Asian American Literature Fans

By Stephen Hong Sohn

Targeted for middle grade readers, Lygia Day Peñaflor’s debut, Unscripted Joss Byrd, explores the life of a preteen movie star. The titular Joss Byrd is on a shoot in Montauk with her single mother Viva. She’s struggling to commit new scripts to memory, especially because of continual re-writes. At the same time, we immediately begin to see how much pressure Joss Byrd has on her young shoulders because she’s the “cash cow” for her family, so much so that her mother has already squandered a considerable amount of Joss’s earnings in a failed venture. But all is not well with Joss: she doesn’t always feel up for doing movies, and she needs to find a more productive way to memorize lines. Further still, she finds her older co-star on the movie (a man named Rodney who is a method actor) to be detestable and slimy. Fortunately, Joss is able to make a friend in her youthful co-star, Chris, who is playing her older brother in the movie.

The movie itself is a biopic based upon the director Terrance’s life. Complications begin to arise because Viva is having a sexual relationship with the director, despite the fact that he is married. Further still, Joss begins to realize that the movie shoot is encroaching on the lives of the locals, who cannot use specific beaches to surf or hang out. Joss is definitely caught in the middle, but she begins to find her way, especially with the help of a tutor named Damon, who enables her to memorize her lines with more efficiency. Her developing friendship with Chris is another stabilizing force.

Though Peñaflor’s debut has much going for it, especially with its insider-type look into the life of a child actor, the story itself was uneven. It was especially difficult to find any redeemable value in Joss’s mother. Peñaflor is forced to find a way to make Viva likable, but does not provide enough of a back story to support the major pivot that the conclusion makes. If anything, that particular character makes me worry about Joss Byrd well beyond the final pages. You wonder if she will find her way in a movie industry that seems so intent on exploiting her, on the one hand, and a mother who seems unable to engage her duties as a supportive parental guardian, on the other.

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Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu