A Review of Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something (Tin House Books, 2021)
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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Ah, I picked this book to read on the plane back to California! Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something (Tin House Books, 2021) was exactly the right choice, as it is a quiet burn of the novel, the kind that gets under your skin and reminds you of the very intricate dynamics that emerge between employees and their employers! Let’s let the official marketing description provide us with some key information (as per usual): “A perceptive and powerful debut of identity and belonging—of a young woman determined to be seen. Willa Chen has never quite fit in. Growing up as a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey, Willa felt both hypervisible and unseen, too Asian to fit in at her mostly white school, and too white to speak to the few Asian kids around. After her parents’ early divorce, they both remarried and started new families, and Willa grew up feeling outside of their new lives, too. For years, Willa does her best to stifle her feelings of loneliness, drifting through high school and then college as she tries to quiet the unease inside her. But when she begins working for the Adriens—a wealthy white family in Tribeca—as a nanny for their daughter, Bijou, Willa is confronted with all of the things she never had. As she draws closer to the family and eventually moves in with them, Willa finds herself questioning who she is, and revisiting a childhood where she never felt fully at home. Self-examining and fraught with the emotions of a family who fails and loves in equal measure, Win Me Something is a nuanced coming-of-age debut about the irreparable fissures between people, and a young woman who asks what it really means to belong, and how she might begin to define her own life.”
This description is quite useful, as it explores why the novel contains two temporal signatures. One, in the diegetic present, involves Willa’s adventures as a live-in nanny. The other, set in the past, gives us the context from which Willa emerges, the challenges of growing up as “a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey.” Without the stability of a social collective behind her, Willa naturally seeks out these connections elsewhere, including in the home of her employer. The problem that the novel sets up is that really fine line between employee and employer, especially because Willa becomes something more like an extended family member over time. Willa’s relationship with Bijou becomes particularly close, giving us a sense that we’re moving in a somewhat naturalistic direction. Here, I provide a bit of a spoiler warning, so turn away from these last lines if you intend on reading the novel but haven’t yet had the chance. Wu’s debut doesn’t disappoint precisely because the conclusion is profoundly unsentimental and squarely confronts the overall disposability of the worker, no matter how seemingly essential she may be. But, Wu’s protagonist is a particularly spritely one, so we know that she is just really beginning on her journey. An understated, but glowing first novel.
Buy the Book Here
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ccape
Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape
Ah, I picked this book to read on the plane back to California! Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something (Tin House Books, 2021) was exactly the right choice, as it is a quiet burn of the novel, the kind that gets under your skin and reminds you of the very intricate dynamics that emerge between employees and their employers! Let’s let the official marketing description provide us with some key information (as per usual): “A perceptive and powerful debut of identity and belonging—of a young woman determined to be seen. Willa Chen has never quite fit in. Growing up as a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey, Willa felt both hypervisible and unseen, too Asian to fit in at her mostly white school, and too white to speak to the few Asian kids around. After her parents’ early divorce, they both remarried and started new families, and Willa grew up feeling outside of their new lives, too. For years, Willa does her best to stifle her feelings of loneliness, drifting through high school and then college as she tries to quiet the unease inside her. But when she begins working for the Adriens—a wealthy white family in Tribeca—as a nanny for their daughter, Bijou, Willa is confronted with all of the things she never had. As she draws closer to the family and eventually moves in with them, Willa finds herself questioning who she is, and revisiting a childhood where she never felt fully at home. Self-examining and fraught with the emotions of a family who fails and loves in equal measure, Win Me Something is a nuanced coming-of-age debut about the irreparable fissures between people, and a young woman who asks what it really means to belong, and how she might begin to define her own life.”
This description is quite useful, as it explores why the novel contains two temporal signatures. One, in the diegetic present, involves Willa’s adventures as a live-in nanny. The other, set in the past, gives us the context from which Willa emerges, the challenges of growing up as “a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey.” Without the stability of a social collective behind her, Willa naturally seeks out these connections elsewhere, including in the home of her employer. The problem that the novel sets up is that really fine line between employee and employer, especially because Willa becomes something more like an extended family member over time. Willa’s relationship with Bijou becomes particularly close, giving us a sense that we’re moving in a somewhat naturalistic direction. Here, I provide a bit of a spoiler warning, so turn away from these last lines if you intend on reading the novel but haven’t yet had the chance. Wu’s debut doesn’t disappoint precisely because the conclusion is profoundly unsentimental and squarely confronts the overall disposability of the worker, no matter how seemingly essential she may be. But, Wu’s protagonist is a particularly spritely one, so we know that she is just really beginning on her journey. An understated, but glowing first novel.
Buy the Book Here
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