Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 14, 2014.

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Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for March 14, 2014.

(with apologies as always for errors in grammar/ spelling/ formatting etc)

In this post, reviews of: Derek Kirk Kim’s Tune: Still Life (illustrated by Les McClaine) (First Second, 2013); Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (Back Bay Books, 2013); Yvonne Woon’s Love Reborn (Disney Hyperion, 2014); Andrew Lam’s Birds of Paradise Lost (Red Hen Press, 2013); Paula Young Lee’s Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat (Solas House, 2013); Kim Fu’s For Today I Am A Boy (Houghton Mifflin, 2014); Mariko Nagai’s Dust of Eden (Albert & Whitman, 2014); and Crystal Chan’s Bird (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014).

A Review of Derek Kirk Kim’s Tune: Still Life (illustrated by Les McClaine) (First Second, 2013)



Derek Kirk Kim returns the saga started in Tune and Les McClaine is along for the ride to help with the illustrating. Spoilers forthcoming. If you’ve read the first volume, you know that Andy Go is stuck in some sort of exhibit in space, where aliens can view him in his natural habitat (which is a replica of his parents’ home). He does not realize that the contract he has signed makes it so that he must stay there for the duration of his life. Andy makes friends with the exhibit’s caretaker, but the race of aliens he comes into contact with begin to trouble him. Indeed, they do not have a sense of art at all and his caretaker is astonished when she can see that he has created images with the use of a pencil. Thus, Andy begins a friendship with this extraterrestrial being, in part to try to gain his freedom, and also to allow him to bring another individual into the exhibit. Of course, we recall that in the first volume he has developed serious feelings for one of his fellow students at the art institute, a lively young girl named Yumi Kwon. As an exchange for teaching her how to draw, the caretaker takes it upon herself to add Yumi Kwon to the exhibit. The problem arises when it is discovered that the Yumi Kwon that has been added to the exhibit comes actually from a ringer dimension, which is a kind of alternate university that is very similar to the one that Andy inhabits. The problem is that the ringer dimension creates some obvious deviations in the timeline: this version of Yumi has already dated Andy and further still that the other version of Andy in ringer Yumi’s dimension has cheated on her three times. Additionally, the ringer Yumi is a journalist rather than a fellow artist. Thus, the fact that they are in the exhibit together is a problem insofar as the ringer Yumi is not happy about being stuck in that location with Andy (who she at first does not realize is from another dimension). The hijinks of this volume are well illustrated and Kim’s comic plot elements are certain to keep readers interested. The conclusion leaves us wondering whether or not Andy has found a potential ally that will allow him to escape. Will he or won’t he? It seems as we will have to find out in another volume, as Tune: Still Life ends with a cliffhanger.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Tune-Still-Derek-Kirk-Kim/dp/159643760X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1385350325&sr=8-1&keywords=derek+kirk+kim

A Review of Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (Back Bay Books, 2013).



I rarely have been reading plays these days, but Ayad Akhtar’s Disgraced (also the writer of American Dervish, which was already reviewed on Asian American literature fans) was recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize in drama, so it seemed to be a good time to pick a play up; correct me if I’m wrong but he may also be the first American writer of Asian descent to have won a Pulitzer Prize for drama? In any case, Disgraced centers on an interracial relationship between a Muslim-Pakistani American lawyer named Amir and his Caucasian wife and artist Emily. The play opens with Emily painting Amir, part of her interest in portraying ethnic cultural contexts within her artistic work. The crux point of the play occurs over an explosive dinner conversation in which Amir and Emily are eating with Amir’s African American colleague, Jory, and her Jewish husband, Isaac. Thus, Akhtar immediately places an eclectic and diverse group together. In the post 9/11 milieu, Amir is especially attuned to racial issues and the dinner conversation often steers toward tricky subject matter, especially as these four debate and explore the meaning of various statements or views that can be found in the Quran. The intensity of the dinner party amplifies over the course of the drama and you are not surprised by its catastrophic conclusion; there is a naturalistic impulse in this play that seems to suggest that we can become the monsters that our societies most fear. Akhtar’s play is so riveting because the drama, though so short, embraces the flaws and the unique textures of its characters and the contours of its crackling dialogue.

Buy the Book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Disgraced-A-Play-Ayad-Akhtar/dp/0316324469/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1384325123&sr=8-1&keywords=ayad+akhtar

A Review of Yvonne Woon’s Love Reborn (Disney Hyperion, 2014)



Apparently the Dead Beautiful series comes to an end in Love Reborn, perhaps the most action packed of all three novels and certainly the one that fans have been waiting for: will Renee and Dante BOTH be able to survive? This question is the one that provides the cornerstone for this novel, especially as Dante’s time on earth seems to be coming to an end. Fortunately, they believe they have a solution: they must be able to travel to the Netherworld and in the process restore Dante’s soul. Unfortunately, traveling to the Netherworld endangers humans, as humans must sacrifice parts of their senses in order to gain access to the area. Only when they have lost ALL of their senses will humans or undead be able to purify their souls and be fully healed. The location of the Netherworld is the other problem. Renee and Dante must team up with Anya—from a previous book—and Theo, a talented but wily former monitor in order to follow the clues that will help them gain access to the Netherworld. Along the way, they are aided by a mysterious individual who keeps sending them notes only signed with the name “Monsieur.” It is together that the four will best be able to defeat the hordes of the Undead that are following them (the Liberum) as well as escape the clutches of the Monitors who are seeking to find Dante and end his life.

Woon ramps up the tension in this novel by rooting us within a narrative perspective that is itself troubled by the ways in which characters might be double-dealing. Indeed, Renee realizes that many characters have their secrets and at multiple points, we wonder (along with Renee) whether or not Dante, Anya, or Theo might all eventually turn on her. Further still, it becomes apparent that the Monitors may not all be as virtuous as she once thought them to be. Woon has to accomplish so much in this novel that there’s bound to be a letdown in some sense and the conclusion feels a bit rushed, but devotees of the young adult paranormal fantasy will not be disappointed by this climactic conclusion to the Dead Beautiful trilogy.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Reborn-Dead-Beautiful-Novel/dp/1423171209/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394773390&sr=8-1&keywords=Love+Reborn

A Review of Andrew Lam’s Birds of Paradise Lost (Red Hen Press, 2013).



Red Hen Press always publishes books slightly off the beaten path, ones that are formally experimental and/or contextually odd or unique. Lam contributes to this indie press identity with his first foray into fiction, the loosely connected story collection Birds of Paradise Lost. I recently taught a course which focused primarily or arguably on story cycles and I suppose you could place this collection within that realm only insofar as Lam unites the collection with the themes of Vietnamese American displacements and traumas (mostly set in the San Francisco Bay area), but goes beyond some of the ur-tropes associated with writings of this ethnic group by positioning complicated characters within respective fictional worlds. These oddballs and pariahs include queers, figures with disabilities like Tourette’s syndrome, cannibals (in one grotesque and traumatic case), a woman who seeks revenge, often in tandem with more common figures such as refugees and migrants. Stylistically, Lam avoids sentimentality and overwrought pathos and instead focuses on a kind of rawness that characterizes the lives of those struggling to get by; one of the most compelling stories is actually written from the perspective of the classmate of a newly arrived Vietnamese boy and typifies Lam’s ability to draw out what might be a more mundane story by refiguring it from another’s viewpoint. Lam’s collection is more in line with the work of Linh Dinh (see Fake House: Stories or Blood and Soap: Stories) than something like Nam Le’s the Boat or Angie Chau’s Quiet as They Come. A quirky and provocative work!

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Birds-Paradise-Lost-Andrew-Lam/dp/1597092681/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387813622&sr=8-1&keywords=birds+of+paradise+lost

A Review of Paula Young Lee’s Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat (Solas House, 2013).



So, this book randomly jives with a lot of research I completed just before the summer ended. I was writing a paper on a novel that had a lot of depictions of game hunting, specifically of deer hunting, so reading Paula Young Lee’s Deer Hunting in Paris: A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat was right up my research alley. Lee is author of a number of other books, but this one takes a much more personal look at her experiences in romance and in relation to the fact that her partner is one avid hunter. Lee—being quite the adventurous soul—is ever willing to embrace the lifestyle of the hunter, but before we get to that part, we’ll back to back up a few steps. The beginning of the memoir is much about Lee’s life growing up as the Korean American daughter of a by the books Christian immigrant pastor. She spends a number of years in her early adulthood living in Paris, France, only to begin a long distance relationship with a man from Maine. Of course, what makes this relationship nominally perfect is that she ends up living in a part of Maine called Paris, so we see her move from Paris, France to Paris, Maine. This man—in some ways, the polar opposite of our memoirist—is the person she falls in love with and thus, she gamely (see what I did there) takes up sport hunting and meat preparation as part of a kind of relational development. Lee’s background in academia breaks through her humorous writerly voice, as we get chapters on moose hunting, deer hunting, rabbit hunting, among others. The ethnographic nature of these chapters serves to reveal the rituals and cultures of Maine hunters, which are distinct from other local communities, as readers discover over the course of the episodic chapters. Lee is also willing to describe scenes of butchery and meat preparation without softening her prose: there are blood, guts, entrails, and organs, and also a desire to make sure the meat and any associated body parts are properly preserved and used. For those who have no interest in these subjects, the memoir might grow tiresome, but regardless of where you stand in relation to predator-prey type relationships, the last three chapters bring an emotional intensity back into the memoir that serves as a nice balance to the more light-hearted sequences that appear in earlier sections. Lee also peppers the memoir with the occasional recipe for those who are more interested in the culinary aspects of game meats. An interesting stylistic choice is the occasional use of hangul without necessarily translating the characters, a detail I very much enjoyed.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunting-Paris-Memoir-Travelers/dp/1609520807/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1386907469&sr=8-1&keywords=paula+young+lee

A Review of Kim Fu’s For Today I Am A Boy (Houghton Mifflin, 2014).



Kim Fu’s debut novel For Today I Am A Boy is probably one of the most sustained explorations of a Asian North American transgender character that I’ve read since Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night. It is probably no surprise that Fu hails from Canada, as this particular national canon has had what I consider to be far more dynamic and provocative explorations of queer issues (with writers such as Lydia Kwa, Larissa Lai, Shyam Selvadurai, among others) in recent years. The novel is an episodically plotted bildungsroman for our narrator, Peter, who is one of four children in a fairly dysfunctional immigrant family living in Canada. He has two older sisters, Adele and Helen, and then one younger sister, Bonnie. His father looks to Peter as the son who will continue the family line and expects him to act appropriately, which also means that he must perform his masculinity. His mother gambles and does not seem to be very happy in her marriage. The novel quickly shows the dispersal of the children. Adele escapes to Europe; Helen gets an education and leaves for Los Angeles; Bonnie becomes a stripper and lives in an itinerant lifestyle, while Peter seeks to establish a career as a cook. Along the way, Peter struggles to confront the nature of his transgender subjectivity. It isn’t until the final arc of the book that Fu allows Peter some actual closure to this issue. Interestingly enough, it isn’t until Peter’s father unexpectedly dies that the family can begin to heal. His mother finds herself freed from her feelings of powerlessness, while the sisters have had enough time apart to consider their assorted estrangements. And finally: Peter is able to consider the possibility that he can be the fourth sister he has always wanted to be. Fu’s novel is uneven, but its unsentimental depiction gives it great gravitas and it’s a novel I will be sure to incorporate into future classes.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/For-Today-I-Am-Boy/dp/0544034724/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390537733&sr=8-1&keywords=for+today+i+am+a+boy

A Review of Mariko Nagai’s Dust of Eden (Albert & Whitman, 2014).



Mariko Nagai’s Dust of Eden is her debut in the young adult fiction category, though she takes a rather original approach in the representation of a Japanese American girl who is interned at Minidoka by predominantly using the lyric form. The protagonist—if we can call her that—is Mina “Masako” Tagawa and her perspective provides us with a poetic entry into the traumas associated with the Japanese American internment. She is part of a family unit that includes an older brother (Nick), her mother, and her father (who is taken prisoner and questioned by the FBI), as well as her grandfather. Her father eventually joins them in Minidoka, but the reunion is strained. Nick, in particular, sees his father as a traitor. Mina finds a way to pass her time by writing letters to her best friend back in Seattle. Mina’s mother finds a job in the mess hall that requires considerable physical labor. When Nick turns 18, he eventually joins the army and goes against the wishes of his father. The lyric novel takes a much more darker turn in the concluding sections: Mina’s grandfather passes away, Nick writes letters about his experiences as a soldier engaged in combat (one poem concerns his perspective on the German extermination camps), and then of course, the atomic bombings. With such a broad historical tapestry, this novel would require some scaffolding if taught in the classroom. Nagai’s poetic approach of course is both accessible on the one hand (for younger audiences) and also employs a dynamic method to bring to life the internment experience. Nagai’s work easily resonates alongside other poetic works such as Mitsuye Yamada’s Camp Notes and Other Writings and Lawson Inada’s Legends from Camp. The sections I found most complicated appeared when Nagai explored conceptions of what it means to be American. For Mina, she is interpolated by an educational system that attempts to extract patriotism from her, while also denying her her citizenship: a paradox that she certainly comes to understand. For Nick, he spends the ending of the book in Japan, helping out with the American occupation. Once in Japan, he gets of sense of how he is not embraced as a Japanese citizen and in this sense, his identity as an American feels somehow more certain, what he calls “simply American.” These last words ring ironic and perhaps tragically hollow, given all that has occurred to Mina and Nick, their families, and all Japanese American internees.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Dust-Eden-Mariko-Nagai/dp/0807517399/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394090801&sr=8-1&keywords=mariko+nagai

A Review of Crystal Chan’s Bird (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014).



Crystal Chan’s debut YA novel, Bird, takes on a particularly dark topic: the aftermath for one family in the wake of a young boy’s suicide. That boy, John—nicknamed Bird—jumped off a cliff when he was just 5 years old. On that same day, Bird’s little sister Jewel is born. Fast forward to about a decade in the future and Jewel, as the narrator, gives us the present circumstances of her family, one that is trying to make a life in Iowa. Jewel is a mixed race child—of Jamaican, Mexican, and Caucasian backgrounds. One summer, she makes fast friends with a boy named John; John is African American, adopted, and is visiting Iowa for the summer and living with his Uncle. Jewel and John develop a fast friendship. John comes to discover Jewel’s hopes of becoming a geologist and learns of the special ring of stones she has erected near the site where her brother jumped off the cliff. Indeed, she often returns to that location, a kind of spiritual place that fills her with a sense of stability and center. John has his own hideout in a tree nicknamed the Event Horizon. Not surprisingly, his aim is to become an astronaut. For Jewel, things at home are far from perfect. Her mom still suffers from bouts of depression and her paternal grandfather was rendered mute in the wake of Bird’s suicide. Strangely enough, when Jewel brings John home for the first time, the grandfather becomes agitated and physically violent. It becomes clear that the grandfather might be trying to protect her from John because he perceives that John may be a “duppy,” which is another word for a spirit (a Jamaican cultural reference). The introduction of Jamaican spiritualism is key to establishing the continued issues that surface in the shadow of Bird’s suicide. Jewel’s father actually forbids her to go to the cliff, fearing that she may be somehow influenced negatively by duppies, which he thinks are rampant in that location. His beliefs also put major strain on his marriage, as Jewel’s mother does not believe in duppies.

Chan’s debut is especially impressive in its exploration of melancholia, depression, and coming-of-age. Jewel is very spirited character and we can see immediately that her persistence and resilience are integral in establishing a possible future for this fractured family. Another element that I really appreciated was the complicated, but organic friendship that develops between Jewel and John, both benefitting from the struggles that the other must face. This novel is certainly one I would recommend to readers of all ages.

Buy the Book Here:

http://www.amazon.com/Bird-Crystal-Chan/dp/1442450894/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393373264&sr=8-1&keywords=Crystal+Chan+Bird