asianamlitfans | Nov. 7th, 2023

Nov. 7th, 2023

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape

*reviewer’s note: In my aim to cover as much ground and texts as I can, I’m focusing on shorter lightning reviews that get to the gist of my reading experience! As Asian American literature has boomed, my time to read this exponentially growing archive has only diminished. I will do my best, as always!

In this lightning review, I cover Jane Pek’s The Verifiers (Knopf Doubleday 2022)! Let’s let the official marketing description get us off the ground here: “Claudia is used to disregarding her fractious family’s model-minority expectations: she has no interest in finding either a conventional career or a nice Chinese boy. She’s also used to keeping secrets from them, such as that she prefers girls—and that she's just been stealth-recruited by Veracity, a referrals-only online-dating detective agency. A lifelong mystery reader who wrote her senior thesis on Jane Austen, Claudia believes she's landed her ideal job. But when a client vanishes, Claudia breaks protocol to investigate—and uncovers a maelstrom of personal and corporate deceit. Part literary mystery, part family story, The Verifiers is a clever and incisive examination of how technology shapes our choices, and the nature of romantic love in the digital age.”

This novel was a really surprising read. I finished it over three or so nights and was continually surprised in the way that it continued to evolve. Pek is clearly a big fan of mysteries, much like her protagonist Claudia, who is our plucky first person storyteller. Pek knows how to create the mystery, draw out the mystery, throw in a bunch of red herrings, and then complicate the mystery even further. There are a bunch of references to canonical novels, so that’s another great element. The conclusion to this one is a bit open-ended, and it makes you wonder if Claudia could exist at the core of an entire series. The other element that I really enjoyed was Pek’s deep dive into apps and artificial intelligence in relation to matchmaking. I didn’t expect such a robust engagement with the technological side of the matchmaking world, and I came to find so much to sink my readerly teeth into. A wonderfully plotted detective novel with an engaging first person narrator. I definitely recommend this one for a plane ride or a day at the beach or pool.

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ccape

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape

*reviewer’s note: In my aim to cover as much ground and texts as I can, I’m focusing on shorter lightning reviews that get to the gist of my reading experience! As Asian American literature has boomed, my time to read this exponentially growing archive has only diminished. I will do my best, as always!

In this lightning review, I am covering Kat Chow’s Seeing Ghosts (Grand Central Publishing, 2021)! The official marketing description provides us with this context: “Kat Chow has always been unusually fixated on death. She worried constantly about her parents dying—especially her mother. A vivacious and mischievous woman, Kat's mother made a morbid joke that would haunt her for years to come: when she died, she'd like to be stuffed and displayed in Kat's future apartment in order to always watch over her. After her mother dies unexpectedly from cancer, Kat, her sisters, and their father are plunged into a debilitating, lonely grief. With a distinct voice that is wry and heartfelt, Kat weaves together a story of the fallout of grief that follows her extended family as they emigrate from China and Hong Kong to Cuba and America. Seeing Ghosts asks what it means to reclaim and tell your family’s story: Is writing an exorcism or is it its own form of preservation? The result is an extraordinary new contribution to the literature of the American family, and a provocative and transformative meditation on who we become facing loss.”

I loved this text! Really tough material that covers the multifaceted process of mourning. I appreciated how Chow was able to weave in not only her family’s history but also makes major references to other Asian American writers and scholars (like Yung Wing, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and Anne Anlin Cheng). The memoir first covers the loss of the author’s mother, but then gradually shifts toward the family’s evolution in the wake of that death. Kat and her two sisters must navigate a life without their mother, while also finding ways to connect to their father, who at times can be fairly opaque. The nuanced way in which Chow depicts this relationship between three daughters and their father was especially poignant. The concluding arc turns us transnationally, as the daughters and their father travel to Cuba, hoping for some closure. A breathtaking work of mourning and partial recoveries.

Buy the Book Here

ccape

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape

*reviewer’s note: In my aim to cover as much ground and texts as I can, I’m focusing on shorter lightning reviews that get to the gist of my reading experience! As Asian American literature has boomed, my time to read this exponentially growing archive has only diminished. I will do my best, as always!

In this lightning review, I am here to wax rhapsodic about Maya Shanbhag Lang’s What We Carry (The Dial Press, 2020)! We’ll let the official marketing description get us started, as always: “Maya Shanbhag Lang grew up idolizing her brilliant mother, an accomplished physician who immigrated to the United States from India and completed her residency all while raising her children and keeping a traditional Indian home. Maya’s mother had always been a source of support—until Maya became a mother herself. Then the parent who had once been so capable and attentive became suddenly and inexplicably unavailable. Struggling to understand this abrupt change while raising her own young child, Maya searches for answers and soon learns that her mother is living with Alzheimer’s. Unable to remember or keep track of the stories she once told her daughter—stories about her life in India, why she immigrated, and her experience of motherhood—Maya’s mother divulges secrets about her past that force Maya to reexamine their relationship. It becomes clear that Maya never really knew her mother, despite their close bond. Absorbing, moving, and raw, What We Carry is a memoir about mothers and daughters, lies and truths, receiving and giving care, and how we cannot grow up until we fully understand the people who raised us. It is a beautiful examination of the weight we shoulder as women and an exploration of how to finally set our burdens down.”

One of the most compelling aspects of Lang’s memoir is the way in which Lang is pushed to move past the illusions that parents can generate, sometimes to protect their own children. This aspect of what makes this memoir both so productive and heartbreaking at the same time. The myth that Lang’s mother creates of herself is the very one that Lang must deconstruct in order for both of them to come to grips with each other’s lives. Of course, this process is further complicated by the Alzheimer’s diagnosis that Lang’s mother receives. The other element that I absolutely reveled in was the meticulous detail with which Lang depicts the harrowing, yet intimate process of care work. As the conditions of Lang’s mother worsens, Lang and her husband (along with their young child) decide to take her in to keep an eye on her. This period is both one in which they can occasionally cement their bonds as family, but Alzheimer’s continually comes to undermine any lasting sense of stability. Eventually, Lang’s mother must be put into a long-term nursing care facility. An unflinching account of care work anchored by Lang’s stellar prose and keen insights.

Buy the Book Here

ccape

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Corinna Cape

I had meant to read this book long ago, but I actually lost it in a cross-country move. I eventually got my hands on another copy, so I can rectify my oversight. Neel Patel’s Tell Me How to Be (Flatiron, 2021) is one of those books that I would have written on awhile back had it come out sooner. The novel is especially important because it reminds us of the complicated contours of the queer Asian American experience, especially in relation to transnational dynamics and family formations. Let’s let B&N give us more context: “Renu Amin always seemed perfect. But as the one-year anniversary of her husband’s death approaches, she is binge-watching soap operas and simmering with old resentments. She can’t stop wondering if, thirty-five years ago, she chose the wrong life. In Los Angeles, her son, Akash, has everything he ever wanted, but he is haunted by the painful memories he fled a decade ago. When his mother tells him she is selling the family home, Akash returns to Illinois, hoping to finally say goodbye and move on. Together, Renu and Akash pack up the house, retreating further into the secrets that stand between them. Renu sends an innocent Facebook message to the man she almost married, sparking an emotional affair that calls into question everything she thought she knew about herself. Akash slips back into bad habits as he confronts his darkest secrets—including what really happened between him and the first boy who broke his heart. When their pasts catch up to them, Renu and Akash must decide between the lives they left behind and the ones they’ve since created, between making each other happy and setting themselves free. By turns irreverent and tender, filled with the beats of ’90s R&B, Tell Me How to Be is about our earliest betrayals and the cost of reconciliation. But most of all, it is the love story of a mother and son each trying to figure out how to be in the world.”

This particular description is fairly robust, and I don’t need to add too much more general information. The one thing that it really misses is the interesting discursive mode, as Patel chooses to use alternating first person perspectives, shifting between the aforementioned Renu and Akash. I’m always a huge fan of the first person, but Patel doesn’t necessarily give you characters that you can just sit by and observe. Indeed, I read Patel’s story collection, If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi, and Patel always retains these fairly strident first person perspectives. These characters are fully formed and exhibit both strengths and major flaws, so they can be a lot. This novel is no different. For instance, Akash is pretty messy: he has some substance abuse problems, he’s pretty flaky, he’s broke, and he keeps a lot of secrets. While Akash’s mother clearly has more of her life put together, she has her own issues, living in an area with a majority-white community and the fact that she is grappling with a major move to London. Renu has her own secret as well, so you might conceive of this novel as one involving comparative “closets,” with Akash being queer and his mother having a still-burning love for a Muslim man in her past. The novel works best as Patel’s incisive indictment of transnational Asian American parents, who no doubt have many things that they keep from their children. The novel unmasks the hypocrisy potentially existing within the Asian American parental structure, which can produce heteronormative relationship standards that are not only destructive but do not acknowledge relational forms of queerness existing even in seemingly heterosexual relationships. On the level of plot, the novel occasionally suffers from periodic dips in momentum, but Patel ultimately knows that what progresses the narrative is the dissonant and synergistic nature of these various relationships.

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