Front Desk

Front Desk by Kelly Yang
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This #OwnVoices story of a 10-year-old immigrant from China who wants to be a writer and helps her family manage a motel for a racist owner who cheats them and intimidates them into accepting below-poverty wages grabbed me from the start and made me wish I could leap into the pages and rescue all the immigrants from those who take advantage of them. Finding out that many of the events in the book are based on real-life experiences of the author just made that impulse all the stronger. Sadly, I do not have the ability to protect fictional people. Now I need to focus my attention on ways to help their real-life counterparts. The story is set in the 1990s, but as we've seen in the recent days, weeks, months, and years, many people's racist attitudes towards Asians, Latinx, and African Americans haven't improved.

The extra sections at the end of this book, especially the author's background and the discussion questions, make this an excellent book club selection. Because so much of the story is based on the author's life, I am categorizing the book as "biographical fiction" as well as "realistic fiction."

For readers' advisors: Character doorway is primary, but story is also very strong. No sex or swearing. Mia's mother is beaten up, as is a friend they aid early in the story, but the violence is all off-screen. Strong themes of friendship, respect, care for others, hard work, and persistence in following your dreams.

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Dreams of Joy

Dreams of Joy: A Novel by Lisa See

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Dreams of Joy begins the night Joy learns that her aunt is her biological mother, and her mother is her aunt. Joy blames herself for her father's recent suicide, and she's furious at being lied to about her biological parents, so she runs away to China. It's 1957, and the Communist Revolution is in full swing there, and Joy is awash with enthusiasm for the New Society.

I want to like this book, but I just can't make myself finish right now. I listened to seven of the thirteen CDs, so I made it more than half way. I simply can't take any more of Joy's selfish, self-centered, naive blindness! Her enthusiasm for all things Red China never wanes, and she doesn't see that she's run away to do the very thing that caused her father's death, really. She willfully ignores the disparity between life in the countryside and the flashy parties with Chairman Mao in the cities, choosing instead to believe the propaganda, no matter how idiotic it is. It makes me want to scream!

Joy's mother, Pearl, I find more likable, although not enough right now to pull me through to the end of the book. And Joy's biological father, Z.G., isn't compelling enough for me to understand why Pearl & her sister May have been in love with him for the past 20 years.

May and Pearl are the eponymous characters from See's earlier book, Shanghai Girls, which I haven't read. Perhaps I should have started there; maybe I'd like this book better if I'd read the first. I may someday get back to finishing this one and reading the first one, but I'll have to wait for my blood to stop boiling first.

For readers' advisors: character and setting doorways



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American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars

I did it! I finally read an entire graphic novel! And I'm still alive to tell about it. :)

My friend's 12-year-old daughter recommended it to me, so I figured it had to be pretty good. She knows the whole manga thing confuses me, so she picked a GN that was more like a comic strip with varying sizes of panels--easy enough for me to follow.

This book has three storylines that trade off, and I couldn't figure out whether there was supposed to be one unifying story until almost the very end, but it wasn't hard to track each thread, even when I couldn't see how they would connect. 1) A tale of the Chinese Monkey King, 2) a tale of a lone Chinese American boy making friends with a Chinese boy, and 2) a tale of an American teenager who is embarrassed by his uber-stereotypical Chinese cousin coming to visit. I enjoyed the humor of each, and I was surprised to see a slight religious theme subtly interwoven into the whole--a blend of Eastern and Western.

I also appreciated how fast it was to read. Only 1 1/2 lunch hours required!

Overall, I'd say it's a great GN for teenagers. There are some raging teenage hormones in the story, so I probably wouldn't recommend it to all elementary school kids. And I think I'd actually give it 3 1/2 stars. Were I a big GN fan in general, it would probably get 4 stars. :)


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