Asian American Literature Fans – Megareview for December 27, 2015 AALF uses “maximal ideological inclusiveness” to define Asian American literature. Thus, we review any writers working in the English language of Asian descent. We also review titles related to Asian American contexts without regard to authorial descent. We also consider titles in translation pending their relationship to America, broadly defined. Our point is precisely to cast the widest net possible. With apologies as always for any typographical, grammatical, or factual errors. My intent in these reviews is to illuminate the wide-ranging and expansive terrain of Asian American and Asian Anglophone literatures. Please e-mail ssohnucr@gmail.com with any concerns you may have. In this post, reviews of Zoë S. Roy’s Calls Across the Pacific (Inanna Publications, 2015); Sherry Thomas’s The Immortal Heights (HarperCollins, 2015); Marisa de Los Santos and David Teague’s Connect the Stars (Harper Children’s Division, 2015); Ayad Akhtar’s The Who & The What (Back Bay Books, 2014); Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand (Little Brown and Company, 2015); Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (Harper 2015); Tabitha Suzuma’s Hurt (Transworld Publishers, 2015); and Melissa de la Cruz’s Isle of the Lost (Disney-Hyperion, 2015). A Review of Zoë S. Roy’s Calls Across the Pacific (Inanna Publications, 2015). 
I have been reading Zoë S. Roy’s publication in reverse order, starting with her most recent novel, Calls Across the Pacific, which is told in third person perspective and follows the viewpoint of Nina Huang. The official page provides this useful synopsis: “Fleeing the Cultural Revolution, a young Nina Huang says goodbye to her family and friends, and steals across the bay to Hong Kong, afterward immigrating to the U.S. and later to Canada. Twice she returns to China to reunite with her mother as well as friends, and to see how Chinese society and politics are evolving. However, as an escaped citizen who has returned with an American passport, Nina puts herself in dangerous situations and finds herself needing to flee from the red terror once again.” The novel can be classified more or less as a kind of bildungsroman, as Nina attempts to integrate herself into a larger national identity, one that is ultimately complicated by the titular “calls across the Pacific.” Rather than presenting Nina as traumatized by her many boundary-crossing movements, Roy is intent on revealing a tactical character, one who is willing to push herself intellectually and physically in order to survive. In some ways, this novel reminded me of Jade Snow Wong’s Fifth Chinese Daughter, especially as it twined a narrative about an individual alongside larger social forces embroiling the United States in Asia. In this sense, Roy’s work is very much operating through a historical aesthetic, as Nina becomes a political refugee in a time in which the U.S. must contend from fallout from multiple wars in Asia (and the Cold War). Pivotal to the texture of Roy’s narrative are romance plots, as Nina must find a way to balance her romantic interests alongside her educational endeavours. Indeed, her first significant relationship in North America is ultimately terminated after her boyfriend perceives that she is putting more effort into her studies than into their connection. A second relationship with a Canadian journalist proves to be more fruitful, especially as Nina is able to explore her interests in political science alongside her developing notions of romance and love, especially as couched in a more westernized context. Of course, the calls across the Pacific also speak to Nina’s multiple movements back to China, first after Nixon re-establishes contact in 1975 and later when Nina seeks to embark on more research for an intended book project. But both of these trips are not surprisingly complicated. Nina cannot be too open about her travels there, and both instances involve her identity being interrogated. In the last arc of the book, Roy ups the tension when Nina is detained for a period of time until she can provide proof that she is traveling with the assent of her original labor camp. Of course, Nina is not part of a labor camp, so she must rely upon the quick wits of her friends and family to help her escape and return to Canada. Fortuitously, Nina’s translation skills come in handy during this period, and she inadvertently falls upon some information that reveals the hardships endured by some “sent down youth” during the Cultural Revolution. Such details are essential to Roy’s political project: this novel is part of the historical recovery work of many expatriate and domestic Chinese North American writers who have been delving into this particular period and the many brutalities that resulted from Mao’s reformation policies (see also: Lisa See’s Shanghai Girls for another instance that explores the Great Leap Forward). The sustained interplay between historical references and personal matters can sometimes bog down the emotional impact of the plot, but Calls Across the Pacific is undeniably critical as part of this larger archive of Chinese North American transnational narratives that reveal the intricate nature of ethnic diasporas. Buy the Book Here:
For more on the author:
https://sites.google.com/site/zoesroy/
A Review of Sherry Thomas’s The Immortal Heights (HarperCollins, 2015).
As always, I give a spoilers warning with many young adult fictions due to their often serialized natures. Sherry Thomas returns with The Immortal Heights, part of the Elemental Trilogy, which is focused on Iolanthe Seabourne and her paramour Prince Titus, who is heir apparent to the kingdom. B&N will again provide us with the key synopsis: “In a pursuit that spans continents, Iolanthe, Titus, and their friends have always managed to remain one step ahead of the forces of Atlantis. But now the Bane, the monstrous tyrant who bestrides the entire mage world, has issued his ultimatum: Titus must hand over Iolanthe, or watch as his entire realm is destroyed in a deadly rampage. Running out of time and options, Iolanthe and Titus decide to act now and deliver a final blow to the Bane that will end his reign of terror for good.But getting to the Bane means accomplishing the impossible: finding a way to infiltrate his crypt in the deepest recesses of the most ferociously guarded fortress in Atlantis. And everything is only made more difficult when new prophecies come to light, foretelling a doomed effort. . . .Iolanthe and Titus will put their love and their lives on the line. But will it be enough?” The “friends” that are being referred to here are none other than Kashkari (Titus’s former classmate, who has been revealed to be a mage with prognosticating capabilities), Amara (who Kashkari loves but is betrothed to his brother), Master Haywood (Iolanthe’s guardian when she was growing up), and Mrs. Hanco*ck. Much of the beginning plays out the events from the last novel in which Iolanthe and Titus are recovering from the effects of amnesia and are battling Atlantean forces in the desert. Once this battle is over, they must plan a way to defeat Bane all the while acknowledging the possibility that this conflict may end their lives. The prophecy that has long held this trilogy together remains complicated by Kashkari’s vision that Iolanthe may find herself killed if she engages in a battle with Bane. This fact leads Titus to try to find a way to leave Iolanthe behind, but his stratagem proves futile as Iolanthe is determined to end Bane for the larger cause of terminating such an evil force in the world. There has always been much to admire about Sherry Thomas’s foray into the genre of the young adult fiction with paranormal romance tendencies: she’s game for meticulous world building, especially related to elements involving movement: vaulting, usage of portals and spell books from other dimensions, magic carpet rides, and wyverns capable of carrying particularly deadly riders from Atlantis. At the same time, the intricacies of this world often create an extra readerly burden because the narrative has been strewn across three novels and an excess of 1000 pages at this point. There were times when I had to hunt down the previous two installments just to get reoriented, even as Thomas takes time to reiterate certain “rules” that apply to this fictional world. Thus, even Thomas seems to get bogged down in some of the details and entire chapters can seem to be devoted to exposition, which creates an uneven pace over the span of this final installment. Fortunately, Thomas knows how to tie the loose ends together and devoted fans will be rewarded with a finale that provides much needed romantic catharsis for our central protagonists, visions of doom be damned.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-immortal-heights-sherry-thomas/1121093635#productInfoTabs
A Review of Marisa de Los Santos and David Teague’s Connect the Stars (Harper Children’s Division, 2015).
The holiday season always means reading more guilty pleasures. For me, the guilty pleasures often come in the form of YA para/normal fiction. Santos and Teague’s second collaboration (after Saving Lucas Biggs, which was already reviewed on AALF) was just the right thing I needed after I finished my grading and was moving into what I like to call: catch up and do the publishing thing during winter break. As with Saving Lucas Biggs, Santos and Teague split the narrative perspectives up amongst multiple first person storytellers. The first is given to Audrey Alcott, who possesses a rather unique ability to tell whether or not someone is lying. She is so adept at this skill that she has a rather anthropological eye toward deception, categorizing someone’s lie based upon their demeanor and the truth they are ultimately obscuring. The second is given to Aaron Archer, who also has a talent: he has immaculate sensorial (both visual and aural) memory with such an acuity that he can remember everything he has read, seen, and heard. Each character, though, is a bit of an outcast in their respective middle schools. Audrey is certainly a misfit and is disinvited from a major party at the beginning of the novel. When she is accused of stealing a bracelet from one of the most popular girls in the school, she knows it’s time for a change. For his part, Aaron parlays his talents into being the leader of his school’s trivia team, but his knowledge has its limits, as he can memorize facts and figures, but cannot always subjectively interpret or analyze them. When Aaron suffers a catastrophic failure at a major competition, he too realizes he needs a change. Enter the wilderness camp in which Aaron and Audrey are sent to in order to find a new sense of fulfillment and perspective. There they meet some other outsiders who have “special powers”: Louis, who has heightened sensory perception, and Kate, who boasts hyperempathy, thus giving her the ability to better understand the experiences of others. But, there is still a queen bee who presents a problem for this merry band of four, especially as the camp leader, Jare, places them all on various quests and challenges in order to make the most of their time amongst the mountains and deserts of the area. Santos and Teague are well aware that they need to keep readerly interest, so they raise the stakes in the final arc by presenting a missing person plot, which is twined with the possibility that Jare may not be as upstanding as he seems. This plot device does make for some compelling drama, but the root of the work stems not from the developments of these events, so much as they bring to light the dilemma that Aaron and Audrey face as oddballs. Aaron finds a way to better feel out the facts that have brought him so much attention, while Audrey understands that lying is not a quick way to mark someone else as evil or inherently pathological. Connect the Stars makes for a heartwarming story, perhaps perfect for the holiday season.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/connect-the-stars-marisa-de-los-santos/1120977502
A Review of Ayad Akhtar’s The Who & The What (Back Bay Books, 2014).
Do you ever sometimes burn out on narrative? It was apparent that I needed something really different to read, so I decided to pick up a play: Ayad Akhtar’s The Who & The What (Back Bay Books, 2014). B&N provides this pithy synopsis: “The Pulitzer prize-winning author of Disgraced explores the conflict that erupts within a Muslim family in Atlanta when an independent-minded daughter writes a provocative novel that offends her more conservative father and sister. Zarina has a bone to pick with the place of women in her Muslim faith, and she's been writing a book about the Prophet Muhammad that aims to set the record straight. When her traditional father and sister discover the manuscript, it threatens to tear her family apart. With humor and ferocity, Akhtar's incisive new drama about love, art, and religion examines the chasm between our traditions and our contemporary lives.” The play is apparently a riff off of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Fans of Shakespeare will remember that one of the two sisters in that play is the “shrew,” who is closing in on spinsterhood and the younger of the two realizes that she will have difficulty getting married unless her older sister is married off first. Akhtar uses the same premise for this play, as Zarina’s younger sister Mahwish aggressively encourages her to get married. Zarina’s father Afzal takes it one step further by creating an internet profile for her daughter on a Muslim American dating site and pretending to be her. Akhtar takes the comic aspects of this play to a high level by making it so that Afzal actually screens the men interested in dating Zarina by meeting with them first, without these men realizing that they are meeting Zarina’s father instead. Not surprisingly, Afzal has not found a suitable man for her daughter… until that it is, he meets Eli, a white man who has converted to the Islamic faith. Hijinks naturally ensue when Zarina discovers her father’s stratagem, but Zarina softens when he meets Eli, and this arranged dating actually ends up working to Azfal’s benefit. Zarina and Eli eventually get married, but there are skeletons in the closet. Zarina was in love with another man prior to meeting Eli, and she felt forced into ending that relationship because the man was not a Muslim. Second, Zarina has been suffering from a form of writer’s block based upon a novel that would be an obvious feminist critique of the prophet Muhammed. Once Azfal gets wind of Zarina’s plot, he naturally throws a conniption fit. Here, Akhtar also seems to be gesturing to the imperiled nature of artistic imagination in the face of Islamic fundamentalism, an issue obviously fraught for South Asian American/ Anglophone writers especially following the fatwa directed at Salman Rushdie following the publication of The Satanic Verses. Akhtar’s plays have always also been particularly incisive in their exploration of interracial romance, and The Who and the What is no different. In this case, Zarina, obviously living up to the royal significations of her name, seeks to find a path to independence for the modern Muslim woman, one that allows her to critique religion while also finding a source of identity within that same faith. This project is no doubt a dangerous path and the play reveals how challenging it can be to shake the religious ground from a feminist and transnational standpoint. Akhtar is no doubt a playwright who enjoys channeling the agent provocateur and The Who and the What is sure to generate lots of discussions over religious freedom, artistic imagination, and interracial dynamics.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-who-the-what-ayad-akhtar/1119965865
A Review of Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand (Little Brown and Company, 2015).
Plays so rarely come in full trade paperback versions, so Akhtar’s embrace by Little Brown and Company has been a treat, especially for fans of Asian American literature (and readers of AALF). Akhtar’s third published drama through LB & Co. is The Invisible Hand, which takes a look at corporate greed, transnational corporations, and their connections to the Islamic faith and Middle Eastern/ South Asian nation-state building (and/ or destabilization). Of the three plays that Akhtar has published, it might be surprising to say that this piece is probably the most polemic and potentially controversial. The short summary given at B&N states: “A chilling examination of how far we will go to survive and the consequences of the choices we make. In remote Pakistan, Nick Bright awaits his fate. A successful financial trader, Nick is kidnapped by an Islamic militant group, but with no one negotiating his release, he agrees to an unusual plan. He will earn his own ransom by helping his captors manipulate and master the world commodities and currency markets.” There are a couple of different power plays at work. On the one hand, there is the more Westernized and liberal entity that is embodied through Bashir, a man affiliated with the terrorist group that has taken Nick Bright captive. Bashir seeks to learn the techniques of trade, futures, and currency manipulation in order to correct the corruption that he perceives has undermined Pakistan’s development as an independent nation-state. On the other, there is the Imam who presents a more conservative approach to the West, who finds Nick Bright’s talents as a trader to be merely a symbol of Western avarice and decadence. There can only be one use value for Nick Bright, which exists only in his likely death as an enemy of Muslims. It is unclear who retains the upper hand between the Imam and Bashir, and the power dynamic is one that Nick necessarily must navigate if he is to survive. In any case, Akthar is most content in unsettling the audience, especially by muddying the boundaries between heroes and villains. Though Nick’s life is no doubt in peril, it’s not quite clear of course what path is the most just or noble. Because of this lack of clear moralism, Akhtar’s latest play is open to fruitful interpretation and no doubt will stir many conversations concerning discourses of terrorism, western capitalism, and social justice. As always, Akhtar retains his status as a preeminent playwright/ agent provocateur.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-invisible-hand-ayad-akhtar/1121865195
A Review of Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (Harper 2015).
Well, my guess is that readers will react strongly in one way or another to Alexandra Kleeman’s debut novel You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine. The title refers to the existential conceit of the novel, which explores the ways in which an individual may or may not be able to connect to himself, herself or zeself. In the novel’s case, the title character, known simply as A, spends much of her time musing on whether or not she is really herself. She feels a little bit out of sync, a kind postmodern ennui that also undermines her closest relationships. She has a roommate, a young woman named B, who also happens to look like her, though B is skinnier. A’s boyfriend, known simply as C, provides A with the company that she needs to get out of her head and to pretend at times that she’s not so lonely. But the novel takes a strange turn after setting up these basic relationships, as A starts to get increasingly unhinged or at least compelled by her desire to find meaning in a commoditized world in which commercial narratives and capitalism often give her the most compelling ways to get at her conflict: how can A be more like herself? For A, this quest leads her to the Church of Conjoined Eaters wherein she undergoes a cult-like process to purge herself of all dark forces, which apparently involve any specific memories of her past life. She must be recreated as a new vessel in which her relationships especially seem to cause a damaging form of de-selfing. By embracing the ways of the light, she can become the best ghost of herself. This process of ghosting seems to be Kleeman’s take on consumer’s capitalism attempt to construct desire. That is, as we are constructed around what lacks in us. Thus, we continually seek to buy things in order to make us closer to what we actually want to be. The problem, as Kleeman’s novel shows us, is that we can never actually get there, precisely because there’s always something else that you can improve, change, or buy to make you one step closer to the best version of you—under consumer capitalism mind you—that you can be. As a novel of ideas, You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine stretches readerly patience because it requires you to find a way to identify with the title character in order to follow her increasingly weird adventures and meandering thoughts. In this sense, some might find the critique of consumer capitalism and associated technologies to be the more intriguing than any aspect of the novel’s actual literary conceits, including its plots and characters. Nevertheless, readers will definitely find themselves in a quirky fictional world, one sure to provoke discussion over the novel’s open form conclusion.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/you-too-can-have-a-body-like-mine-alexandra-kleeman/1120611753
A Review of Tabitha Suzuma’s Hurt (Transworld Publishers, 2015).
(at first I thought the tagline on the cover was a bit dramatic, but after reading the novel...)
Most of Tabitha Suzuma’s work has only been published in the UK. With Forbidden, Suzuma received her stateside release a couple of years ago. Her most recent publication, Hurt, another young adult fiction, has only been released in the UK unfortunately. As always, I start these kinds of reviews with the frustration that comes from having to deal with publication rights and how they ultimately affect a reader’s access to a given work. In any case, Tabitha Suzuma’s Hurt employs a third person perspective that is focalized through Mateo Walsh, a brilliant young diver who is aiming for an Olympic medal. He is in a very serious romantic relationship with a fellow student named Lola; they’re in their late teens and have already engaged in sexual activity with each other. He is popular, though eschews the limelight to focus on his girlfriend and his two best friends, Hugo and Isabel (these two are also a couple). The novel starts with a flashback of a scene in which Mateo finds himself awake in his room with visible cuts and bruises all across his body and no idea why his room is trashed. Something has happened to him, but he is unsure about what that is. Over the course of the novel, little bits and pieces begin to emerge about that flashback. At first it becomes evident that the event was obviously related to some sort of traumatic moment in which he was a central figure: the problem for the reader is that we’re unsure whether or not he was a victim or a perpetrator. Perhaps, this tension is Suzuma’s greatest feat in this work, as readers are propelled to figure out not only what happened on that fateful night, but also whether or not Mateo harbors a secret that he keeps from the ones he loves because he fears some sort of inner monster. Suzuma has a number of plotting tricks up her sleeve that increasingly ramp up readerly anxiety: we wonder if Matheo might harm himself due to his intense agitated state; what is the secret he harbors? *And here we have some spoilers forthcoming* When Matheo finally tells Lola that he’s been sexually assaulted and raped by another man, we begin to see the possibility that he may begin to address his trauma, but the identity of this perpetrator becomes ever significant to the plot, and the reveal is Suzuma’s devastating final card. But, I’ll avoid that revelation for the possible reader. One minor issue that the novel does bring up is the question of the villain and how a figure imbued with antagonistic force is depicted. As the novel grapples with serious questions of trauma and recovery, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not the figure who is ultimately deemed to be a perpetrator deserves a rounded characterization. It does call to mind whether or not we need a more nuanced vocabulary for the figure of the antagonist and the variations thereof. In any case, I digress. Suzuma’s Hurt will be sure to generate some polarizing responses, but ultimately keep the reader taut to the page.
For more on the book go here:
http://www.tabithasuzuma.com/#/hurt/4565532969
A Review of Melissa de la Cruz’s Isle of the Lost (Disney-Hyperion, 2015).
So, it wouldn’t be AALF without a review of a Melissa de la Cruz novel at some point. I think she may perhaps hold the gold medal for most reviews here. Pylduck can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m fairly sure that she (or Allen Say) has gotten the most review love over here. Part of the reason is obviously that I am a big fan of the paranormal young adult genre and de la Cruz is ever prolific in this area. One of her latest efforts in this area is Isle of the Lost (Disney-Hyperion, 2015), which is apparently a novelistic prequel to some sort of television series (if I’ve gotten my facts correct). Isle of the Lost takes on the perspectives of the children of major Disney heroes and villains, focusing on the five children. Four are stuck in the Isle of the Lost, the place where Disney villains have been banished and where magic, especially the evil kind, has been completely abolished. These four are Mal (daughter of Maleficent), Evie (daughter of the Evil Queen who tried to poison and off Snow White), Carlos (son of Cruella de vil), and Jay (son of Jafar). One other perspective is given to Ben, son of the Beast and Belle, who lives in a beautiful and also magical-less place called Auradon in which all of the Disney heroes reside. Ben’s storyline is fairly straightforward: he is bored by how “good” the heroes have it, while he struggles to take on the mantle of being the king, since his father and mother want to retire from governance. The children of the Disney villains are not surprisingly far more interesting: they live in a land filled with frowns and slop, burnt black coffee and evil schemes. They go to school for classes that teach you how to be more dastardly, how to be more selfish, and how to be more cunning. But, Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay are not exactly so evil, and de la Cruz’s novel operates with a seductive conceit concerning the heroic capacities of villains and their children. By turning good and bad around, de la Cruz generates a form of narrative intrigue that serves as the perfect grounds for the upcoming series. You’ll want to see if Ben, Mal, Evie, Carlos, and Jay might meet in a universe where bad and good isn’t so easily defined and perhaps create an even better world in the process. But we’ll have to wait and see. Of course, the novel benefits from a fictional world that most Western readers will be quite knowledgeable about already and thus builds in an audience hungry for the story that will follow. Readers will be pleased to see a new generation of Disney heroes and villains because it allows that universe to expand in unpredictable ways, while also incorporating beloved stories from the past all at the same time.
Buy the Book Here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-isle-of-the-lost-melissa-de-la-cruz/1121883556
