not entirely graceful. For instance, Reb’s mother must find a new identity to carve out in light of the fact that she may be forced to find another source of income in order to finance Reb’s schooling. Reb herself reconsiders the importance of Jackson in her life and whether or not she really wants to attend Columbia. Finally, Reb’s grandfather suggests they all retreat to Hawaii, with an opportunity to restore and rejuvenate. When the family does relocate for a period, Headley’s characters begin to see their rebirths. I always appreciate Headley’s novels because she manages that rare balance: to provide her characters with closure, while not succumbing to an excessively sentimental ending. Another engaging YA fiction.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Return-Me-Justina-Chen/dp/0316102555/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364401738&sr=8-1&keywords=justina+chen
In this post, reviews of Kashmira Sheth’s My Dadima Wears a Sari (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi) (Peachtree Publishers, 2007) and Kashmira Sheth’s Monsoon Afternoon (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi (Peachtree Publishers, 2008); Paul Yee’s What Happened This Summer (Tradewind Books, 2006); Elsie Chapman’s Dualed (Random House Books for Young Readers, 2013); and Justina Chen Headley’s Return to Me (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2013).
A Review of Kashmira Sheth’s My Dadima Wears a Sari (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi) (Peachtree Publishers, 2007) and Monsoon Afternoon (illustrated by Yoshiko Jaeggi (Peachtree Publishers, 2008).
It’s been awhile since I reviewed any children’s picture books and I recently had a chance to read the gorgeously illustrated and spirited narratives found in the collaborative publications produced by Yoshiko Jaeggi and Kashmira Sheth out of Peachtree Publishers. Sheth has already been reviewed on Asian American literature fans; please see, for instance, pylduck’s post on Sheth’s (and Pearce’s) most recent offering:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/141128.html
The picture book form is reliant upon a delicate balance between text and illustration. Jaeggi’s work in both books is absolutely exquisite; it seems as though the pictures have been produced in watercolor, giving both books a kind of dream-like quality that is perhaps perfect for the youthful reader. My Dadima Wears a Sari gives Sheth an opportunity to explore the cross-cultural and transnational dynamics of the titular piece of clothing. Here, the more Americanized young children, presumably of South Asian descent, receive a lesson from their “dadima” (a Gujarati term for grandmother) about the nature and personal history of her saris. As with other books that explore race and ethnicity, these children’s narratives are instructional in their approach, giving young readers the chance to understand what might be to them a foreign culture, but at the same time, Sheth and Jaeggi’s work will appeal to ethnically specific populations as well, who might be dealing with youth undergoing acculturation. This particular book also has a fun addition at the end, showing young readers how a sari can be worn. Whereas My Dadima Wears a Sari takes place the United States, Monsoon Afternoon is set in India. In that story, a young boy asks various members of his family to go outside and play, but everyone seems to be busy except for his grandfather, otherwise known as “dadaji.” The narrative thus reveals their bonding time on the arrival of the monsoon season. Here, the pedagogical conceit appears in the guise of the difference in weather patterns and Sheth does take time to explain the importance of the monsoon to her personal life in an author’s note the surfaces at the conclusion of this picture book.
Buy the Books Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Monsoon-Afternoon-Kashmira-Sheth/dp/1561454559/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1364148646&sr=8-4&keywords=kashmira+sheth
http://www.amazon.com/Dadima-Wears-Sari-Kashmira-Sheth/dp/1561453927/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1364148646&sr=8-7&keywords=kashmira+sheth
A Review of Paul Yee’s What Happened This Summer (Tradewind Books, 2006).
We reviewed a number of Paul Yee titles on Asian American literature fans, including some of his children’s books and a handful of his young adult titles. Plyduck’s latest review of a Paul Yee title was Ghost Train, posted here:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/152518.html
What Happened This Summer is part of Yee’s work in the young adult genre; this publication is a curious one insofar as it is not listed as a collection of short stories or a novel per se, though it seems to be marketed as a general fictional work (set primarily in and around Vancouver, Canada). Since characters do recur across the stories, it seems best described as a story cycle or sequence. Because all of the stories are told in the first person perspective and most from the viewpoint of a Chinese Canadian youth, there is a kind of repetitive quality to the work that can detract from the important political contexts that Yee aims to convey. Indeed, the strength of What Happened This Summer is the thematic focus on generational ruptures between parents and their children, the lack of community building among immigrant youth, and the general malaise facing individuals as they struggle to acculturate to a new land and place. Yee is deft at weaving in particular historical and social contexts, including histories of Chinese migration, the continuing tensions among Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, the rise of China as a global economic power, and the ever-present lens of suspicion cast upon Asian immigrants due to emerging viruses from that region (like SARS). The strongest stories show Yee’s attentive consideration of form: one story employs the journal format and enhances the distinctiveness of its teenage narrator. In another, the narrator is studying for the TOEFL exam and finds himself struggling with the proper use of articles and Yee draws attention to the terrain of language as a kind of minefield, especially as certain words become bolded. For those looking for a grittier depiction of Chinese Canadian teenagers, Yee’s What Happened This Summer is certainly a good choice.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Happened-this-Summer-Paul/dp/1896580882/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363157361&sr=8-1&keywords=what+happened+this+summer
A Review of Elsie Chapman’s Dualed (Random House Books for Young Readers, 2013).
Elsie Chapman’s debut novel Dualed leads us back into the young adult fiction world in the subgenre known as the paranormal urban fantasy romance. Our narrator is West Grayer, a teenage girl, who lives in a speculative fictional world, Kersh, in which each individual is born with a double living in another city. Yes, there are TWO of each individual living in the same fictional world. Once these individuals reach a certain age, the Alts must battle to the death. The one that survives is called a Complete. Of course, everything isn’t so simple with the process. There are Strikers, assassins hired to help kill off one’s Alt. Those with more money and living in better areas inevitably have higher rates of completion. West Grayer, as we might expect, is an underdog. Her parents are dead; her siblings have in one way or another either been killed by their alts or have been accidentally killed. Her closest friend, Chord, completes, but West loses her brother Luc when he gets inadvertently drawn into the combat. Chapman’s premise is first-rate for the simple fact that it is so philosophical. How does one go about killing the person that looks exactly like oneself? Will that other person hold the same values, the same motivations? The amazon page takes the issue a little bit further by asking the question about the world itself in which children and teens are pitted against each other along with the tagline that assumes that the one that survives is “more worthy.” This moniker is interesting insofar as it suggests that the individual who is more efficient and skilled at killing the other is better. What kind of society would this be? This question is never actually fully explored in the novel. We get a sense of a shadowy governing system known as the Board, but we do not know why they devised this system or if indeed they are the ones in actual power. Fortunately, Chapman has at least one more novel in this series coming out, tentatively entitled Divided. Given the rather definitive ending of this novel, it will be interesting to see what road Chapman takes. In terms of the broader subgenre that we’ve reviewed here, Dualed would pair incredibly well with Zhang’s What’s Left of Me. The cultural critic in me can’t help but think a little bit imaginatively about these two writers and their fictional worlds, both which involve characters who ultimately have to deal with a kind of split in the self. Are we not in some kind of metaphorical consideration of Asian American identity? Haha! Yea, a bit of a stretch, but Chapman leaves enough room in her physical descriptions of West to wonder if there is a racial background to be discerned. Indeed, in these speculative fictional worlds, it is the question of social difference which remains a question mark and the intellectual work we must do to yoke such worlds to our own.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Dualed-Elsie-Chapman/dp/0307931544/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364621649&sr=1-1&keywords=elsie+chapman
A Review of Justina Chen Headley’s Return to Me (Little Brown Books for Young Readers, 2013).
Though I have a great love for the young adult/ paranormal/ urban/ romance/ fantasy genre, as demonstrated by my incessant reading of authors like Melissa de la Cruz, Yvonne Woon, Malinda Lo, and others, there is something absolutely refreshing about reading a YA fiction that is not so steeped in the supernatural. To be sure, Headley, perhaps in a nod to the shift in the speculative, does give her some of these characters a kind of sixth-sense, an ability at times to see visions that will mark the future (an intuitional skill arguably). Yet, Headley’s focus has always been—in this fourth novel as in her three previous ones—to contour the quite complicated nature of adolescent maturity. In Return to Me, our protagonist and first person narrator is Rebecca Muir, an aspiring teenage architect living in Seattle, who has just been accepted to Columbia University. When her father receives a promotion in the New York City area, all seems perfectly aligned for her entire family to stay together, which also includes a devoted mother and a rambunctious younger brother (named Reid). Not all is so perfect of course. Rebecca (also nicknamed Reb, or Rebel) is in a serious relationship (with Jackson) and must consider whether or not to continue it. With counsel from her father, she decides to give it a shot, but the novel immediately shifts gears once they have arrived in New York. Reb’s Dad is away on a business trip and does not answer his phone; they soon discover that he is having an affair and that he is separating from their mother. Headley thus uses this novel to explore how one family recovers and heals from this kind of rift and the process is not entirely graceful. For instance, Reb’s mother must find a new identity to carve out in light of the fact that she may be forced to find another source of income in order to finance Reb’s schooling. Reb herself reconsiders the importance of Jackson in her life and whether or not she really wants to attend Columbia. Finally, Reb’s grandfather suggests they all retreat to Hawaii, with an opportunity to restore and rejuvenate. When the family does relocate for a period, Headley’s characters begin to see their rebirths. I always appreciate Headley’s novels because she manages that rare balance: to provide her characters with closure, while not succumbing to an excessively sentimental ending. Another engaging YA fiction.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Return-Me-Justina-Chen/dp/0316102555/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364401738&sr=8-1&keywords=justina+chen
April 13, 2013
Asian American Literature Fans Megapost for April 13, 2013.
Asian American Literature Fans Megapost for April 13, 2013.
In this post, reviews of Abhishek Singh’s Krishna (Image Comics, 2012), Amit Majmudar’s The Abundance (Metropolitan Books, 2013), Indira Ganesan’s As Sweet As Honey (Knopf, 2013), and Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave (Knopf, 2013).
A Review of Abhishek Singh’s Krishna (Image Comics, 2012).
Abhishek Singh’s lushly illustrated graphic re-telling Krishna engages the story of the Hindu avatar. Singh follows the general storyline offered by important source materials. Much of the early half of the novel follows Krishna’s upbringing, which in part involves the taming of dangerous animals; later he seeks vengeance against the evil figure who tried to have him killed as an infant (due to a prophecy). Singh’s work is especially minimalist and relies upon the power of the visuals to carry the story. This aesthetic also encourages more interpretive work on the part of the reader, connecting panel sequences against each other. A definite must-read for those interested in the graphic narrative form, especially in its unique reconsideration and recreation of spiritual texts. I’ve included extra pictures in this review so you can get a sense of the epic tapestry that Singh creates in this work.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/KRISHNA-Journey-Within-Abhishek-Singh/dp/160706653X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365708568&sr=8-1&keywords=abhishek+singh
A Review of Amit Majmudar’s The Abundance (Metropolitan Books, 2013).
I was pleasantly surprised to see the listing for Amit Majmudar’s The Abundance appear so soon after his luminous debut novel, Partitions. Majmudar is also the author of two poetry collections. The Abundance shows Majmudar’s range as a fiction writer, as he moves from the historical foundations of his first novel to the immigrant setting of his second. Set in the Midwest, the unnamed narrator is an aged grandmother of Indian descent who is dying of cancer. The novel is far more about family dynamics than anything else and Majmudar takes some time carving out some of the intricacies that emerge here. The narrator’s husband, Abhi, is a successful medical doctor, while her two children, Mala and Ronak, take divergent routes to their Americanization. Ronak ends up marrying out of class and caste, a Caucasian American named Amber and working first in finance, while Mala dutifully follows Indian customs, getting an arranged marriage, while also following in her parents’ footsteps by becoming a medical doctor (an ENT specialist). With the focus so often on sons in Asian cultures, you can expect that Ronak, despite his more rebellious ways, is still perceived as the favored child. Mala, looking to get closer to her mother in the little time that is left, makes concrete efforts to connect, especially by learning the cooking recipes that have been a part of the family life (from whence the hardcover’s bright book jacket filled with spices takes its inspiration). One important backstory becomes the realization that the narrator did ultimately place her own career as a medical doctor on the backburner to raise Mala and Ronak, so Majmudar takes on the question of balancing a professional career and the work of motherhood. As the novel moves toward the conclusion, Majmudar includes two intriguing developments, a kind of metafictional nod to the book’s construct. First, Ronak finds out that Mala is documenting their mother’s recipes and thinks it would be a good idea to get it published as a book. Of course, the problem becomes the commercialization and sentimentalization of the whole experience of the narrator’s dying, and this event places a serious wedge among family members. Second, we discover that Mala has a keen interest in English, a topic that she perhaps eschewed in order to follow her parents’ professional trajectories. At some point, Mala and her mother discuss a kind of autobiographical conceit where the writer might take on the first person perspective of their biographical subject. These two events allow Majmudar’s book to rise above its more traditional immigrant family saga in that it gestures to the narrative not only as a deeply moving story concerning disease and disintegration and the aging process, but also one that delves into the craft and aesthetic implications behind that narrative.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Abundance-Novel-Amit-Majmudar/dp/0805096582/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363879361&sr=8-1&keywords=amit+majmudar
A Review of Indira Ganesan’s As Sweet As Honey (Knopf, 2013)
With the imprint of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse all over these pages, it was clear to see the inspiration for Indira Ganesan’s third novel, As Sweet as Honey. As Sweet as Honey takes place on a fictional island called Pi (apparently the settings for Ganesan’s other novels which I admit I have not yet had a chance to read! EEEK!). Fortunately, Woolf’s novel is not replicated too directly and Ganesan takes her own approach to the theme of loss as it moves into the transnational and immigrant context. Woolf’s novel is so much about the connections among individual characters and how they all cannot or do not necessarily articulate their direct thoughts and feelings to each other. The modernist aesthetic works insofar as readers are still provided tremendous access to the patchwork of thoughts and feelings of each character through Woolf’s use of the stream-of-consciousness style. Thus, characters, as much as they are alienated from one another, nevertheless find cohesion through the stylistic. In this sense, Woolf has always been the quintessential modernist writer. But I digress. Ganesan looks to focus more broadly on the theme of the lighthouse as perhaps a kind of allegory for transnational movement. The Mrs. Ramsay analogue is Meterling, a very tall woman who embarks on a very non-tradition marriage with Archer, an Outlander from the UK. Meterling is soon pregnant. Love marriages are a big no-no, as we have seen in various books, so Meterling and Archer’s union creates a little bit of a scandal, but tragedy strikes when Archer dies due to a heart condition. In the wake of the romance’s abrupt conclusion, Meterling begins to eventually develop relations with Archer’s side of the family; one individual in particular, Simon, Archer’s younger brother, takes great pains to get to know Meterling and wouldn’t you know it: Simon and Meterling fall in love. There are of course many complications: Meterling’s extended family find the mourning period too brief and worry that yet another marriage to someone outside caste and class would result in residual fallout for other women of marriageable age within their kinship system. Further still, once Simon and Meterling decide to bring up the child in the UK, they begin to realize that there is a spectral presence following them. And of course I haven’t even spoken about Ganesan’s interesting narrative perspective, which primarily invokes a vague “we” standpoint of three young children brought up on Pi (mostly it’s from Mina’s perspective, but we also get shades of her siblings Rasi and Sanjay), who are our primary focalizers. The second portion is the most fascinating from the storytelling perspective, because it’s unclear how this information comes to be known and who is directing our vision of the fictional world. The final arc brings us back to Pi, where a reunion of sorts occurs. Ganesan brings us back to the lighthouse motif, but we don’t even need it: we already have that sense that return never means reclamation, that time passes and all we can do is live with our choices.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/As-Sweet-Honey-Indira-Ganesan/dp/0307960447/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363107183&sr=8-1&keywords=indira+ganesan
A Review of Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave (Knopf, 2013).
Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave is a brutal and astonishing memoir, written as a chronicle of one woman’s life following her experiences during and subsequent to the Indian tsunami of 2004. She, along with her family, (her two children Vik and Malli, her husband Steve, and her parents) are in a seaside Sri Lankan community known as Yala when the wave hits. She has little time before realizing what is happening and in a split second decision: she takes her children, her husband, gets into the car of a jeep, but they are still eventually overtaken by the rushing water. Indeed, she does not pause to warn her parents who had been staying in the next room. Moments like this are ones that haunt her in the difficult years that will follow. Deraniyagala is separated from her family at that point and their fates at first are unclear and the memoir from this point takes the perspective of a woman coming to terms with various forms and manifestations of loss. The struggle of mourning is depicted with devastating clarity and this memoir is not for the light of heart. Deraniyagala does not shy away from some of the deepest and conflicted feelings and events that arise during this period: suicidal ideation, obsessional tendencies, and the desire to self-destruct. Of course, there is an arc and trajectory to this work and the conclusion sees Deraniyagala find new ways to cope and to find the will to survive.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Wave-Sonali-Deraniyagala/dp/0307962695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363458173&sr=8-1&keywords=sonali+deraniyagala
In this post, reviews of Abhishek Singh’s Krishna (Image Comics, 2012), Amit Majmudar’s The Abundance (Metropolitan Books, 2013), Indira Ganesan’s As Sweet As Honey (Knopf, 2013), and Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave (Knopf, 2013).
A Review of Abhishek Singh’s Krishna (Image Comics, 2012).
Abhishek Singh’s lushly illustrated graphic re-telling Krishna engages the story of the Hindu avatar. Singh follows the general storyline offered by important source materials. Much of the early half of the novel follows Krishna’s upbringing, which in part involves the taming of dangerous animals; later he seeks vengeance against the evil figure who tried to have him killed as an infant (due to a prophecy). Singh’s work is especially minimalist and relies upon the power of the visuals to carry the story. This aesthetic also encourages more interpretive work on the part of the reader, connecting panel sequences against each other. A definite must-read for those interested in the graphic narrative form, especially in its unique reconsideration and recreation of spiritual texts. I’ve included extra pictures in this review so you can get a sense of the epic tapestry that Singh creates in this work.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/KRISHNA-Journey-Within-Abhishek-Singh/dp/160706653X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365708568&sr=8-1&keywords=abhishek+singh
A Review of Amit Majmudar’s The Abundance (Metropolitan Books, 2013).
I was pleasantly surprised to see the listing for Amit Majmudar’s The Abundance appear so soon after his luminous debut novel, Partitions. Majmudar is also the author of two poetry collections. The Abundance shows Majmudar’s range as a fiction writer, as he moves from the historical foundations of his first novel to the immigrant setting of his second. Set in the Midwest, the unnamed narrator is an aged grandmother of Indian descent who is dying of cancer. The novel is far more about family dynamics than anything else and Majmudar takes some time carving out some of the intricacies that emerge here. The narrator’s husband, Abhi, is a successful medical doctor, while her two children, Mala and Ronak, take divergent routes to their Americanization. Ronak ends up marrying out of class and caste, a Caucasian American named Amber and working first in finance, while Mala dutifully follows Indian customs, getting an arranged marriage, while also following in her parents’ footsteps by becoming a medical doctor (an ENT specialist). With the focus so often on sons in Asian cultures, you can expect that Ronak, despite his more rebellious ways, is still perceived as the favored child. Mala, looking to get closer to her mother in the little time that is left, makes concrete efforts to connect, especially by learning the cooking recipes that have been a part of the family life (from whence the hardcover’s bright book jacket filled with spices takes its inspiration). One important backstory becomes the realization that the narrator did ultimately place her own career as a medical doctor on the backburner to raise Mala and Ronak, so Majmudar takes on the question of balancing a professional career and the work of motherhood. As the novel moves toward the conclusion, Majmudar includes two intriguing developments, a kind of metafictional nod to the book’s construct. First, Ronak finds out that Mala is documenting their mother’s recipes and thinks it would be a good idea to get it published as a book. Of course, the problem becomes the commercialization and sentimentalization of the whole experience of the narrator’s dying, and this event places a serious wedge among family members. Second, we discover that Mala has a keen interest in English, a topic that she perhaps eschewed in order to follow her parents’ professional trajectories. At some point, Mala and her mother discuss a kind of autobiographical conceit where the writer might take on the first person perspective of their biographical subject. These two events allow Majmudar’s book to rise above its more traditional immigrant family saga in that it gestures to the narrative not only as a deeply moving story concerning disease and disintegration and the aging process, but also one that delves into the craft and aesthetic implications behind that narrative.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Abundance-Novel-Amit-Majmudar/dp/0805096582/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363879361&sr=8-1&keywords=amit+majmudar
A Review of Indira Ganesan’s As Sweet As Honey (Knopf, 2013)
With the imprint of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse all over these pages, it was clear to see the inspiration for Indira Ganesan’s third novel, As Sweet as Honey. As Sweet as Honey takes place on a fictional island called Pi (apparently the settings for Ganesan’s other novels which I admit I have not yet had a chance to read! EEEK!). Fortunately, Woolf’s novel is not replicated too directly and Ganesan takes her own approach to the theme of loss as it moves into the transnational and immigrant context. Woolf’s novel is so much about the connections among individual characters and how they all cannot or do not necessarily articulate their direct thoughts and feelings to each other. The modernist aesthetic works insofar as readers are still provided tremendous access to the patchwork of thoughts and feelings of each character through Woolf’s use of the stream-of-consciousness style. Thus, characters, as much as they are alienated from one another, nevertheless find cohesion through the stylistic. In this sense, Woolf has always been the quintessential modernist writer. But I digress. Ganesan looks to focus more broadly on the theme of the lighthouse as perhaps a kind of allegory for transnational movement. The Mrs. Ramsay analogue is Meterling, a very tall woman who embarks on a very non-tradition marriage with Archer, an Outlander from the UK. Meterling is soon pregnant. Love marriages are a big no-no, as we have seen in various books, so Meterling and Archer’s union creates a little bit of a scandal, but tragedy strikes when Archer dies due to a heart condition. In the wake of the romance’s abrupt conclusion, Meterling begins to eventually develop relations with Archer’s side of the family; one individual in particular, Simon, Archer’s younger brother, takes great pains to get to know Meterling and wouldn’t you know it: Simon and Meterling fall in love. There are of course many complications: Meterling’s extended family find the mourning period too brief and worry that yet another marriage to someone outside caste and class would result in residual fallout for other women of marriageable age within their kinship system. Further still, once Simon and Meterling decide to bring up the child in the UK, they begin to realize that there is a spectral presence following them. And of course I haven’t even spoken about Ganesan’s interesting narrative perspective, which primarily invokes a vague “we” standpoint of three young children brought up on Pi (mostly it’s from Mina’s perspective, but we also get shades of her siblings Rasi and Sanjay), who are our primary focalizers. The second portion is the most fascinating from the storytelling perspective, because it’s unclear how this information comes to be known and who is directing our vision of the fictional world. The final arc brings us back to Pi, where a reunion of sorts occurs. Ganesan brings us back to the lighthouse motif, but we don’t even need it: we already have that sense that return never means reclamation, that time passes and all we can do is live with our choices.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/As-Sweet-Honey-Indira-Ganesan/dp/0307960447/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363107183&sr=8-1&keywords=indira+ganesan
A Review of Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave (Knopf, 2013).
Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave is a brutal and astonishing memoir, written as a chronicle of one woman’s life following her experiences during and subsequent to the Indian tsunami of 2004. She, along with her family, (her two children Vik and Malli, her husband Steve, and her parents) are in a seaside Sri Lankan community known as Yala when the wave hits. She has little time before realizing what is happening and in a split second decision: she takes her children, her husband, gets into the car of a jeep, but they are still eventually overtaken by the rushing water. Indeed, she does not pause to warn her parents who had been staying in the next room. Moments like this are ones that haunt her in the difficult years that will follow. Deraniyagala is separated from her family at that point and their fates at first are unclear and the memoir from this point takes the perspective of a woman coming to terms with various forms and manifestations of loss. The struggle of mourning is depicted with devastating clarity and this memoir is not for the light of heart. Deraniyagala does not shy away from some of the deepest and conflicted feelings and events that arise during this period: suicidal ideation, obsessional tendencies, and the desire to self-destruct. Of course, there is an arc and trajectory to this work and the conclusion sees Deraniyagala find new ways to cope and to find the will to survive.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Wave-Sonali-Deraniyagala/dp/0307962695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363458173&sr=8-1&keywords=sonali+deraniyagala
March 29, 2013
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 29 2013
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 29 2013
A Review of Tania James’s Aerogrammes (Vintage, 2013); Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (Riverhead Hardcover, 2013); Lakshmi Persaud’s Daughters of Empire (Peepal Tree Press, 2013); Annapurna Potluri’s The Grammarian (Counterpoint Press, 2013).
A Review of Tania James’s Aerogrammes (Vintage, 2013)
What a pleasure it is to return to reading short story collections. It’s been a while since I’ve read one and I sometimes forget how poetic short story collections can be, for the simple fact that as a reader, we begin to try to connect all the stories together despite how disparate they may be in storytelling approach, subject matter, and characterization. Tania James’s debut short story collection (she is also author of the novel, Atlas of Unknowns, which I also reviewed here on Asian American Literature Fans), Aerogrammes, is exquisitely rendered and quietly heartbreaking. While many involve South Asian contexts, some do not. My favorite short story was probably the second, “What to do with Henry,” in which the titular Henry is a chimpanzee that is “adopted” alongside an out-of-wedlock young girl (named Neneh) from Sierra Leone by a woman named Pearl, whose husband had engaged in an extramarital affair. By the story’s conclusion, Pearl has passed away, Henry has been donated to a local zoo, and Neneh finds herself wondering about Henry, if Henry still remembered their cherished time together. But, the short story resonates and grows in its poignancy because we begin to see that, for Neneh, Henry really is all the family she has left. Other standout stories include “The Gulf,” told through the eyes of a young girl who elliptically narrates the marital troubles of her parents; “Aerogrammes,” the title story which focuses on the friendship developed between an aged man, Mr. Panicker, and an elderly woman in the space of a nursing home; “Ethnic Ken,” which relates the subtle ways that an Indian grandfather finds himself struggling to acculturate to America; and “Escape Key,” the story of a budding writer named Neel as his attempt to remain connected to his family in the wake of his brother’s tragic accident, which leaves him paralyzed. As I stated earlier, an absolutely exquisite collection, one to be savored over the course of repeated readings and one I will surely add to future course offerings.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Aerogrammes-Other-Stories-Tania-James/dp/0307268918/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341932849&sr=8-1&keywords=Tania+James
http://www.amazon.com/Aerogrammes-Vintage-Contemporaries-Tania-James/dp/0307389022/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364572884&sr=1-2&keywords=Tania+James+Aerogrammes
A Review of Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (Riverhead Hardcover, 2013).
I’m a huge, huge “Asian American literature fan” of Mohsin Hamid, who we really can’t quite call an Asian American writer in the strictest sense. He currently lives in Pakistan and his novels can’t always or readily be adhered to U.S. contexts. Nevertheless, Hamid is certainly a transnational author in which Asia and Pakistan are usually nodal points in a larger global trajectory. This issue plays out especially in relation to economics and national modernization in Hamid’s biting satire and third novel: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. Certainly, there is something Swiftian—if I might be so jargonish—at work in this novel as it is billed as a “how to” novel, but instead gives us a portrait on one boy’s rise from country urchin to a kind of business magnate. If this work is actually a “how to” book on how to “get filthy rich in rising Asia,” Hamid’s narrative would be pretty depressing. The main character’s trajectory is one in which he pines away for the woman he truly loves, while marrying a woman who he merely tolerates. Then, there’s the whole issue of upward mobility, which is predicated on corruption, nepotism, and alternative economies. Perhaps the most fascinating element about this novel is Hamid’s choice of narrative perspective which is primarily conducted in the second person. At some point, late in the narrative, there is a kind of authorial intrusion that makes this novel a kind of philosophically driven metafiction that speaks to the author’s desire to give something back to his characters—supposedly in this case precisely because the main character’s life has been such a complicated one. Hamid is an agent provocateur and this novel is precisely the kind to provoke strong discussions and strong classroom discussions and I will no doubt add this book to my “teachable text” list. In the meantime, I encourage you to have a “filthy rich” reading experience by taking on Hamid’s latest novel.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Filthy-Rich-Rising-Asia/dp/1594487294/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363969466&sr=8-1&keywords=Mohsin+Hamid
A Review of Lakshmi Persaud’s Daughters of Empire (Peepal Tree Press, 2013).
So, I am reviewing Lakshmi Persaud’s Daughters of Empire, but also wanted to alert you to a press, which I have been following for a bit and been absolutely fascinated by: Their offerings can be found here:
http://www.peepaltreepress.com/home.asp
Peepal Tree Press’s catalog focuses on Caribbean writers. For the purposes of this community, given the “coolie labor” and the trade routes that linked the Caribbean to Asia, there is a rather fascinating history of multiracial Asian communities. Reflecting this history, there are a number of what we might more broadly call diasporic Asian writers; I focus on Lakshmi Persaud in this review, but Peepal Tree opened up a whole archive that I was not aware of and reminded me of my much beloved master’s exam during graduate school. Despite the stress of preparing for that exam, I made the brave choice of studying Anglophone literatures and it widened my understanding of World Literatures in English. I picked three areas, including the Caribbean, Africa, and India and got to read a diverse range of writers, including Bessie head, Garth St. Omer, Caryl Phillips, Derek Walcott and Anita Desai. As I focused my dissertation on Asian American literature with all of its more traditional definitions in mind, a hemispheric approach was largely lost. A press like Peepal Tree reminds of us the hemispheric history of Asian America more broadly defined. With writers on its catalog like Weiling Jin, Jan Lo Shinebourne and David Dabydeen, I expect there will be quite more work to do for Asian Americanists as we deal not only with east-west transnationalisms, but north and south migrations and postcolonial reverberations.
In Persaud’s Daughters of Empire (Persaud also author of a number of other works, including but not limited to: Butterfly in the Wind, For the Love of My Name, Sastra, and Raise the Lanterns High), a Indo-Trinidadian immigrant woman named Amira Vidhur has moved to London along with her husband, Santosh, due to his job promotion. But all is not perfect: the culture is so different and her daughters, Anjali, Satisha, and Vidya struggle to find the best schools to be enrolled in. Over time, Amira does make some close friendships with many in her local community and Persaud is clearly invested in the exploration of neighborly networks and feminist intersubjectivity. At the same time, Amira wants to retain her cultural and familial ties to Trinidad, which includes a very close relationship to her sister Ishani (who is herself married to a man named Ravi). In order to balance acculturation with a respect for the homeland, Amira and Santosh agree to traveling often to Trinidad, most of often for the summers, where Anjali, Satisha, and Vidya can come to appreciate their geographical heritage. As the novel moves forward, we see Amira struggle with leaving behind a career in teaching to become a full-time mother. She finds some respite in her gardening, but as her children grow, so do their own personal conflicts and the later stages of the novel see Persaud focusing on more on the daughters, who have various career aspirations. Anjali for instance is looking to pursue a graduate degree, but the novel takes a tremendously dark turn at that point and the family and its extended contacts must come together to protect Anjali. Persaud is a patient writer and she takes great care with these characters, especially marking out the contours of all the main figures, so the novel accrues a kind of dynamic equilibrium that is the foundation of the immigrant family saga.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Daughters-Empire-Lakshmi-Persaud/dp/1845231872/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364400510&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=lakshmi+pesaud
A Review of Annapurna Potluri’s The Grammarian (Counterpoint Press, 2013).
I’ve been having some writers’ blocks lately, so what have I been doing to do pass the time is to read more books (rawr). As a quick side note, here are some other offerings of Counterpoint Press (publisher of a number of other authors who might be of interest here, including Judy Fong Bates and Denise Chong):
http://counterpointpress.com/
Annapurna Potluri’s promising debut novel, The Grammarian, follows the transnational experiences of a French linguist (of Swiss ancestry) named Alexandre Lautens. He travels to Southern India in the early 20th century to document and to help construct a language book based upon Telugu. He stays with the Adivis, a high-powered local family with large land-holdings. The patriarch, Shiva, is married to Lalita, and is father to two daughters; the elder is Anjali, described as beautiful, but apparently “disfigured” from polio and then the younger, Mohini, who is slated to be married. Potluri’s novel takes a nod from Forster in its execution of the Westerner who comes to India and ends up embroiled in a kind of local scandal. I do not want to ruin the plot so much, but the novel is quite adept at showing how cultural illiteracy can ultimately impact so many different lives. The irony is that Lautens is so skilled at linguistic study, but even with certain forms of cultural acquisition, his understanding of gender and sexual dynamics as it relates to Indian culture is unfortunately and tragically limited. Perhaps, the most poignant aspect of Potluri’s narrative is the way in which one seemingly minor moment can become the focal point for Anjali’s life, a kind of turning point that leads to a completely different life trajectory. As Lautens and Anjali’s lives eventually move into separate directions, Potluri has the difficult task of keeping those characters somehow united in thought and in narrative-space. It is here that the novel finds the most fragility and the later arcs require Potluri to canvas over wider sweeps of time in order to come to the novel’s more hurried conclusion. Because Potluri is so adept at focalizing the narrative through Lautens in those early chapters, which seems him taking in the Indian landscapes around him, the final sequence occasionally seems too rushed. Nevertheless, the emotional impact of the story will remain.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Grammarian-Novel-Annapurna-Potluri/dp/1619021021/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364140267&sr=8-1&keywords=annapurna+potluri
A Review of Tania James’s Aerogrammes (Vintage, 2013); Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (Riverhead Hardcover, 2013); Lakshmi Persaud’s Daughters of Empire (Peepal Tree Press, 2013); Annapurna Potluri’s The Grammarian (Counterpoint Press, 2013).
A Review of Tania James’s Aerogrammes (Vintage, 2013)
What a pleasure it is to return to reading short story collections. It’s been a while since I’ve read one and I sometimes forget how poetic short story collections can be, for the simple fact that as a reader, we begin to try to connect all the stories together despite how disparate they may be in storytelling approach, subject matter, and characterization. Tania James’s debut short story collection (she is also author of the novel, Atlas of Unknowns, which I also reviewed here on Asian American Literature Fans), Aerogrammes, is exquisitely rendered and quietly heartbreaking. While many involve South Asian contexts, some do not. My favorite short story was probably the second, “What to do with Henry,” in which the titular Henry is a chimpanzee that is “adopted” alongside an out-of-wedlock young girl (named Neneh) from Sierra Leone by a woman named Pearl, whose husband had engaged in an extramarital affair. By the story’s conclusion, Pearl has passed away, Henry has been donated to a local zoo, and Neneh finds herself wondering about Henry, if Henry still remembered their cherished time together. But, the short story resonates and grows in its poignancy because we begin to see that, for Neneh, Henry really is all the family she has left. Other standout stories include “The Gulf,” told through the eyes of a young girl who elliptically narrates the marital troubles of her parents; “Aerogrammes,” the title story which focuses on the friendship developed between an aged man, Mr. Panicker, and an elderly woman in the space of a nursing home; “Ethnic Ken,” which relates the subtle ways that an Indian grandfather finds himself struggling to acculturate to America; and “Escape Key,” the story of a budding writer named Neel as his attempt to remain connected to his family in the wake of his brother’s tragic accident, which leaves him paralyzed. As I stated earlier, an absolutely exquisite collection, one to be savored over the course of repeated readings and one I will surely add to future course offerings.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Aerogrammes-Other-Stories-Tania-James/dp/0307268918/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341932849&sr=8-1&keywords=Tania+James
http://www.amazon.com/Aerogrammes-Vintage-Contemporaries-Tania-James/dp/0307389022/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364572884&sr=1-2&keywords=Tania+James+Aerogrammes
A Review of Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (Riverhead Hardcover, 2013).
I’m a huge, huge “Asian American literature fan” of Mohsin Hamid, who we really can’t quite call an Asian American writer in the strictest sense. He currently lives in Pakistan and his novels can’t always or readily be adhered to U.S. contexts. Nevertheless, Hamid is certainly a transnational author in which Asia and Pakistan are usually nodal points in a larger global trajectory. This issue plays out especially in relation to economics and national modernization in Hamid’s biting satire and third novel: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. Certainly, there is something Swiftian—if I might be so jargonish—at work in this novel as it is billed as a “how to” novel, but instead gives us a portrait on one boy’s rise from country urchin to a kind of business magnate. If this work is actually a “how to” book on how to “get filthy rich in rising Asia,” Hamid’s narrative would be pretty depressing. The main character’s trajectory is one in which he pines away for the woman he truly loves, while marrying a woman who he merely tolerates. Then, there’s the whole issue of upward mobility, which is predicated on corruption, nepotism, and alternative economies. Perhaps the most fascinating element about this novel is Hamid’s choice of narrative perspective which is primarily conducted in the second person. At some point, late in the narrative, there is a kind of authorial intrusion that makes this novel a kind of philosophically driven metafiction that speaks to the author’s desire to give something back to his characters—supposedly in this case precisely because the main character’s life has been such a complicated one. Hamid is an agent provocateur and this novel is precisely the kind to provoke strong discussions and strong classroom discussions and I will no doubt add this book to my “teachable text” list. In the meantime, I encourage you to have a “filthy rich” reading experience by taking on Hamid’s latest novel.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Filthy-Rich-Rising-Asia/dp/1594487294/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363969466&sr=8-1&keywords=Mohsin+Hamid
A Review of Lakshmi Persaud’s Daughters of Empire (Peepal Tree Press, 2013).
So, I am reviewing Lakshmi Persaud’s Daughters of Empire, but also wanted to alert you to a press, which I have been following for a bit and been absolutely fascinated by: Their offerings can be found here:
http://www.peepaltreepress.com/home.asp
Peepal Tree Press’s catalog focuses on Caribbean writers. For the purposes of this community, given the “coolie labor” and the trade routes that linked the Caribbean to Asia, there is a rather fascinating history of multiracial Asian communities. Reflecting this history, there are a number of what we might more broadly call diasporic Asian writers; I focus on Lakshmi Persaud in this review, but Peepal Tree opened up a whole archive that I was not aware of and reminded me of my much beloved master’s exam during graduate school. Despite the stress of preparing for that exam, I made the brave choice of studying Anglophone literatures and it widened my understanding of World Literatures in English. I picked three areas, including the Caribbean, Africa, and India and got to read a diverse range of writers, including Bessie head, Garth St. Omer, Caryl Phillips, Derek Walcott and Anita Desai. As I focused my dissertation on Asian American literature with all of its more traditional definitions in mind, a hemispheric approach was largely lost. A press like Peepal Tree reminds of us the hemispheric history of Asian America more broadly defined. With writers on its catalog like Weiling Jin, Jan Lo Shinebourne and David Dabydeen, I expect there will be quite more work to do for Asian Americanists as we deal not only with east-west transnationalisms, but north and south migrations and postcolonial reverberations.
In Persaud’s Daughters of Empire (Persaud also author of a number of other works, including but not limited to: Butterfly in the Wind, For the Love of My Name, Sastra, and Raise the Lanterns High), a Indo-Trinidadian immigrant woman named Amira Vidhur has moved to London along with her husband, Santosh, due to his job promotion. But all is not perfect: the culture is so different and her daughters, Anjali, Satisha, and Vidya struggle to find the best schools to be enrolled in. Over time, Amira does make some close friendships with many in her local community and Persaud is clearly invested in the exploration of neighborly networks and feminist intersubjectivity. At the same time, Amira wants to retain her cultural and familial ties to Trinidad, which includes a very close relationship to her sister Ishani (who is herself married to a man named Ravi). In order to balance acculturation with a respect for the homeland, Amira and Santosh agree to traveling often to Trinidad, most of often for the summers, where Anjali, Satisha, and Vidya can come to appreciate their geographical heritage. As the novel moves forward, we see Amira struggle with leaving behind a career in teaching to become a full-time mother. She finds some respite in her gardening, but as her children grow, so do their own personal conflicts and the later stages of the novel see Persaud focusing on more on the daughters, who have various career aspirations. Anjali for instance is looking to pursue a graduate degree, but the novel takes a tremendously dark turn at that point and the family and its extended contacts must come together to protect Anjali. Persaud is a patient writer and she takes great care with these characters, especially marking out the contours of all the main figures, so the novel accrues a kind of dynamic equilibrium that is the foundation of the immigrant family saga.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Daughters-Empire-Lakshmi-Persaud/dp/1845231872/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364400510&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=lakshmi+pesaud
A Review of Annapurna Potluri’s The Grammarian (Counterpoint Press, 2013).
I’ve been having some writers’ blocks lately, so what have I been doing to do pass the time is to read more books (rawr). As a quick side note, here are some other offerings of Counterpoint Press (publisher of a number of other authors who might be of interest here, including Judy Fong Bates and Denise Chong):
http://counterpointpress.com/
Annapurna Potluri’s promising debut novel, The Grammarian, follows the transnational experiences of a French linguist (of Swiss ancestry) named Alexandre Lautens. He travels to Southern India in the early 20th century to document and to help construct a language book based upon Telugu. He stays with the Adivis, a high-powered local family with large land-holdings. The patriarch, Shiva, is married to Lalita, and is father to two daughters; the elder is Anjali, described as beautiful, but apparently “disfigured” from polio and then the younger, Mohini, who is slated to be married. Potluri’s novel takes a nod from Forster in its execution of the Westerner who comes to India and ends up embroiled in a kind of local scandal. I do not want to ruin the plot so much, but the novel is quite adept at showing how cultural illiteracy can ultimately impact so many different lives. The irony is that Lautens is so skilled at linguistic study, but even with certain forms of cultural acquisition, his understanding of gender and sexual dynamics as it relates to Indian culture is unfortunately and tragically limited. Perhaps, the most poignant aspect of Potluri’s narrative is the way in which one seemingly minor moment can become the focal point for Anjali’s life, a kind of turning point that leads to a completely different life trajectory. As Lautens and Anjali’s lives eventually move into separate directions, Potluri has the difficult task of keeping those characters somehow united in thought and in narrative-space. It is here that the novel finds the most fragility and the later arcs require Potluri to canvas over wider sweeps of time in order to come to the novel’s more hurried conclusion. Because Potluri is so adept at focalizing the narrative through Lautens in those early chapters, which seems him taking in the Indian landscapes around him, the final sequence occasionally seems too rushed. Nevertheless, the emotional impact of the story will remain.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Grammarian-Novel-Annapurna-Potluri/dp/1619021021/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1364140267&sr=8-1&keywords=annapurna+potluri
March 12, 2013
Ruth Ozeki's latest novel A Tale for the Time Being
If you are like me and are a fan of Ruth Ozeki, then I'm sure you've been wondering when her latest book was coming out. Well wonder no longer--her latest (and third) novel, A Tale for the Time Being has just been released, and let me tell you, it is worth the wait (specifically a ten year wait since her second novel, All Over Creation was published a decade ago).
I'm not sure if it was by coincidence or by design, but her book, officially released today, comes right after the two year anniversary of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. This tragedy plays a large role in the various plots and themes in A Tale for the Time Being, a novel that, like Ozeki's first novel, My Year of Meats, is a twinned narrative. We are first introduced to Nao Yasutani, a fifteen-year old Japanese schoolgirl who is writing in a journal that's been hacked from Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time or the title as it's also known as, Remembrance of Things Past). We learn in the subsequent chapter that the first-person narrative of Nao is actually being read by a novelist named Ruth (whose chapters are told by an unnamed omniscient narrator who seems content, for the most part, to only tell us about Ruth's thoughts and actions) who discovers the red-covered diary enclosed in a Hello Kitty lunch box (along with a bundle of letters written in Japanese, a composition notebook written in French, and a Seiko watch with kanji inscriptions on the back) that is wrapped in layers of Ziplock freezer bags, barnacle encrusted, hidden among layers of seaweed. Ruth finds the freezer bag/Hello Kitty lunchbox/Diary et al while walking on the beach near her home (which she shares with her artist/environmentalist husband, Oliver) off the coast of British Columbia. And although she has been struggling for nearly a decade to finish a memoir about the last years caring for her Japanese American mother who died from Alzheimer's, she finds herself immersed in reading Nao's story (at the pace in which Nao writes it), which is also the story about Nao's parents (a housewife who is forced to take a job at a publishing house once her husband is first fired from his job in Sunnyvale California, then moves his family back to Tokyo, where he fails to secure another job and tries, unsuccessfully, to kill himself by jumping in front of a train) and Nao's 104-year old great grandmother, a Zen Buddhist monk who is also a radical anarchist feminist writer.
Is this the time to also tell you that Ruth Ozeki splits her time between British Columbia and New York City, is married to an artist/environmentalist named Oliver, and in an interview right after her second novel came out talked about an autobiographical project writing about her Japanese mother who had Alzheimer's?
A Tale for the Time Being is the story of Nao and the story of Ruth. It is also the story of Nao's kamikaze pilot uncle, Haruki #1, the namesake of her father, Haruki #2. It is the story of Oliver, Ruth's husband and of their cat, Pesto (who is actually named Schrodinger after the thought experiment, Schrodinger's cat, which is also a major theme in the novel). And as you can guess from the paragraph above, this postmodern novel has readers wondering are they reading something based in fact or based in fiction or perhaps a blurring of the two (as Ozeki did with My Year of Meats, she plays with readers' notions of fiction and non-fiction, particularly by including footnotes peppered throughout Nao's narration). In reading the story of Nao, Ruth (and readers) learn about the ruthless bullying by her classmates that she endures (a theme all too timely in our day and age), her deep affection for her great grandmother, Jiko Yasutani, and the choices that her family members make (both living and dead) that have shaped the course of their (and others') lives. As Ruth tries to find out what happened to Nao (who she fears may be suicidal like her father), readers learn about Ruth's writer's block, the austere beauty and insularity of her Pacific Northwest remote island home, and about quantum physics. We also learn about the ways that major catastrophic events, 9/11 and the earthquake/tsunami reverberate across space and time.
At heart, the novel emphasizes a theme of interconnectedness, timelessness, and pacificism, all in keeping with the Zen Buddhism that clearly informs both the narrative and Ozeki's person (the biographical notes tell us that she, herself, is a Zen Buddhist priest. There's so much more that I could tell you, about the contents of the Japanese letters, the French composition notebook, about whether Nao survives her bullying, whether her father's suicidal thoughts continue, whether Ruth ever restarts her memoir, and whether Oliver is successful in finding Pesto, who gets lost in one of many storms that batter their island home. But I won't say much more because this is a novel you will want to dive right into, enjoying the ways in which the chapters talk back and forth to one another, from Nao to Ruth and back again. It is a novel that had me slowing down as I noticed that there weren't many more pages for me to flip through, wishing that like Ruth, perhaps I could find more pages and more words to prevent the inevitable end from happening.
I'm not sure if it was by coincidence or by design, but her book, officially released today, comes right after the two year anniversary of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. This tragedy plays a large role in the various plots and themes in A Tale for the Time Being, a novel that, like Ozeki's first novel, My Year of Meats, is a twinned narrative. We are first introduced to Nao Yasutani, a fifteen-year old Japanese schoolgirl who is writing in a journal that's been hacked from Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time or the title as it's also known as, Remembrance of Things Past). We learn in the subsequent chapter that the first-person narrative of Nao is actually being read by a novelist named Ruth (whose chapters are told by an unnamed omniscient narrator who seems content, for the most part, to only tell us about Ruth's thoughts and actions) who discovers the red-covered diary enclosed in a Hello Kitty lunch box (along with a bundle of letters written in Japanese, a composition notebook written in French, and a Seiko watch with kanji inscriptions on the back) that is wrapped in layers of Ziplock freezer bags, barnacle encrusted, hidden among layers of seaweed. Ruth finds the freezer bag/Hello Kitty lunchbox/Diary et al while walking on the beach near her home (which she shares with her artist/environmentalist husband, Oliver) off the coast of British Columbia. And although she has been struggling for nearly a decade to finish a memoir about the last years caring for her Japanese American mother who died from Alzheimer's, she finds herself immersed in reading Nao's story (at the pace in which Nao writes it), which is also the story about Nao's parents (a housewife who is forced to take a job at a publishing house once her husband is first fired from his job in Sunnyvale California, then moves his family back to Tokyo, where he fails to secure another job and tries, unsuccessfully, to kill himself by jumping in front of a train) and Nao's 104-year old great grandmother, a Zen Buddhist monk who is also a radical anarchist feminist writer.
Is this the time to also tell you that Ruth Ozeki splits her time between British Columbia and New York City, is married to an artist/environmentalist named Oliver, and in an interview right after her second novel came out talked about an autobiographical project writing about her Japanese mother who had Alzheimer's?
A Tale for the Time Being is the story of Nao and the story of Ruth. It is also the story of Nao's kamikaze pilot uncle, Haruki #1, the namesake of her father, Haruki #2. It is the story of Oliver, Ruth's husband and of their cat, Pesto (who is actually named Schrodinger after the thought experiment, Schrodinger's cat, which is also a major theme in the novel). And as you can guess from the paragraph above, this postmodern novel has readers wondering are they reading something based in fact or based in fiction or perhaps a blurring of the two (as Ozeki did with My Year of Meats, she plays with readers' notions of fiction and non-fiction, particularly by including footnotes peppered throughout Nao's narration). In reading the story of Nao, Ruth (and readers) learn about the ruthless bullying by her classmates that she endures (a theme all too timely in our day and age), her deep affection for her great grandmother, Jiko Yasutani, and the choices that her family members make (both living and dead) that have shaped the course of their (and others') lives. As Ruth tries to find out what happened to Nao (who she fears may be suicidal like her father), readers learn about Ruth's writer's block, the austere beauty and insularity of her Pacific Northwest remote island home, and about quantum physics. We also learn about the ways that major catastrophic events, 9/11 and the earthquake/tsunami reverberate across space and time.
At heart, the novel emphasizes a theme of interconnectedness, timelessness, and pacificism, all in keeping with the Zen Buddhism that clearly informs both the narrative and Ozeki's person (the biographical notes tell us that she, herself, is a Zen Buddhist priest. There's so much more that I could tell you, about the contents of the Japanese letters, the French composition notebook, about whether Nao survives her bullying, whether her father's suicidal thoughts continue, whether Ruth ever restarts her memoir, and whether Oliver is successful in finding Pesto, who gets lost in one of many storms that batter their island home. But I won't say much more because this is a novel you will want to dive right into, enjoying the ways in which the chapters talk back and forth to one another, from Nao to Ruth and back again. It is a novel that had me slowing down as I noticed that there weren't many more pages for me to flip through, wishing that like Ruth, perhaps I could find more pages and more words to prevent the inevitable end from happening.
March 9, 2013
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 8, 2013
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 8, 2013
In this post, reviews of Veera Hiranandani’s The Whole Story of Half a Girl (Delacorte Press, 2012); Joël Barraquiel Tan’s type O negative (Red Hen Press, 2009) and Ching-in Chen’s The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi Books, 2009); Ellen Oh’s Prophecy (HarperCollins Children’s Division, 2013); Shaun Tan’s The Bird King: An Artist’s Notebook (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013); Tosca Lee’s Iscariot (Howard Books, 2013); Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart (Constable & Robinson, 2010); Embodying Asian/ American Sexualities edited by Gina Masequesmay and Sean Metzger (Lexington Books, 2010).
A Review of Veera Hiranandani’s The Whole Story of Half a Girl (Delacorte Press, 2012).
In Veera Hiranandani’s debut novel, The Whole Story of Half a Girl, our storyteller and protagonist is Sonia Nadhamuni, who is of mixed-race background, part Indian and Jewish (also of other ethnic backgrounds, including Russian and Polish). The start of the novel sees her having to change schools due in part to the financial instability faced by her parents; her father loses his job and begins to succumb to a bout of depression. Sonia’s transition is in its own way also difficult. She must forge new friendships and somehow maintain old ones. She is faced with multiple platonic opportunities. There’s Kate, who hails from what might be considered the queen B crowd; Kate is upper-middle class, popular, beautiful, white, and encourages Sonia to try out for the cheerleading team. There’s Alisha: working class, African American, bookish and introverted, who appeals to Sonia’s artistic tendencies. Then there’s Sam, her red-headed Jewish buddy from her former school. How will Sonia balance all such friendships? I recently also reviewed Kavita Daswani’s Lovetorn, which paired a coming-of-age story against the mental instability of an immigrant mother. Hiranandani takes a similar approach in this novel. Sonia must not only navigate that shark-infested ocean that is the public middle school, but somehow also come to understand that her own conflicts and challenges must be placed in the context of others, like her father. Indeed, Hiranandani’s plotting takes a darker and more serious turn by the conclusion. Given the genre of the middle school fiction, we can likely expect a more uplifting ending, but Hiranandani’s point is to show that children grow up and collide against an adult world into which they will soon ultimately find themselves. Hiranandani also takes on the challenging subject of the mixed-race childhood and places it in the context of interracial tension at the middle school level. Indeed, Alisha and Kate seem to be more largely a metaphorical way of figuring Sonia’s middleman position: does she identify as a minority at all? The fact that so many students keep asking her “what she is,” figures largely into her sense of bewilderment and Hiranandani takes a rather direct look at the complications of mixed-race even in this seemingly most multicultural moment. The last thing I would want to say is that it’s amazing to see that such work exists and can be picked up at a library alongside many of the youth oriented fictions that Hirandani herself points to in the early chapter of the novel, ones such as A Wrinkle In Time and The Giver. I can only recall Betti Bao Lord’s In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson as the sole example of a youth oriented fictional work that I could pick up in paperback form at my local public library when I was a youth (admittedly now a very long time ago). A much needed addition to the area of middle school fictions, mixed-race representations, and the coming-of-age story.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Whole-Story-Half-Girl/dp/0385741286/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361221216&sr=8-1&keywords=veera+hiranandani
A Review of Joël Barraquiel Tan’s type O negative (Red Hen Press, 2009) and Ching-in Chen’s The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi Books, 2009).
In this review, I cover two of Red Hen Press’s most recent poetry collections: Joël Barraquiel Tan’s Type O negative (Red Hen Press, 2009) and Ching-in Chen’s The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi Books, 2009). Arktoi is an imprint of Red Hen Press that publishes work by lesbian writers. Both these works show an attentive commitment to questions of racial, immigrant, and queer identity. These intersections also appear in tandem with explorations of form. Ching-in Chen’s The Heart’s Traffic, for instance, is billed as a “novel in poems” and thus engages the scope of a developmental lyric bildungrsoman—if we can even call it that—in its representation of Xiaomei, who must not only acculturate to the United States, but also deal with questions of her sexuality. Chen uses an incredible array of poetic forms, including but not limited to the haibun, villanelle, the sestina (and a variation of the form called the double sestina), the pantoum, among others, alongside free verse to explore these various thematics. As readers come to find out in “The Geisha Author Interviews,” Xiaomei must contend with how her racialized body can be fetishized. She further endures the taunts of other schoolchildren, as showcased in “Ching Chong,” “fob 1,” “Ku Li,” and “Coolie: A History Report.” As Xiaomei begins to explore her queer sexuality, the poems turn toward the complication of sexual identity in the face of transgender issues. Xiaomei’s relationship with Jani, for instance, is troubled when Jani “intend[s] to begin living full-time as a man” (79) named Jaden. As The Heart’s traffic begins its final arc, the sparrow, a motif introduced at the beginning, returns, suggesting the ways in which Xiaomei may not find that perfect love she is looking for. Nevertheless, the “novel in poems” seems to end on an optimistic note, suggesting that Xiaomei has come to better understand herself and her place in the world. Tan’s Type O Negative unfolds in two distinct parts. The first half of the book roughly focuses on the lyric speaker’s experiences growing up in the Philippines. These poems are playful and intimate at the same time and exhibit some similarity to the poetic work of R. Zamora Linmark, both in tone and thematics. We see the hijinks related to a protoqueer child coming to understand his sexuality and how his own feelings relate to the people who surround him. One recurrent theme is the problematic relationship that the lyric speaker forges with his uncle, a connection that will end abruptly when the uncle is murdered. The lyric speaker will also detail what seems to be an unacknowledged extended family, one that comes into being due to the extramarital dalliances of the lyric speaker’s father. The remnants of the speaker’s strong feelings for his family carry over as the collection transitions to the United States. The second half of the book changes in its approach and is much more daring in its representation. In this portion, Tan makes effective use of primarily alternating between two forms: the pantoum and the sestina. Both forms clearly function with repetition in mind, so there is something of a chant-like effect going on here. Because many of the poems focus on the death of loved ones, the collection turns far more elegiac in its quality. In “gift giver,” a pantoum, the lyric speaker conveys, “the bloom of lesions & the feast of sores/ pink veined marble carved in sweet memory, the burning pyres/ he delivers each boy, moaning & spent, to his god/ softly he whispers in their ears, no death, just pleasure” (77, emphasis original). We are not exactly sure what “he” is dying from, but one of the common thematics of this final arc is the question of survival in the age of the AIDS epidemic. With titles such as “bug chaser” and “AIDS service foundation ghost,” the collection provides Tan the chance to address many issues related to queer men romancing each other in a time of plague. These are both thrilling works to read and certainly perfect for course adoption, especially for any classes focused on themes of gender and sexuality or Asian American identity politics.
Buy the Books Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Type-Negative-Joel-Tan/dp/1597090182/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311990201&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Traffic-Ching--Chen/dp/0980040728/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311990268&sr=1-1
A Review of Ellen Oh’s Prophecy (HarperCollins Children’s Division, 2013).
Ellen Oh’s Prophecy is part of what will be a planned trilogy in the Dragon King Chronicles series. Oh’s debut novel involves a young female protagonist named Kira who also happens to be a talented demon killer. The prophecy of the title relates to the foretelling that an individual of immense power will unite the fragmented kingdom against dangerous outside forces. Over the course of the novel, Kira is tasked with protecting her young cousin, Taejon, who will eventually assume the mantle of the kingdom and who seems to be the individual foretold about in the prophecy itself. Of course, you can imagine given that the cover states “one girl will save them all,” that Kira will somehow be related to and make problematic the gendered claims on saving the kingdom. Kira’s central positioning within the story makes concrete Oh’s biggest sociocultural intervention: a feminist revisioning of the so-often male-dominated fantasy genre. Kira is a strong-willed character, handy with a sword and especially distrusting of anybody who takes a romantic interest in her. What is interesting is that Oh employs a historical and social tapestry that hearkens to a historically distant time in Korea, but this analog might remain more opaque for readers unfamiliar with specific ethnic themes. The publishers chose to include a useful glossary of the more difficult terminology, but I was surprised that an author’s note was not included to consider some of Oh’s intentions about the obviously Asiatic terrain that the narrative traverses. The novel is very fast-paced and will appeal to a readership. Admittedly, I would be considered a geriatric reader for this book in relation to the target audience (middle schoolers and teens). The most productive element of this book is the contouring of YA fictional worlds, which increasingly have included strong female characters and ethnic and minority themes.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Prophecy-The-Dragon-King-Chronicles/dp/0062091093/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362246092&sr=8-1&keywords=Ellen+Oh
A Review of Shaun Tan’s The Bird King: An Artist’s Notebook (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013).
Ah, Shaun Tan tides us over until his next completed work with his impressionistic The Bird King: An Artist’s Notebook. The subtitle cues us into the rather unofficial nature of this sequence of pictures and sketches, which do not tell tales per se, but rather reveal Tan’s creative mind at work at various stages. The most compelling pieces are the ones that readers will be familiar with based upon previous publications. For instance, Tan does include some of the original sketches and storyboards that would be the basis for The Arrival. This publication is a definite must-have for any fan of Tan for the simple fact of the volume’s gorgeous production; many of the sketches are published in full color. For those looking for a more polished work should look to his previous undertakings, such as the aforementioned The Arrival, The Lost Thing or Tales from Outer Suburbia.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bird-King-Artists-Notebook/dp/0545465133/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362275164&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bird+king
A Review of Tosca Lee’s Iscariot (Howard Books, 2013).
(hilariously enough the dimensions of this photo were 466 X 666; that's all I'm sayin!)
So Tosca Lee was one of those writers that I came upon by accident, surfing amazon.com one night in one of my fits of insomnia. I saw immediately that she had a number of novels, some penned alongside Ted Dekker, but others that were decidedly in a form that I have not had much experience reading within: that of biblical, historical fiction (Lee has also authored Havah and Demon: A Memoir). Her newest offering, Iscariot, provides Lee with the opportunity to reconsider and to reimagine the life of one of the Bible’s most reviled figures: Judas. Boldly employing the first person voice, Lee creates a narrative that grants us entry into Judas’s life, one that plagued by his traumatic upbringing. The early portions of the novel set the stage for the enmity between the Jews and the Romans. Judas is caught up in this strife on a tragic personal level: he must endure the crucifixion of his father, the disappearance of his beloved older brother (presumed to have been enslaved by the Romans), the defiling of his mother as she prostitutes herself in order to ensure their survival following their harrowing escape from a town under siege. Judas recovers from this childhood and eventually marries, hoping to raise a family, but his wife dies during childbirth and their child, though very close to term, does not survive. In the wake of the loss of his immediate family, Judas seeks new life fulfillments. When he hears of a messiah figure that is miraculously healing those who are disabled and plagued with illnesses, he curiously finds out who he is and then later on becomes one of his disciplines. But all is not so simple with his newfound belief in Jesus, especially as this revolutionary figure draws the ire of multiple communities and sources of power, so much so that the disciples (and Judas) often fear for their lives. Though I would consider myself a secular-type reader, this narrative did appeal to me for a number of reasons. First, Lee is not interested in denigrating Judas, but rather seeks to contextualize why he might have acted in the way he did. Second, I did grow up in a churchgoing household and biblical stories still hold a kind of fascination for me that can be traced to that period of my life. While the subject matter may not appeal to all readers, Lee’s ideological project should, especially in the way that the novel cautions us from making snap judgments about figures who can be so quickly and superficially villain-ized. An idiosyncratic and imaginative fictional work.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Iscariot-Novel-Judas-Tosca-Lee/dp/1451683766/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362687521&sr=8-1&keywords=Tosca+Lee
A Review of Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart (Constable & Robinson, 2010).
For those of you looking to expand course offerings and to explore research interests in the Asian diaspora in relation to representations of gender and sexuality, you can look to Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart (published previously in India under the title Past Continuous and currently only available in new editions in the UK) to find a dynamic narrative intertwining queer desire and postcolonial themes. For more on the press that published Mukherjee’s work in the “west,” please see:
http://www.constablerobinson.com/
Mukherjee chooses a bifurcated third person narrative perspective, one which follows Ritwik, a gay Indian man who migrates to London for a university education. The second takes place in the British colonial period of India around the turn of the century and involves a kind of governess figure, Miss Gilby, who comes to work for the Chowdhury family. This work situation is tenuous insofar as the Chowdhury’s struggle to retain a measure of normalcy to their lives as Bengal begins to disintegrate in the midst of religious factionalism. The two temporally and geographically narratives seem hardly linked at first, but as the novel moves forward we begin to see the elliptical ways that migration and homeland, otherness and physical violence, can unfortunately and tragically brew together. The other risk that Mukherjee takes on is in having the reader having to be equally invested in both stories; the contemporary tale is, in some sense, much more accessible and the narrative movements to colonial-era India occasionally strike with discordant tones, especially for the reader who may be impatient to see the link between the two sections more strongly delineated. The biggest draw from my perspective is Mukherjee’s unflinching look at Ritwik’s coming-of-age and his acceptance of his queer sexuality, which take him into the perilous world of prostitution and cottaging and ultimately encourages him to take on a status as an undocumented immigrant. The naturalistic narrative trajectory is in some sense exactly right, especially as the concluding arc sees Ritwik increasingly rely upon diffuse connections and his various sexual escapades to float him through the next day, the next week, and perhaps, in some cases, with that most generous john, into the next month. Ritwik does strike up an intriguing friendship with an aged woman, Anne Cameron, who provides him with some measure of financial solvency, as he cares for her. The scenes involving Ritwik taking bodily care of Anne (in relation to her bathing) are penned with an especially astonishing and unsentimental style. A very promising debut novel and the beginning of what we would hope to be an illustrious literary career.
Buy the Book Review:
http://www.amazon.com/A-Life-Apart-Neel-MUKHERJEE/dp/184901101X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1361733160&sr=8-4
A Review of Embodying Asian/ American Sexualities edited by Gina Masequesmay and Sean Metzger (Lexington Books, 2010).
In this brief review, I just wanted to point out one of the intriguing additions to the field of gender and sexuality studies in relation to Asian American contexts and cultures. After edited anthologies by Russell Leong (Dimensions of Desire) and David Eng and Alice Y. Hom (Q&A), I haven’t seen many collections like this one that really take on issues related to Asian American gender and sexuality. What is particularly noteworthy about Masequesmay and Metzger’s collection is their embrace of the multigenre and multidisciplinary format: cultural criticism, creative writing, fictional interviews, activist-scholarship, among other such individual pieces populate this eclectic work. Readers will definitely find a dynamic experience moving through this edited anthology. My favorite individual selections appeared actually latest in the collection, on topics that have gotten little scholarly attention thus far: homosexuality in the Korean American evangelical context and critical considerations of the Cambodian cultural production. For those looking to add course material to courses on gender and sexuality in Asian American literature, this edited collection would obviously be ideal.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Embodying-Asian-American-Sexualities-Masequesmay/dp/073912904X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362246819&sr=8-1&keywords=Sean+Metzger
In this post, reviews of Veera Hiranandani’s The Whole Story of Half a Girl (Delacorte Press, 2012); Joël Barraquiel Tan’s type O negative (Red Hen Press, 2009) and Ching-in Chen’s The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi Books, 2009); Ellen Oh’s Prophecy (HarperCollins Children’s Division, 2013); Shaun Tan’s The Bird King: An Artist’s Notebook (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013); Tosca Lee’s Iscariot (Howard Books, 2013); Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart (Constable & Robinson, 2010); Embodying Asian/ American Sexualities edited by Gina Masequesmay and Sean Metzger (Lexington Books, 2010).
A Review of Veera Hiranandani’s The Whole Story of Half a Girl (Delacorte Press, 2012).
In Veera Hiranandani’s debut novel, The Whole Story of Half a Girl, our storyteller and protagonist is Sonia Nadhamuni, who is of mixed-race background, part Indian and Jewish (also of other ethnic backgrounds, including Russian and Polish). The start of the novel sees her having to change schools due in part to the financial instability faced by her parents; her father loses his job and begins to succumb to a bout of depression. Sonia’s transition is in its own way also difficult. She must forge new friendships and somehow maintain old ones. She is faced with multiple platonic opportunities. There’s Kate, who hails from what might be considered the queen B crowd; Kate is upper-middle class, popular, beautiful, white, and encourages Sonia to try out for the cheerleading team. There’s Alisha: working class, African American, bookish and introverted, who appeals to Sonia’s artistic tendencies. Then there’s Sam, her red-headed Jewish buddy from her former school. How will Sonia balance all such friendships? I recently also reviewed Kavita Daswani’s Lovetorn, which paired a coming-of-age story against the mental instability of an immigrant mother. Hiranandani takes a similar approach in this novel. Sonia must not only navigate that shark-infested ocean that is the public middle school, but somehow also come to understand that her own conflicts and challenges must be placed in the context of others, like her father. Indeed, Hiranandani’s plotting takes a darker and more serious turn by the conclusion. Given the genre of the middle school fiction, we can likely expect a more uplifting ending, but Hiranandani’s point is to show that children grow up and collide against an adult world into which they will soon ultimately find themselves. Hiranandani also takes on the challenging subject of the mixed-race childhood and places it in the context of interracial tension at the middle school level. Indeed, Alisha and Kate seem to be more largely a metaphorical way of figuring Sonia’s middleman position: does she identify as a minority at all? The fact that so many students keep asking her “what she is,” figures largely into her sense of bewilderment and Hiranandani takes a rather direct look at the complications of mixed-race even in this seemingly most multicultural moment. The last thing I would want to say is that it’s amazing to see that such work exists and can be picked up at a library alongside many of the youth oriented fictions that Hirandani herself points to in the early chapter of the novel, ones such as A Wrinkle In Time and The Giver. I can only recall Betti Bao Lord’s In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson as the sole example of a youth oriented fictional work that I could pick up in paperback form at my local public library when I was a youth (admittedly now a very long time ago). A much needed addition to the area of middle school fictions, mixed-race representations, and the coming-of-age story.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Whole-Story-Half-Girl/dp/0385741286/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361221216&sr=8-1&keywords=veera+hiranandani
A Review of Joël Barraquiel Tan’s type O negative (Red Hen Press, 2009) and Ching-in Chen’s The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi Books, 2009).
In this review, I cover two of Red Hen Press’s most recent poetry collections: Joël Barraquiel Tan’s Type O negative (Red Hen Press, 2009) and Ching-in Chen’s The Heart’s Traffic (Arktoi Books, 2009). Arktoi is an imprint of Red Hen Press that publishes work by lesbian writers. Both these works show an attentive commitment to questions of racial, immigrant, and queer identity. These intersections also appear in tandem with explorations of form. Ching-in Chen’s The Heart’s Traffic, for instance, is billed as a “novel in poems” and thus engages the scope of a developmental lyric bildungrsoman—if we can even call it that—in its representation of Xiaomei, who must not only acculturate to the United States, but also deal with questions of her sexuality. Chen uses an incredible array of poetic forms, including but not limited to the haibun, villanelle, the sestina (and a variation of the form called the double sestina), the pantoum, among others, alongside free verse to explore these various thematics. As readers come to find out in “The Geisha Author Interviews,” Xiaomei must contend with how her racialized body can be fetishized. She further endures the taunts of other schoolchildren, as showcased in “Ching Chong,” “fob 1,” “Ku Li,” and “Coolie: A History Report.” As Xiaomei begins to explore her queer sexuality, the poems turn toward the complication of sexual identity in the face of transgender issues. Xiaomei’s relationship with Jani, for instance, is troubled when Jani “intend[s] to begin living full-time as a man” (79) named Jaden. As The Heart’s traffic begins its final arc, the sparrow, a motif introduced at the beginning, returns, suggesting the ways in which Xiaomei may not find that perfect love she is looking for. Nevertheless, the “novel in poems” seems to end on an optimistic note, suggesting that Xiaomei has come to better understand herself and her place in the world. Tan’s Type O Negative unfolds in two distinct parts. The first half of the book roughly focuses on the lyric speaker’s experiences growing up in the Philippines. These poems are playful and intimate at the same time and exhibit some similarity to the poetic work of R. Zamora Linmark, both in tone and thematics. We see the hijinks related to a protoqueer child coming to understand his sexuality and how his own feelings relate to the people who surround him. One recurrent theme is the problematic relationship that the lyric speaker forges with his uncle, a connection that will end abruptly when the uncle is murdered. The lyric speaker will also detail what seems to be an unacknowledged extended family, one that comes into being due to the extramarital dalliances of the lyric speaker’s father. The remnants of the speaker’s strong feelings for his family carry over as the collection transitions to the United States. The second half of the book changes in its approach and is much more daring in its representation. In this portion, Tan makes effective use of primarily alternating between two forms: the pantoum and the sestina. Both forms clearly function with repetition in mind, so there is something of a chant-like effect going on here. Because many of the poems focus on the death of loved ones, the collection turns far more elegiac in its quality. In “gift giver,” a pantoum, the lyric speaker conveys, “the bloom of lesions & the feast of sores/ pink veined marble carved in sweet memory, the burning pyres/ he delivers each boy, moaning & spent, to his god/ softly he whispers in their ears, no death, just pleasure” (77, emphasis original). We are not exactly sure what “he” is dying from, but one of the common thematics of this final arc is the question of survival in the age of the AIDS epidemic. With titles such as “bug chaser” and “AIDS service foundation ghost,” the collection provides Tan the chance to address many issues related to queer men romancing each other in a time of plague. These are both thrilling works to read and certainly perfect for course adoption, especially for any classes focused on themes of gender and sexuality or Asian American identity politics.
Buy the Books Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Type-Negative-Joel-Tan/dp/1597090182/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311990201&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Traffic-Ching--Chen/dp/0980040728/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311990268&sr=1-1
A Review of Ellen Oh’s Prophecy (HarperCollins Children’s Division, 2013).
Ellen Oh’s Prophecy is part of what will be a planned trilogy in the Dragon King Chronicles series. Oh’s debut novel involves a young female protagonist named Kira who also happens to be a talented demon killer. The prophecy of the title relates to the foretelling that an individual of immense power will unite the fragmented kingdom against dangerous outside forces. Over the course of the novel, Kira is tasked with protecting her young cousin, Taejon, who will eventually assume the mantle of the kingdom and who seems to be the individual foretold about in the prophecy itself. Of course, you can imagine given that the cover states “one girl will save them all,” that Kira will somehow be related to and make problematic the gendered claims on saving the kingdom. Kira’s central positioning within the story makes concrete Oh’s biggest sociocultural intervention: a feminist revisioning of the so-often male-dominated fantasy genre. Kira is a strong-willed character, handy with a sword and especially distrusting of anybody who takes a romantic interest in her. What is interesting is that Oh employs a historical and social tapestry that hearkens to a historically distant time in Korea, but this analog might remain more opaque for readers unfamiliar with specific ethnic themes. The publishers chose to include a useful glossary of the more difficult terminology, but I was surprised that an author’s note was not included to consider some of Oh’s intentions about the obviously Asiatic terrain that the narrative traverses. The novel is very fast-paced and will appeal to a readership. Admittedly, I would be considered a geriatric reader for this book in relation to the target audience (middle schoolers and teens). The most productive element of this book is the contouring of YA fictional worlds, which increasingly have included strong female characters and ethnic and minority themes.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Prophecy-The-Dragon-King-Chronicles/dp/0062091093/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362246092&sr=8-1&keywords=Ellen+Oh
A Review of Shaun Tan’s The Bird King: An Artist’s Notebook (Arthur A. Levine Books, 2013).
Ah, Shaun Tan tides us over until his next completed work with his impressionistic The Bird King: An Artist’s Notebook. The subtitle cues us into the rather unofficial nature of this sequence of pictures and sketches, which do not tell tales per se, but rather reveal Tan’s creative mind at work at various stages. The most compelling pieces are the ones that readers will be familiar with based upon previous publications. For instance, Tan does include some of the original sketches and storyboards that would be the basis for The Arrival. This publication is a definite must-have for any fan of Tan for the simple fact of the volume’s gorgeous production; many of the sketches are published in full color. For those looking for a more polished work should look to his previous undertakings, such as the aforementioned The Arrival, The Lost Thing or Tales from Outer Suburbia.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bird-King-Artists-Notebook/dp/0545465133/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362275164&sr=8-1&keywords=the+bird+king
A Review of Tosca Lee’s Iscariot (Howard Books, 2013).
(hilariously enough the dimensions of this photo were 466 X 666; that's all I'm sayin!)
So Tosca Lee was one of those writers that I came upon by accident, surfing amazon.com one night in one of my fits of insomnia. I saw immediately that she had a number of novels, some penned alongside Ted Dekker, but others that were decidedly in a form that I have not had much experience reading within: that of biblical, historical fiction (Lee has also authored Havah and Demon: A Memoir). Her newest offering, Iscariot, provides Lee with the opportunity to reconsider and to reimagine the life of one of the Bible’s most reviled figures: Judas. Boldly employing the first person voice, Lee creates a narrative that grants us entry into Judas’s life, one that plagued by his traumatic upbringing. The early portions of the novel set the stage for the enmity between the Jews and the Romans. Judas is caught up in this strife on a tragic personal level: he must endure the crucifixion of his father, the disappearance of his beloved older brother (presumed to have been enslaved by the Romans), the defiling of his mother as she prostitutes herself in order to ensure their survival following their harrowing escape from a town under siege. Judas recovers from this childhood and eventually marries, hoping to raise a family, but his wife dies during childbirth and their child, though very close to term, does not survive. In the wake of the loss of his immediate family, Judas seeks new life fulfillments. When he hears of a messiah figure that is miraculously healing those who are disabled and plagued with illnesses, he curiously finds out who he is and then later on becomes one of his disciplines. But all is not so simple with his newfound belief in Jesus, especially as this revolutionary figure draws the ire of multiple communities and sources of power, so much so that the disciples (and Judas) often fear for their lives. Though I would consider myself a secular-type reader, this narrative did appeal to me for a number of reasons. First, Lee is not interested in denigrating Judas, but rather seeks to contextualize why he might have acted in the way he did. Second, I did grow up in a churchgoing household and biblical stories still hold a kind of fascination for me that can be traced to that period of my life. While the subject matter may not appeal to all readers, Lee’s ideological project should, especially in the way that the novel cautions us from making snap judgments about figures who can be so quickly and superficially villain-ized. An idiosyncratic and imaginative fictional work.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Iscariot-Novel-Judas-Tosca-Lee/dp/1451683766/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362687521&sr=8-1&keywords=Tosca+Lee
A Review of Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart (Constable & Robinson, 2010).
For those of you looking to expand course offerings and to explore research interests in the Asian diaspora in relation to representations of gender and sexuality, you can look to Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart (published previously in India under the title Past Continuous and currently only available in new editions in the UK) to find a dynamic narrative intertwining queer desire and postcolonial themes. For more on the press that published Mukherjee’s work in the “west,” please see:
http://www.constablerobinson.com/
Mukherjee chooses a bifurcated third person narrative perspective, one which follows Ritwik, a gay Indian man who migrates to London for a university education. The second takes place in the British colonial period of India around the turn of the century and involves a kind of governess figure, Miss Gilby, who comes to work for the Chowdhury family. This work situation is tenuous insofar as the Chowdhury’s struggle to retain a measure of normalcy to their lives as Bengal begins to disintegrate in the midst of religious factionalism. The two temporally and geographically narratives seem hardly linked at first, but as the novel moves forward we begin to see the elliptical ways that migration and homeland, otherness and physical violence, can unfortunately and tragically brew together. The other risk that Mukherjee takes on is in having the reader having to be equally invested in both stories; the contemporary tale is, in some sense, much more accessible and the narrative movements to colonial-era India occasionally strike with discordant tones, especially for the reader who may be impatient to see the link between the two sections more strongly delineated. The biggest draw from my perspective is Mukherjee’s unflinching look at Ritwik’s coming-of-age and his acceptance of his queer sexuality, which take him into the perilous world of prostitution and cottaging and ultimately encourages him to take on a status as an undocumented immigrant. The naturalistic narrative trajectory is in some sense exactly right, especially as the concluding arc sees Ritwik increasingly rely upon diffuse connections and his various sexual escapades to float him through the next day, the next week, and perhaps, in some cases, with that most generous john, into the next month. Ritwik does strike up an intriguing friendship with an aged woman, Anne Cameron, who provides him with some measure of financial solvency, as he cares for her. The scenes involving Ritwik taking bodily care of Anne (in relation to her bathing) are penned with an especially astonishing and unsentimental style. A very promising debut novel and the beginning of what we would hope to be an illustrious literary career.
Buy the Book Review:
http://www.amazon.com/A-Life-Apart-Neel-MUKHERJEE/dp/184901101X/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1361733160&sr=8-4
A Review of Embodying Asian/ American Sexualities edited by Gina Masequesmay and Sean Metzger (Lexington Books, 2010).
In this brief review, I just wanted to point out one of the intriguing additions to the field of gender and sexuality studies in relation to Asian American contexts and cultures. After edited anthologies by Russell Leong (Dimensions of Desire) and David Eng and Alice Y. Hom (Q&A), I haven’t seen many collections like this one that really take on issues related to Asian American gender and sexuality. What is particularly noteworthy about Masequesmay and Metzger’s collection is their embrace of the multigenre and multidisciplinary format: cultural criticism, creative writing, fictional interviews, activist-scholarship, among other such individual pieces populate this eclectic work. Readers will definitely find a dynamic experience moving through this edited anthology. My favorite individual selections appeared actually latest in the collection, on topics that have gotten little scholarly attention thus far: homosexuality in the Korean American evangelical context and critical considerations of the Cambodian cultural production. For those looking to add course material to courses on gender and sexuality in Asian American literature, this edited collection would obviously be ideal.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Embodying-Asian-American-Sexualities-Masequesmay/dp/073912904X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362246819&sr=8-1&keywords=Sean+Metzger
February 23, 2013
movie version of mohsin hamid's the reluctant fundamentalist
Just watched the trailer for a movie version of Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, directed by Mira Nair and starring Riz Ahmed as Changez. Should be interesting! (See also my thoughts of the book.)
February 16, 2013
asianamlitfans @ 2013-02-16T20:35:00
Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for February 15 2013
In this post, reviews of Kevin Chong’s My Year of the Racehorse: Falling in Love with the Sport of Kings (Greystone Books, 2012); Aamer Hussein’s Insomnia (Telegram Books, 2007); Nury Vittachi’s The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics: Feng Shui Detective #3 (Felony & Mayhem, 2012); E.C. Myers’s Quantum Coin (Pyr, 2012); Darien Gee’s The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society (Ballantine Books, 2013); Irfan Master’s A Beautiful Lie (Albert Whitman, 2012); Kendare Blake’s Sleepwalk Society (2010, PRA Publishing); Manil Suri’s City of Devi (W.W. Norton, 2012)
A Review of Kevin Chong’s My Year of the Racehorse: Falling in Love with the Sport of Kings (Greystone Books, 2012)
Kevin Chong has already gotten some reviewing attention on this blog; please see, for instance, pylduck’s review this-a-way for Beauty Plus Pity:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/124780.html
Chong tackles the memoir form with the very idiosyncratic My Year of the Racehorse, which follows the author’s misadventures as he takes up the mantle of being part-owner of a potentially prize-winning racehorse known as Blackie. It might be important to mention that at the conclusion of the memoir, there is a sort of disclaimer concerning the part-fictive nature of the narrative, that certain events and characters have been altered to protect their identities and in some cases to streamline the “plot.” These moments always break me out of the memoir as a kind of nonfictional form, reminding me that we must approach such works with a keen eye for a sense of construct and for artifice. If anything, Chong leans on a laidback humor that was evident already in a novel like Beauty Like Pity; it tracks throughout My Year of the Racehorse to give the memoir an emotionally resonant, but comic scaffolding. His characterizations of figures like the horse-trainer, Randi, and later an animal psychic are alternately poignant and offbeat. For me, the aspect that was perhaps the most illuminating was the semi-ethnographic sections that gives readers a perspective into racehorses and their history, the whole vocabulary behind the track culture, and the high stakes that can be involved in the process. Early on, too, Chong is entirely willing to admit to the readers that his adventures into the land of racehorses was, in part, motivated by the desire to write another book and to push him creatively. To be sure, it is this gamble that pays off the most, as readers are treated to an original and winning literary formula. We’ll bet on Chong to be back and to be bringing us another memoir on a topic we will not be able to predict: perhaps his adventures to be the first Canadian to land on Mars? wink
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/My-Year-Racehorse-Falling-Sport/dp/1553655206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358925248&sr=8-1&keywords=Kevin+Chong
A Review of Aamer Hussein’s Insomnia (Telegram Books, 2007).
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Aamer Hussein’s Insomnia (Telegram Books, 2007) is a short story collection that explores the complications of transnational identifications, romance, and the connection between politics and aesthetics. There is a palimpsestic quality in this collection, precisely because it is filled with artists, writers, poets, students, lovers, political dissidents, and activists, who together combine to form a potent alchemy from which Hussein can explore a number of repeating themes and plotlines. The short story form is a particularly useful one for Hussein insofar as it showcases the tremendous lyricism of his writing. The stories are often broken up into smaller chapters that take on a kind of density that is more evocative of poetry or poetic prose. The standouts are the ones that still manage to achieve more narrative coherence. For instance, “The Crane Girl” follows a kind of love triangle that emerges among Murad, a Pakistani living in London and two Japanese transnationals: Tsuru, of the title, and then Shigeo. Though Murad is not aware at first, his friendship with Shigeo is in part brokered over their shared attraction to Tsuru and Hussein’s story reveals the multificated terrain of heartbreak and friendship that can find footing in the shadow of a triangle. “Hibiscus Days: A Story Found in a Drawer” was probably my favorite as it follows four characters, as they eventually grow apart from each other. Hussein employs this story as a way to explore how upper-middle class youth negotiate the perils and pitfalls of revolutionary sentiments and their own class privilege. The other major theme is of course Hussein’s orbiting around the experience of the immigrant and the sojourner of Pakistani descent living in London.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Insomnia-Aamer-Hussein/dp/1846590248/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1359833912&sr=8-4&keywords=Aamer+Hussein
A Review of Nury Vittachi’s The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics: Feng Shui Detective #3 (Felony & Mayhem, 2012).
What would our lives be without Mr. CF Wong, our enterprising feng shui expert and detective? Fortunately, we don’t have to ponder the question too long this year because Felony & Mayhem offers U.S. distribution to the third title in the series, otherwise known by its felicitous title: The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics (I believe it was originally published by Allen & Unwin in 2006). As earlier installments have revealed, Mr. CF Wong as the feng shui expert, is one of a larger cadre of professionals in the mystical arts; you have diviners and psychics, witch doctors and herbalists, all comprising a very motley and supernatural crew. Fortunately, along with Mr. CF Wong, his hilariously enterprising assistant, Joyce McQuinnie, is again along for the investigatory ride. In this novel, there are a couple of strange occurrences that immediately ramp up the plotting. First, a veterinary doctor (Lu Linyao) discovers that her daughter has been kidnapped, which immediately brings in Wong and McQuinnie into the equation to help out. As Wong and McQuinnie delve further into the motivations behind the kidnapping, they become enmeshed in a larger plot involving vegan terrorists. That’s right folks: vegan terrorists. It’s here that Vittachi has a great deal of comic fun at the expense of the politically leftist, but as the novel moves inexorably toward unmasking the true villains, we begin to see that there is a much more complicated ethnic issue at hand. Indeed, one of the vegan terrorists (spoilers forthcoming) is from the Uyghur ethnic minority and is operating to engage in subversive activities. At one point, there is a bomb that is implanted inside the body of an elephant. Vittachi drags out this plot development a little bit too long, but does wring a lot of laughs from various minor characters wondering if they have heard the phrase correctly: “there is a bomb in an elephant.” As with the previous two installments, you can tell Vittachi can juggle the complicated terrain of the political, the humorous, and the detective plot all at the same time. In this fantastic alchemy, this third installment is another must read in the Feng Shui detective series.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shanghai-Union-Industrial-Mystics/dp/1937384071/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1359571775&sr=8-8&keywords=nury+vittachi
A Review of E.C. Myers’s Quantum Coin (Pyr, 2012)
Fortunately fans of the Coin series didn’t have to wait very long for the sequel to Fair Coin, which was later published in the same year. More fortunately still, E.C. Myers captures the synergy he found between a dynamic plot and unique characters in his sequel, Quantum Coin, which sees our spunky hero, Ephraim Scott, return to battle a particularly catastrophic issue: the merging of the multiverse. Yes, readers, Ephraim’s own reality is merging with the many others that exist and he, alongside his girlfriend, Jena Kim, and his girlfriend’s analog, Zoe Kim, must work together with yet more analogs in yet another version of the multiverse (Nathan and Dr. Kim) to help stop this destructive process (by analog, I mean an individual’s “double” in another reality and if this description is confusing, it’s certainly meant to encourage you to go to read the first installment). For those that are uninitiated, the coin of the title speaks to the power that Ephraim has over a particular circular metallic item that can allow him to switch places in the multiverse with another version of himself. The first book explored what happened as Ephraim engaged in this process and had to fight an evil version of his friend in order for general order to be restored. The operation of the titular coin also involves other gadgets such as a controller, making the movement between one reality and another a more complicated, if not, potentially perilous process. Dr. Kim encourages them to use the coin and the controller to move back into the past of another reality in order to find Hugh Everett, a man of incredible genius and a world-renowned quantum physicist, who might have the intellectual capacity to come up with a plan to help stop the merging process. Members of this community will appreciate Myers’s intertwinement of the science fiction genre with racial formation. When Ephraim and Jena must travel to a version of 1950s America, Jena’s appearance provokes concern and racial epithets. Further still, when Ephraim encounters Jena’s grandfather, Grumps, during this period, Myers ingeniously inserts some McCarthy-ish moments that give this historical period some extra texture. Myers’s second installment is also more complicated because he explores the romantic instabilities that might arise as one character must tangle with love interests not only in one reality, but in many others as well. That’s right: what is Ephraim to do with the fact that his relationship with Jena Kim seems to be wobbling in the face of his suppressed emotions for Zoe? And what of Jena’s own flirtatious dalliance with one of the Hugh Everett analogs? With romance blooming amid the virtual destruction of all possible realities, you don’t need to flip a coin to wager whether or not you should read this book.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Coin-E-C-Myers/dp/1616146826/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359918747&sr=8-1&keywords=quantum+coin
A Review of Darien Gee’s The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society (Ballantine Books, 2013).
In The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society, Darien Gee’s follow-up to Friendship Bread, the self-explanatory title refers to the community building that occurs amongst a group of women all invested in this DIY hobby. I completed this novel during a rather long stay at an airport and then on the ensuing flight down to southern California. I picked it because I knew that it would not necessarily be the kind of plot that would generate much anxiety or horror in me and fortunately, it did not disappoint. Some figures that appeared in the core cast of characters from the first book return in different capacities and energize Gee’s idyllic representation of what seems to be a semi-suburban community. This novel more specifically hones in on: Yvonne, a beautiful young woman who also happens to be trying to make a living as a plumber; Frances, a married woman who along with her husband Reed, are deciding upon whether to adopt a special needs child from China (named Mei Ling); Bettie, the aged but spirited president of the titular scrapbooking society; Connie, a just-out-of-the foster system figure, who comes upon a lost goat and develops a touching bond with her furry four-legged friend; Ava, a young single mother who is looking to support her son; and Isabel, who is selling her home in the aftermath of her husband’s infidelity and then his tragic death he had been having an affair with Ava). As with Gee’s previous effort, each character is involved their own conflict, but are united together in their scrapbooking interests. The plot thread that weights most heavily for the novel occurs when Bettie, the scrapbooking president, is discovered to be suffering from vascular dementia. In this respect, the novel does present us with the quietly devastating effects of a medical condition that is often overlooked, as Bettie needs more care and attention and fails to remember even those closest to her. The kaleidoscopic approach to the construction of this Avalon community does have its risks: Gee must take her time to draw out each character and to round them in their intricacies; the plotting takes awhile to generate steam. As with Friendship Bread, Gee’s work is not about postapocalyptic landscapes filled with zombies or cannibals, nuclear fallout or disease-infested corpses; instead, she focuses on the subtle tensions that undergird one local community. The novel’s general topic matter—that of scrapbooking—should appeal to one of the target reading bases and the hardcover print edition does include some interesting recipes and scrapbooking tips in its conclusion. This novel is undoubtedly to be embraced by book clubs and DIY groups at large.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Friendship-Bread-Novel-Darien-Gee/dp/0345525353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360966208&sr=8-1&keywords=friendship+bread
A Review of Irfan Master’s A Beautiful Lie (Albert Whitman, 2012).
A Beautiful Lie is a middle-school directed fiction concerning the Indian Partition of 1947. Irfan Master’s debut novel takes on a very difficult historical context, one that I could imagine would be its own challenge to move into a representational terrain directed at younger audiences. The protagonist and first person narrator of the novel is Bilal and the “beautiful lie” of the title comes from his decision to keep his father in the dark concerning the political and religious turmoil surrounding them. You see, Bilal’s father is already dying, and Bilal’s deception is motivated from his desire to protect his father in his compromised physical state. Given the historical restrictions within which Master must work, we all ultimately know where the narrative will lead and the events prior to the Partition sequence are of course filled with the growing factionalism appearing between Muslims and Hindus. At one point, Bilal travels with his mentor Doctorji to help a remote village with healthcare when they are detained for potentially being spies. Bilal’s background as a Muslim puts him at odds with a number of Hindu communities in the lead-up to the country’s violent schism and even the most basic of pastimes, such as cricket, become the terrain upon which religious differences are posed. Master’s fictional project is a delicate one, insofar as he must work to render the experience authentically through the eyes of a boy. The author’s note accompanying the text, while delving into some of the circumstances surrounding the Partition is useful, perhaps would be aided by an instructional component Indeed, many of these historically grounded youth-oriented fictions seem best engaged with in a classroom setting where they can be contextualized in depth.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/A-Beautiful-Lie-Irfan-Master/dp/0807505978/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360355936&sr=8-1&keywords=Irfan+Master
A Review of Kendare Blake’s Sleepwalk Society (2010, PRA Publishing)
Kendare Blake’s debut novel Sleepwalk Society is billed as a young adult novel written in the post-9/11 context. It is, to a certain extent, reminiscent of the haze filled, postmodern ennui that characterized Pamela Lu’s debut novel, Pamela. Whereas Lu revels in the empty center at the core of that meandering narrative, Blake’s central characters still seek to hold on to something real—however that might be defined—in a moment of transition. That is, the three main characters, Violet, Terran, and Joey are all in their beginning stages of college and trying to figure out what it is they want to do with their lives. They live upper middle class existences with all the trappings of privilege that ultimately make such life choices seem on some level filled with false uncertainty. Blake’s poetic writing style lifts this narrative above something maudlin and Violet is fortunately quite a perceptive and lyrical focalizer. There will be moments in the reading where something will lift off the page and ring out in its clarity. The scenes with Violet and her father are often the best and most brutal in the novel. At the same time, Sleepwalk Society can suffer from a kind of listlessness that perhaps is evoked in the title itself. The main characters sometimes come off as bored of their own lives. In this state, the plotting will not always get off the ground and Blake must work diligently to continue the narrative moving forward around college parties and the perils of the hook-up culture. I was quite surprised at the novel’s conclusion and will be interested to see what other readers might expect from Violet by the ending. Blake also happens to be the author of two novels that were recently published from Tor, which are part of the young adult urban romance fantasy fiction genre (Anna Dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares; she has a forthcoming novel called Antigoddess). As a quick note, I wanted to encourage you to browse the offerings at the PRA Publishing website to see what else they have brewing:
http://prapublishing.com/
It’s always a treat to find out about new independent publishers =).
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Society-Modern-Contemporary-Fiction/dp/0982140711/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1359313298&sr=8-6
A Review of Manil Suri’s City of Devi (W.W. Norton, 2012)
So, Manil Suri is another one of those writers whose novels I say I will eventually get to, but then somehow manage to squander away the hours, but no more: I have read his semi-post-apocalyptic speculative realist novel City of Devi (after Age of Shiva and The Death of Vishnu). The third novel was originally intended to refer to Brahma, but Suri shifted his focus to Devi and hence this third novel. Suri clearly takes the post-9/11 milieu as the inspiration for this work and the religious factionalism that continues to plague Indian-Pakistani politics; more specifically he gestures to the 2008 and 2011 Mumbai bombings. The titular city is that of Mumbai, which in the wake of the mega-blockbuster movie, Superdevi, has become full of religious fervor. When Mumbai becomes subject to a set of coordinated nuclear bombings, the novel imagines two main characters as they both attempt to navigate the ruins in order to find someone very dear to them. The first character is Sarita, an educated woman, who opens the novel looking to buy a pomegranate. The symbolic importance of this fruit is not revealed until later on, but her obsession with this fruit is involved with her search for her husband, a man by the name of Karun, a talented mathematician. Karun disappeared just prior to the attacks, so Sarita’s quest to be reunited with her husband is one already filled with mystery and uncertainty. The second character is Jaz, a queer man of Muslim background, who, as we come to discover, had been in a rather long-term relationship with Karun. When that relationship goes south in the midst of Jaz’s infidelity, Karun ends up marrying Sarita. In the period following the attacks, disguised as a man of Hindu background, Jaz joins forces with Sarita in order to find Karun. Of course, Sarita has little idea of Jaz’s true intentions, though she is suspicious, and as the novel moves forward, both characters must constantly perform different identities in order to survive and to bring less attention to their specific religious backgrounds. The larger question that Suri seems to be pushing at us is how to reconcile the triangulated love story amid the larger post-apocalyptic storyline. Fredric Jameson might, of course, suggest we read that relationship allegorically, but what is to be made of these two characters, searching so fervently for a man they each love in their own ways? To answer this question, you’ll of course have to read the book. Suri’s narrative is tremendously engaging. The one issue that does arise is that the swapping of first person narrators inevitably places one storytelling voice in comparison to the other and in many ways, Jaz is the far more dynamic and mischievous character, leading us sometimes to wish for more of his perspective. On the social context level, Suri provides us with a brilliant depiction of a contemporary city brimming with religious convictions that ultimately possess far more shaky foundations. What does faith offer in the midst of violence and global conflict, the novel finally poses, especially with such catastrophic manifestations.
Buy the book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-City-Devi-A-Novel/dp/0393088758/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360006758&sr=8-1&keywords=city+of+devi
In this post, reviews of Kevin Chong’s My Year of the Racehorse: Falling in Love with the Sport of Kings (Greystone Books, 2012); Aamer Hussein’s Insomnia (Telegram Books, 2007); Nury Vittachi’s The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics: Feng Shui Detective #3 (Felony & Mayhem, 2012); E.C. Myers’s Quantum Coin (Pyr, 2012); Darien Gee’s The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society (Ballantine Books, 2013); Irfan Master’s A Beautiful Lie (Albert Whitman, 2012); Kendare Blake’s Sleepwalk Society (2010, PRA Publishing); Manil Suri’s City of Devi (W.W. Norton, 2012)
A Review of Kevin Chong’s My Year of the Racehorse: Falling in Love with the Sport of Kings (Greystone Books, 2012)
Kevin Chong has already gotten some reviewing attention on this blog; please see, for instance, pylduck’s review this-a-way for Beauty Plus Pity:
http://asianamlitfans.livejournal.com/124780.html
Chong tackles the memoir form with the very idiosyncratic My Year of the Racehorse, which follows the author’s misadventures as he takes up the mantle of being part-owner of a potentially prize-winning racehorse known as Blackie. It might be important to mention that at the conclusion of the memoir, there is a sort of disclaimer concerning the part-fictive nature of the narrative, that certain events and characters have been altered to protect their identities and in some cases to streamline the “plot.” These moments always break me out of the memoir as a kind of nonfictional form, reminding me that we must approach such works with a keen eye for a sense of construct and for artifice. If anything, Chong leans on a laidback humor that was evident already in a novel like Beauty Like Pity; it tracks throughout My Year of the Racehorse to give the memoir an emotionally resonant, but comic scaffolding. His characterizations of figures like the horse-trainer, Randi, and later an animal psychic are alternately poignant and offbeat. For me, the aspect that was perhaps the most illuminating was the semi-ethnographic sections that gives readers a perspective into racehorses and their history, the whole vocabulary behind the track culture, and the high stakes that can be involved in the process. Early on, too, Chong is entirely willing to admit to the readers that his adventures into the land of racehorses was, in part, motivated by the desire to write another book and to push him creatively. To be sure, it is this gamble that pays off the most, as readers are treated to an original and winning literary formula. We’ll bet on Chong to be back and to be bringing us another memoir on a topic we will not be able to predict: perhaps his adventures to be the first Canadian to land on Mars? wink
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/My-Year-Racehorse-Falling-Sport/dp/1553655206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358925248&sr=8-1&keywords=Kevin+Chong
A Review of Aamer Hussein’s Insomnia (Telegram Books, 2007).
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Aamer Hussein’s Insomnia (Telegram Books, 2007) is a short story collection that explores the complications of transnational identifications, romance, and the connection between politics and aesthetics. There is a palimpsestic quality in this collection, precisely because it is filled with artists, writers, poets, students, lovers, political dissidents, and activists, who together combine to form a potent alchemy from which Hussein can explore a number of repeating themes and plotlines. The short story form is a particularly useful one for Hussein insofar as it showcases the tremendous lyricism of his writing. The stories are often broken up into smaller chapters that take on a kind of density that is more evocative of poetry or poetic prose. The standouts are the ones that still manage to achieve more narrative coherence. For instance, “The Crane Girl” follows a kind of love triangle that emerges among Murad, a Pakistani living in London and two Japanese transnationals: Tsuru, of the title, and then Shigeo. Though Murad is not aware at first, his friendship with Shigeo is in part brokered over their shared attraction to Tsuru and Hussein’s story reveals the multificated terrain of heartbreak and friendship that can find footing in the shadow of a triangle. “Hibiscus Days: A Story Found in a Drawer” was probably my favorite as it follows four characters, as they eventually grow apart from each other. Hussein employs this story as a way to explore how upper-middle class youth negotiate the perils and pitfalls of revolutionary sentiments and their own class privilege. The other major theme is of course Hussein’s orbiting around the experience of the immigrant and the sojourner of Pakistani descent living in London.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Insomnia-Aamer-Hussein/dp/1846590248/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1359833912&sr=8-4&keywords=Aamer+Hussein
A Review of Nury Vittachi’s The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics: Feng Shui Detective #3 (Felony & Mayhem, 2012).
What would our lives be without Mr. CF Wong, our enterprising feng shui expert and detective? Fortunately, we don’t have to ponder the question too long this year because Felony & Mayhem offers U.S. distribution to the third title in the series, otherwise known by its felicitous title: The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics (I believe it was originally published by Allen & Unwin in 2006). As earlier installments have revealed, Mr. CF Wong as the feng shui expert, is one of a larger cadre of professionals in the mystical arts; you have diviners and psychics, witch doctors and herbalists, all comprising a very motley and supernatural crew. Fortunately, along with Mr. CF Wong, his hilariously enterprising assistant, Joyce McQuinnie, is again along for the investigatory ride. In this novel, there are a couple of strange occurrences that immediately ramp up the plotting. First, a veterinary doctor (Lu Linyao) discovers that her daughter has been kidnapped, which immediately brings in Wong and McQuinnie into the equation to help out. As Wong and McQuinnie delve further into the motivations behind the kidnapping, they become enmeshed in a larger plot involving vegan terrorists. That’s right folks: vegan terrorists. It’s here that Vittachi has a great deal of comic fun at the expense of the politically leftist, but as the novel moves inexorably toward unmasking the true villains, we begin to see that there is a much more complicated ethnic issue at hand. Indeed, one of the vegan terrorists (spoilers forthcoming) is from the Uyghur ethnic minority and is operating to engage in subversive activities. At one point, there is a bomb that is implanted inside the body of an elephant. Vittachi drags out this plot development a little bit too long, but does wring a lot of laughs from various minor characters wondering if they have heard the phrase correctly: “there is a bomb in an elephant.” As with the previous two installments, you can tell Vittachi can juggle the complicated terrain of the political, the humorous, and the detective plot all at the same time. In this fantastic alchemy, this third installment is another must read in the Feng Shui detective series.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shanghai-Union-Industrial-Mystics/dp/1937384071/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1359571775&sr=8-8&keywords=nury+vittachi
A Review of E.C. Myers’s Quantum Coin (Pyr, 2012)
Fortunately fans of the Coin series didn’t have to wait very long for the sequel to Fair Coin, which was later published in the same year. More fortunately still, E.C. Myers captures the synergy he found between a dynamic plot and unique characters in his sequel, Quantum Coin, which sees our spunky hero, Ephraim Scott, return to battle a particularly catastrophic issue: the merging of the multiverse. Yes, readers, Ephraim’s own reality is merging with the many others that exist and he, alongside his girlfriend, Jena Kim, and his girlfriend’s analog, Zoe Kim, must work together with yet more analogs in yet another version of the multiverse (Nathan and Dr. Kim) to help stop this destructive process (by analog, I mean an individual’s “double” in another reality and if this description is confusing, it’s certainly meant to encourage you to go to read the first installment). For those that are uninitiated, the coin of the title speaks to the power that Ephraim has over a particular circular metallic item that can allow him to switch places in the multiverse with another version of himself. The first book explored what happened as Ephraim engaged in this process and had to fight an evil version of his friend in order for general order to be restored. The operation of the titular coin also involves other gadgets such as a controller, making the movement between one reality and another a more complicated, if not, potentially perilous process. Dr. Kim encourages them to use the coin and the controller to move back into the past of another reality in order to find Hugh Everett, a man of incredible genius and a world-renowned quantum physicist, who might have the intellectual capacity to come up with a plan to help stop the merging process. Members of this community will appreciate Myers’s intertwinement of the science fiction genre with racial formation. When Ephraim and Jena must travel to a version of 1950s America, Jena’s appearance provokes concern and racial epithets. Further still, when Ephraim encounters Jena’s grandfather, Grumps, during this period, Myers ingeniously inserts some McCarthy-ish moments that give this historical period some extra texture. Myers’s second installment is also more complicated because he explores the romantic instabilities that might arise as one character must tangle with love interests not only in one reality, but in many others as well. That’s right: what is Ephraim to do with the fact that his relationship with Jena Kim seems to be wobbling in the face of his suppressed emotions for Zoe? And what of Jena’s own flirtatious dalliance with one of the Hugh Everett analogs? With romance blooming amid the virtual destruction of all possible realities, you don’t need to flip a coin to wager whether or not you should read this book.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Coin-E-C-Myers/dp/1616146826/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359918747&sr=8-1&keywords=quantum+coin
A Review of Darien Gee’s The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society (Ballantine Books, 2013).
In The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society, Darien Gee’s follow-up to Friendship Bread, the self-explanatory title refers to the community building that occurs amongst a group of women all invested in this DIY hobby. I completed this novel during a rather long stay at an airport and then on the ensuing flight down to southern California. I picked it because I knew that it would not necessarily be the kind of plot that would generate much anxiety or horror in me and fortunately, it did not disappoint. Some figures that appeared in the core cast of characters from the first book return in different capacities and energize Gee’s idyllic representation of what seems to be a semi-suburban community. This novel more specifically hones in on: Yvonne, a beautiful young woman who also happens to be trying to make a living as a plumber; Frances, a married woman who along with her husband Reed, are deciding upon whether to adopt a special needs child from China (named Mei Ling); Bettie, the aged but spirited president of the titular scrapbooking society; Connie, a just-out-of-the foster system figure, who comes upon a lost goat and develops a touching bond with her furry four-legged friend; Ava, a young single mother who is looking to support her son; and Isabel, who is selling her home in the aftermath of her husband’s infidelity and then his tragic death he had been having an affair with Ava). As with Gee’s previous effort, each character is involved their own conflict, but are united together in their scrapbooking interests. The plot thread that weights most heavily for the novel occurs when Bettie, the scrapbooking president, is discovered to be suffering from vascular dementia. In this respect, the novel does present us with the quietly devastating effects of a medical condition that is often overlooked, as Bettie needs more care and attention and fails to remember even those closest to her. The kaleidoscopic approach to the construction of this Avalon community does have its risks: Gee must take her time to draw out each character and to round them in their intricacies; the plotting takes awhile to generate steam. As with Friendship Bread, Gee’s work is not about postapocalyptic landscapes filled with zombies or cannibals, nuclear fallout or disease-infested corpses; instead, she focuses on the subtle tensions that undergird one local community. The novel’s general topic matter—that of scrapbooking—should appeal to one of the target reading bases and the hardcover print edition does include some interesting recipes and scrapbooking tips in its conclusion. This novel is undoubtedly to be embraced by book clubs and DIY groups at large.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Friendship-Bread-Novel-Darien-Gee/dp/0345525353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360966208&sr=8-1&keywords=friendship+bread
A Review of Irfan Master’s A Beautiful Lie (Albert Whitman, 2012).
A Beautiful Lie is a middle-school directed fiction concerning the Indian Partition of 1947. Irfan Master’s debut novel takes on a very difficult historical context, one that I could imagine would be its own challenge to move into a representational terrain directed at younger audiences. The protagonist and first person narrator of the novel is Bilal and the “beautiful lie” of the title comes from his decision to keep his father in the dark concerning the political and religious turmoil surrounding them. You see, Bilal’s father is already dying, and Bilal’s deception is motivated from his desire to protect his father in his compromised physical state. Given the historical restrictions within which Master must work, we all ultimately know where the narrative will lead and the events prior to the Partition sequence are of course filled with the growing factionalism appearing between Muslims and Hindus. At one point, Bilal travels with his mentor Doctorji to help a remote village with healthcare when they are detained for potentially being spies. Bilal’s background as a Muslim puts him at odds with a number of Hindu communities in the lead-up to the country’s violent schism and even the most basic of pastimes, such as cricket, become the terrain upon which religious differences are posed. Master’s fictional project is a delicate one, insofar as he must work to render the experience authentically through the eyes of a boy. The author’s note accompanying the text, while delving into some of the circumstances surrounding the Partition is useful, perhaps would be aided by an instructional component Indeed, many of these historically grounded youth-oriented fictions seem best engaged with in a classroom setting where they can be contextualized in depth.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/A-Beautiful-Lie-Irfan-Master/dp/0807505978/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360355936&sr=8-1&keywords=Irfan+Master
A Review of Kendare Blake’s Sleepwalk Society (2010, PRA Publishing)
Kendare Blake’s debut novel Sleepwalk Society is billed as a young adult novel written in the post-9/11 context. It is, to a certain extent, reminiscent of the haze filled, postmodern ennui that characterized Pamela Lu’s debut novel, Pamela. Whereas Lu revels in the empty center at the core of that meandering narrative, Blake’s central characters still seek to hold on to something real—however that might be defined—in a moment of transition. That is, the three main characters, Violet, Terran, and Joey are all in their beginning stages of college and trying to figure out what it is they want to do with their lives. They live upper middle class existences with all the trappings of privilege that ultimately make such life choices seem on some level filled with false uncertainty. Blake’s poetic writing style lifts this narrative above something maudlin and Violet is fortunately quite a perceptive and lyrical focalizer. There will be moments in the reading where something will lift off the page and ring out in its clarity. The scenes with Violet and her father are often the best and most brutal in the novel. At the same time, Sleepwalk Society can suffer from a kind of listlessness that perhaps is evoked in the title itself. The main characters sometimes come off as bored of their own lives. In this state, the plotting will not always get off the ground and Blake must work diligently to continue the narrative moving forward around college parties and the perils of the hook-up culture. I was quite surprised at the novel’s conclusion and will be interested to see what other readers might expect from Violet by the ending. Blake also happens to be the author of two novels that were recently published from Tor, which are part of the young adult urban romance fantasy fiction genre (Anna Dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares; she has a forthcoming novel called Antigoddess). As a quick note, I wanted to encourage you to browse the offerings at the PRA Publishing website to see what else they have brewing:
http://prapublishing.com/
It’s always a treat to find out about new independent publishers =).
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/Sleep-Society-Modern-Contemporary-Fiction/dp/0982140711/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1359313298&sr=8-6
A Review of Manil Suri’s City of Devi (W.W. Norton, 2012)
So, Manil Suri is another one of those writers whose novels I say I will eventually get to, but then somehow manage to squander away the hours, but no more: I have read his semi-post-apocalyptic speculative realist novel City of Devi (after Age of Shiva and The Death of Vishnu). The third novel was originally intended to refer to Brahma, but Suri shifted his focus to Devi and hence this third novel. Suri clearly takes the post-9/11 milieu as the inspiration for this work and the religious factionalism that continues to plague Indian-Pakistani politics; more specifically he gestures to the 2008 and 2011 Mumbai bombings. The titular city is that of Mumbai, which in the wake of the mega-blockbuster movie, Superdevi, has become full of religious fervor. When Mumbai becomes subject to a set of coordinated nuclear bombings, the novel imagines two main characters as they both attempt to navigate the ruins in order to find someone very dear to them. The first character is Sarita, an educated woman, who opens the novel looking to buy a pomegranate. The symbolic importance of this fruit is not revealed until later on, but her obsession with this fruit is involved with her search for her husband, a man by the name of Karun, a talented mathematician. Karun disappeared just prior to the attacks, so Sarita’s quest to be reunited with her husband is one already filled with mystery and uncertainty. The second character is Jaz, a queer man of Muslim background, who, as we come to discover, had been in a rather long-term relationship with Karun. When that relationship goes south in the midst of Jaz’s infidelity, Karun ends up marrying Sarita. In the period following the attacks, disguised as a man of Hindu background, Jaz joins forces with Sarita in order to find Karun. Of course, Sarita has little idea of Jaz’s true intentions, though she is suspicious, and as the novel moves forward, both characters must constantly perform different identities in order to survive and to bring less attention to their specific religious backgrounds. The larger question that Suri seems to be pushing at us is how to reconcile the triangulated love story amid the larger post-apocalyptic storyline. Fredric Jameson might, of course, suggest we read that relationship allegorically, but what is to be made of these two characters, searching so fervently for a man they each love in their own ways? To answer this question, you’ll of course have to read the book. Suri’s narrative is tremendously engaging. The one issue that does arise is that the swapping of first person narrators inevitably places one storytelling voice in comparison to the other and in many ways, Jaz is the far more dynamic and mischievous character, leading us sometimes to wish for more of his perspective. On the social context level, Suri provides us with a brilliant depiction of a contemporary city brimming with religious convictions that ultimately possess far more shaky foundations. What does faith offer in the midst of violence and global conflict, the novel finally poses, especially with such catastrophic manifestations.
Buy the book Here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-City-Devi-A-Novel/dp/0393088758/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1360006758&sr=8-1&keywords=city+of+devi
