Monday, October 22, 2018

Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Huang

★★★★★

I am the straightest arrow you'll ever meet - I'm a downright prude when it comes to sex, drugs, and violence - so I purposely put off reading this book for years. I knew that Eddie Huang, and this book, had a reputation of being crass, brassy, and overdone, but as a child of immigrants from Taiwan, someone who loves Chinese/Taiwanese food and is a big fan of the Fresh Off the Boat TV show, I've kept this book on my to-read list, and I finally got around to reading it.

This book definitely is not for everyone. Making my way through early chapters, I fully expected to rate the book no higher than 3 stars. Huang uses the slur "Chinaman" the way black people have reclaimed the n-word, except it's not really a thing in the wider Chinese community, so it's jarring. The narrative includes plenty of profanity, makes obscure (to me) references to hip-hop and sports culture, and employs so much slang that I sometimes actually did not understand what Huang was trying to say. Luckily, I do have a working knowledge of basketball, so I could follow lines like, "[Mom's] still the best cook in the family...even the aunts admit my mom goes hard in the paint," (pg. 5) and, "I was into glasses, especially goggles, because Kareem wore them and he had the ill sky hook." (pg. 6)

I knew that Huang had walked away from the TV show because he didn't feel the show accurately represented his family, but I did not know just how much his family was sanitized for American TV audiences. I think the show presents an Asian-American family that is exactly what Americans are willing to accept at this time, but I also believe that Huang's actual origin story is profound in the way it shines a light on the struggles of immigrant families and the diversity of experiences that exist within a group perceived as homogeneous.

What really struck me about Huang's autobiography is how I could simultaneously identify so strongly with some of his experiences - being called "chink", eating at a white friend's house for the first time and encountering new-to-him American foods, feeling a kinship with Chinese/Taiwanese culture by knowing and appreciating the food - but then be so completely taken aback by some of his life choices. On the one hand, he hated the model minority stereotype, yet he participated just enough to show that, "I didn't want to play their stupid Asian Olympics, but I wanted to prove to myself that if I did want to be the stereotypical Chinaman they wanted, I could." (pg. 189) He took honors classes, attended academic summer camps, went to the "Love Boat" study tour in Taiwan, and even became a lawyer, but then he also did drugs, sold drugs, got into fights, and got arrested for assault! I appreciate that this book absolutely took me out of my comfort zone and challenged my own notions of what it means to be Asian-American.

Ultimately, I think this book is about Huang's struggle with identity, his constant efforts to not be defined as others see him and to figure out not only what it means to be true to himself, but also what it means to be an American while also being Asian-American. Huang wrote this book when he was just 30 years old, so it lacks the kind of gravitas you might expect from memoirs in general; it's clear that life to him is about living and learning, and he's just getting started. I recommend this book to anyone interested in exploring race and better understanding the experiences of immigrant families. It's definitely best approached with an open mind free of preconceived notions.

Monday, October 8, 2018

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

★★★★★

Quinn is a white teenaged boy who plays on the school's competitive basketball team. Rashad is a black teenaged boy who is a junior ROTC cadet, and whose best friends play on the same basketball team as Quinn. Chapters alternate between first-person narratives by Quinn and Rashad, and - unlike some other books that use this same storytelling method - the voices of the boys are distinct enough so you could probably figure out who is narrating without having to read the chapter title, thanks to Rashad's chapters being written by Jason Reynolds (a black author), and Quinn's chapters being written by Brendan Kiely (a white author).

One Friday night, as both boys have the same plans to go to a classmate's party, Rashad is racially profiled inside a corner store and becomes a victim of police brutality perpetrated by a white officer. Quinn witnesses the beating and, to his horror, recognizes the officer as his best friend's older brother Paul, a man who, in many ways, was a surrogate father figure to him after his own father died in Afghanistan. The book starts just before the incident, and spans the following week.

Having read this book on the heels of The Hate U Give, it's easy to compare the two and find similarities, though each does offer something different. The Hate U Give is written entirely from the perspective of a black girl who is the sole witness to a fatal shooting. She watches as her friend's name becomes a hashtag, and struggles as public attention turns to her as the only person who can testify about the shooting. All American Boys, on the other hand, offers the perspective of a black boy who survives a non-fatal attack and sees his own name become a hashtag. It also provides the viewpoint of a white boy who grapples with trying to make sense of what he saw, what it means about the world around him and who he is as a person. Since the incident was caught on video by other bystanders, his testimony probably isn't important to the investigation, but he still needs to make some hard choices to come to terms with what happened.

Rashad's story is compelling, and I imagine it would be especially so if you aren't already a supporter of Black Lives Matter. If you are, I expect you'll find your commitment to the movement reaffirmed, as I did.

For myself, I found Quinn's story to be more eye-opening and thought-provoking. I have to admit, as a liberal person of color who lives in a blue state, I frequently wonder, with no small amount of frustration, why more white people aren't more woke. Why can't they see the racism!? Or if they admit to seeing it, why won't they speak up and fight against it? This book doesn't make excuses for white people, but it does show how it can be difficult for individual white people to take a stand when it means losing life-long friends, challenging long-held beliefs, and actually risking opportunities for a better future (e.g., Quinn taking a stand could affect his place on the basketball team, which would affect his chances of earning a college scholarship). The stakes can be high. Given Quinn's previous relationship with Paul, we see how painful Quinn's position is; how is it that someone who he knew to be so generous and so good to him could actually be capable of such a frightening and unthinkable act? Through Quinn's struggle, we see how for many people, life would be so much easier if they just refuted the evidence and ignored the racism.

As might be expected in a book rated for teens, the boys' authentic teenaged dialogue does include swearing.

Thursday, October 4, 2018

Love, Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed

★★★

Maya is an Indian-Muslim-American high school senior. I think the book is well-summarized by this excerpt: "My parents' fears shrink my universe to the four walls of this house. The world outside paints us all as terrorists... And all I want is to make movies and kiss a boy." (p. 220) The book was an interesting combination of teen romance, multicultural identity searching, and spotlight on racism.

The first half of the book reads like a romantic comedy. Perpetually-blushing Maya unexpectedly finds herself in a love triangle, torn between Phil, who is white, beautiful, and captain of the football team, and Kareem, an Indian-Muslim-American student at Princeton. People who enjoy these Team Phil vs. Team Kareem type stories would probably find a lot to like in this book, but alas, I am not generally a fan. (Though that didn't stop me from picking Team Kareem.)

As an aspiring filmmaker, Maya dots her narrative and dialogue with film-related terminology and references to movies. At times, it's an effective tool for breaking the awkwardness in a scene or lightening the tension.

There were things I really loved about this book. Mostly, I enjoyed the writing, which was full of colorful metaphors. In reference to the conservatism of her immigrant community, Maya's first-person narrative observes, "some taboos cross oceans, packed tightly into the corners of immigrant baggage, tucked away with packets of masala and memories of home." (p. 9)

I was a little concerned that Maya's parents were too much of a stereotype of conservative immigrant Indian parents, but those worries were mitigated by the existence of Maya's cool aunt Hina, who served as a counter-example.

Admittedly, I felt misled by the quotes of praise from other authors (printed on the back cover) which referred to Maya as a Muslim and completely omitted her Indian identity. For pretty much the first half of the book, most of the diversity portrayed was that of her being Indian. There was a lot of Indian food, Indian clothes, and Indian culture strewn throughout. The fact that she and her family were also Muslim was mostly limited to statements of that fact and joking mentions of not eating pork. We didn't really see how being Muslim affected her day-to-day life.

It wasn't until about halfway through the book that Maya's Muslim-ness came into focus, in the wake of a terrorist attack. This is when the book finally started to get interesting, in my opinion, as Maya navigated her school with all eyes on her.

I appreciated the way the events surrounding the terrorist attack unfolded, alternating between snapshots of the perpetrator and the victims. However, I was bothered by a few passages that seemed contrived to elicit sympathy for the perpetrator. He was given a background story that some might interpret as excusing his actions; he was abused as a child, "troubled" and misunderstood as a teenager. I would have much preferred passages that instead or additionally showed how he might have fallen down a rabbit hole of hate and poor decisions.

I also was not too keen on one scene that I'm sure many readers would probably enjoy from a romance standpoint. Without giving too much away, there's a moment when Phil comes to Maya's rescue, and as romantic as that is, it just crept too much into "white savior" territory for me.

Overall, I think the book could have been better paced. The pure romance first half of the book could have been condensed, and the aftermath of the terrorist attacks could have been extended. Moreover, I felt the book ended much too abruptly after Maya took a stand for her future. There were just so many unanswered questions I had for the time that was glossed over by the epilogue, particularly in regards to Maya's relationship with her parents. So much conflict, so much tension, how did she and her parents deal with it?!

As is typical of multicultural books, foreign words are occasionally interspersed. I felt like I could understand non-English words from context, though I wasn't sure if specific words were Urdu or Hindi.

Finally, this book does include swearing and references to sex, not uncommon for a book rated for teens.