toastykitten

Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Uttara Rangarajan

Samantha Sotto Yambao’s Water Moon (Del Rey, 2025) may be one of the first books of fiction that I’m reviewing that was published in 2025. Yes, I’m behind, but so is everyone else who studies and reads Asian American literature because it would literally be a full-time job now to just be on top of the what is coming out LOL. So, for those in the know, Yambao previously published under Samantha Sotto. Long ago, we reviewed her debut, Before Ever After. I’m not sure why there is a change in the publication name, but that’s more of a detail to us. Between Before Ever After and Water Moon, there was an e-only publication called Love and Gravity. This publication was one of the first moments that I had where I was firmly dismayed by the changing landscape of reading because there were things that were only being published in digital form. I still to this day do not understand why there can’t be a print on demand option for anything that is primarily marketed as digital! We analogue kings and queens still demand our material culture. Water Moon came at a time of  really bad insomnia, and I was really happy to have this novel, which really is like some of what the blurbs said, connecting this novel to Spirited Away. Okay, let’s get to that marketing description: “On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets. Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it. Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds. But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.”

This book has a LOT of weird details and weird worldbuilding issues that I didn’t fully understand. For instance, you can travel on rumors or travel through puddles. You can fold paper and thus fold time. You can buy almost anything in this dark shadow world for a price. Choices take the form of birds, which are also souls, and then there are malevolent creatures who want to take these souls because they do not have souls of their own. There are unsouled children who then develop into these malevolent creatures, who seem to be made only of inorganic parts. The description is not entirely accurate I guess, and so I will provide my spoiler warning: have you looked away? If you have not, you will find out that Hana absolutely knows that her father staged the ransacking so that the malevolent overlords of this shadow world do not think Hana is involved and may actually give up on looking for her father. Hana realizes that her father thinks that his wife, Hana’s mother, may still be alive, even though everyone thought she was executed when she failed to deliver a “choice” to those malevolent overlords. Thus, what ensues is really a detective quest. Hana is eventually accompanied by a physicist who happens upon the shop on the same day of the ransacking. The physicist is clearly into Hana romantically, so he’ll pretty much do anything to spend time with her, despite the fact that he’s in a shadow world where physics seem to have no meaning. I’m always the most skeptical about this element of the plot in fantasies only because it seems to stretch credulity—at least to me—that a person will simply go into a dangerous under world without really knowing the stakes of what might befall him. And they are in danger ALL.THE.TIME. But, the true romantics in these readers will love this dynamic duo because they persist in the face of demons, monsters, and everything in-between that might be trying to push them off the path of their quest. Eventually, Hana discovers that her mother is indeed alive, but there is no happy reunion, only knowledge that the world in which she has been born into is structured through various conceits that eliminate the possibility for much free will and agency. The ending was wrapped up a little bit too neatly, and because the worldbuilding rules are so strange, I actually wanted to find out what happened to Hana when she is forced apart from her dashing romantic paramour. And spoiler warning again: they are eventually be reunited but not after a long time apart. On the level of my insomnia, I will say that the novel did its purpose. It helped relax me in a time of great stress and anxiety, and so we sometimes see the salve that fiction can offer, at least in the form of closure.

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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Uttara Rangarajan

Alexandra A. Chan’s In the Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Magic (Flashpoint, 2024) continues my trend of reading some creative nonfictional publications. The book actually comes out of a hybrid publishing company that also has a self-publishing arm called Girl Friday Productions (the full link for this book can be found below).  This text is an absolutely gorgeously produced work, much in the same vein as Satsuki Ina’s The Poet and the Silk Girl. There are full color illustrations, high quality glossy pages, and full color photographs. Let’s let the marketing description do some work for us: “A left-brained archaeologist and successful tiger daughter, Chan finds her logical approach to life utterly fails her in the face of this profound grief. Unable to find a way forward, she must either burn to ash or forge herself anew. Slowly, painfully, wondrously, Chan discovers that her father and ancestors have left threads of renewal in the artifacts and stories of their lives. Through a long-lost interview conducted by Roosevelt’s Federal Writers’ Project, a basket of war letters written from the Burmese jungle, a box of photographs, her world travels, and a deepening relationship to her own art, the archaeologist and lifelong rationalist makes her greatest discovery to date: the healing power of enchantment. In an epic story that travels from prerevolution China to the South under Jim Crow, from the Pacific theater of WWII to the black sands of Reynisfjara, Iceland, and beyond, Chan takes us on a universal journey to meaning in the wake of devastating loss, sharing the insights and tools that allowed her to rebuild her life and resurrect her spirit. Part memoir, part lyrical invitation to new ways of seeing and better ways of being in dark times, the book includes beautiful full-color original Chinese brush paintings by the author and fascinating vintage photographs of an unforgettable cast of characters. In the Garden Behind the Moon is a captivating family portrait and an urgent call to awaken to the magic and wonder of daily life.”

I’ll start out by saying that this work doesn’t fit into a single genre, though it probably hews closest to the memoir. Chan chooses to structure the work through the Chinese zodiac calendar. While it would seem like the memoir would be linear, it actually is not. The placeholder years really exist as the beginning point of each chapter, which often moves forward and backward in time. Chan has done some painstaking work, not only in ensuring that a larger archival footprint of her family is shared with readers but also in the background research that she conducts to fill out her family’s lengthy genealogy. This creative nonfictional work is anchored primarily by Chan’s attentiveness to grief. Indeed, the emotional core emerges through Chan’s close relationship with her father, which she conveys through the larger historical tapestry that is unveiled by detailing his life. He grows up in Georgia at a time where there are very few Chinese Americans; he serves in World War II; he marries and gets divorced and marries again (having dealt with the problematics of legislation that impeded interracial unions). Adding to the author’s loss is the fact that her mother will also die of a rare cancer a number of years before the death of her father. But Chan’s modus operandi is to find a way through the grief. Thus the subtitle also reminds us of the centrality of both myth and magic as ways that we confront devastating loss. The “magic” of this particular text surfaces especially in the signs that Chan sees that tells us that her relationship with her parents endures whether or not they are physically with her. She’ll visit faraway places and see traces of her parents in the majestic vistas before her, and she’ll know that the memories she carries means that she will never lose her parents. As the memoir moves forward—and I provide you with a spoiler warning here—Chan’s research into her family history yields a shocking discovery. Her father discovers that their ancestral background ties them to African Americans. Chan comes to find out that an ancestor who was purportedly from South America had actually come to pass as half-Chinese and that she and her family members are part Black. The depth to which Chan continues to mind her biological background is perhaps not surprising, given that she is an archaeologist, but Chan also has an astutely analytical mind as a scholar. Indeed, she comes to consider her father’s mixed race background as one of the reasons why he was so compelled to achieve and to move forward so diligently in life, knowing that the shadows of racial difference could overwhelm him. Chan’s memoir soars precisely because of this impressive balance between self-reflection and excavation, which provides readers with an enduring tribute to a uniquely American family.

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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Uttara Rangarajan

As part of the memoir kick I have been on, I finally finished Qian Julie Wang’s Beautiful Country (Doubleday, 2021). I started this memoir probably over two years ago, but I crashed out of it. I’ve noticed that as I’ve gotten older, I’ll be in the middle of reading like four or five books at the same time. I don’t know when this bad habit started, but it causes me to leave books unfinished for very long periods. In any case, let’s let the marketing description get us started: “In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to ‘beautiful country.’ Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal” and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive. In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly ‘shopping days,’ when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn’s streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center—confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all. But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here. Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.”

I think the most important part of the description occurs at the end, when it states that the author is grounded in “her childhood perspective.” I didn’t realize that about 99% of this memoir would be told in this way. That is, Wang really attempts to resituate herself at the time of her childhood, even though the memoir is clearly being told in past tense. There are only a handful of times where it becomes apparent that the memoir is really being told in retrospect, so I did find this technique a bit jarring. The level of detail that Wang evokes throughout is really incredible, and I did wonder (and was hoping that we might find out) how Wang was able to cobble together the earlier sections. Did she have to outline? Did she have journals that she had kept? Whatever the case, the memoir essentially covers her time from elementary school up until about junior high and early high school. It then fast forwards over one chapter from college all the way to Wang’s contemporary moment, when she becomes a lawyer. The main throughline of this memoir is the unceasing fear that the undocumented migrant feels while being in the United States: they must do everything they can to avoid detection, even to the point of potentially harming themselves. This issue becomes most pressing when Wang’s mother becomes very sick, and there is no option but for her to be taken to the emergency room. Wang’s mother is diagnosed with a mass, and her convalescence is long, but the fact remains that no one is deported. This moment figures prominently in this memoir precisely because it becomes one point in time when the family begins to realize that their categorical self-surveillance may be a little bit too oppressive. The pressures of this kind of life also begin to take a considerable toll on Wang’s parents, who become increasingly distant from each other. A tense encounter involving physical abuse becomes the propelling factor for Wang’s mother to get Wang and herself out of the house and into Canada, there they can be full-fledged citizens, out from the under the weight of their fears. Wang’s father eventually joins them, but what Wang’s memoir ultimately reveals are the painstaking sacrifices that undocumented migrants make in order to find their way to the United States. Of course, it’s never what they hope it will become, and the brutalities of everyday life are made apparent in Wang’s assured narrative voice, however childlike it may be. Through her vision, we understand the godsend that a free meal might be, how much a $50 gift certificate she wins to the bookstore means, and the glory of a radiator’s heat when insulation is faulty. These minor miracles are the ones that move Wang forward through the desperation that clouds over so much of her childhood. Wang’s steadfastness is only paralleled by her forward-thinking mother, who becomes the focal point for a future that is more than just survival.

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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Uttara Rangarajan

I’m lucky to be part of a little reading group with some brilliant folx, and this year’s selection is none other than Aysegül Savas’s The Anthropologists (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024). Occasionally, at AALF, we look a little bit further eastward and such is the case with Savas, who is a Turkish anglophone writer who lives in Paris! In any case, her novel is an interesting one because it functions partly through general abstracts, which is certainly one of Savas’s aims: “Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family? As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. ‘Forget about daily life,’ chides her grandmother on the phone. ‘We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park.’ Back in their home countries parents age, grandparents get sick, nieces and nephews grow up-all just slightly out of reach. But Asya and Manu's new world is growing, too, they hope. As they open the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release?  Unfolding over a series of apartment viewings, late-night conversations, last rounds of drinks and lazy breakfasts, The Anthropologists is a soulful examination of homebuilding and modern love, written with Aysegül Savas' distinctive elegance, warmth, and humor.”

This official marketing description is super useful because of the quotation provided by the grandmother! Part of the whole point of this novel is to document the ordinary and the quotidian, even in the abstract. There’s something that Saval is wrestling with here about evacuating the text with particularity and even historical and cultural specificity. Readers are never given an exact sense of where the story is set (which city is it in?) or the ethnicity of specific characters (though we know, for instance, that Manu and Asya are foreigners, as are many of their friends). Don’t expect food references to help you, as Savas also declines specifying too many of the foods. The only area where I thought we might get a glimpse of where we actually are is when a character mentions needing a residential permit and that this document might limit their movements in and out of the city, but my knowledge of urban centers is extremely limited. In any case, this book meanders and is reflective and seems more philosophical. It is not driven by plot, though there are three main strands. The first involves the repeated sections titled “future selves,” which focuses on Asya and Manu, as their tour properties to find a more permanent place to level. The second involves the documentary that Asya is making which is contained more or less to the sections called “in the park.” Asya is clearly focusing on the ways that community is forged in the unnamed park location. These sections are again pretty pedestrian, but that, I think, is part of the point: to find some semblance of what is important about the ordinary and the everyday.  The final repeated sections, “Principles of Kinship,” were probably my favorite because it details the complications of developing alternative community formations beyond heteronuclear structures. In this novel’s case, Asya and Manu have one clear close friend named Ravi, but around that major friend, a number of others orbit, including Lena; Tereza, an elderly neighbor; and a handful of others. The heft of the novel, at least for me, appears here, and I will provide the spoiler warning. Have you looked away? Well, if not, then it means you either already know or don’t care: the ending leaves us in a situation where Manu and Asya do find their new place, while Ravi moves away with one of their other friends, leaving behind the fledgling kinship that they hoped would endure. The documentary doesn’t seem to be a major element to the conclusion, so the novel really leaves us with the connections that people make as they grow older. The novel makes you wonder about the endurance of these non-heteronuclear family formations we attempt to make, especially in the guise of migrant communities. Overall, Savas’s work seems almost to be less of a novel than a series of vignettes, which the intent to show the complications of the immigrant everyday. An intriguing and spare narrative.

 
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Written by Stephen Hong Sohn
Edited by Uttara Rangarajan

I’ve been on a bit of a creative nonfictional kick lately, and I think it’s because I’m trying to balance all of my high fantasy reading with something that’s a little bit more grounded in explicit social contexts. This time around I’m reviewing Laura Lee’s A History of Scars (Atria, 2021), which is a debut memoir that concerns mental health, caretaking, and the balance one needs to survive in a complicated home environment. The text brings to mind what separates a memoir from a book of essays. After having read a good number of each, I am beginning to see that books marketed as essays are a little bit more wide-ranging, staying away from the central life or recollections of the author. Other than that, the differentiation is really a matter of degree and intensity. But I digress, so let’s get to that marketing description: “In this stunning debut, Laura Lee weaves unforgettable and eye-opening essays on a variety of taboo topics. In ‘History of Scars’ and ‘Aluminum’s Erosions,’ Laura dives head-first into heavier themes revolving around intimacy, sexuality, trauma, mental illness, and the passage of time. In “Poetry of the World,” Laura shifts and addresses the grief she feels by being geographically distant from her mother whom, after being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, is relocated to a nursing home in Korea. Through the vivid imagery of mountain climbing, cooking, studying writing, and growing up Korean American, Lee explores the legacy of trauma on a young queer child of immigrants as she reconciles the disparate pieces of existence that make her whole. By tapping into her own personal, emotional, and psychological struggles in these powerful and relatable essays, Lee encourages all of us to not be afraid to face our own hardships and inner truths.”

This memoir was at times pretty gut-wrenching, and I am beginning to see that such stories are perhaps the foundation of many creative nonfictions. There is perhaps a writing “cure” or at least therapy at work here, with Lee exploring the vulnerable childhood she had under the hands of a physically and emotionally abusive father. These dynamics are soon complicated by the fact that Lee is beginning to take care of her mother, who is eventually diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. For many years though, Lee has no idea, and because Lee’s father is expelled from the home at some point, Lee, as the only one who is still around, is eventually expected to take care of her mother, whether or not she wants to. Lee has two older siblings, but the home dynamics make it clear that they need to get out of there as soon as possible. Lee’s relationship with her middle sister is complicated because that sister ends up emulating some of the propulsive anger modeled by their father. Lee struggles to keep herself afloat in this world. It is climbing that she turns to for a form of escape, where the presence of mind required to move up a sheer rock face is the kind that becomes meditative and constitutive. The memoir also explores how Lee is eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, which she astutely notes cannot be solely understood as a biologically-activated mental disorder. Lee considers how impactful her difficult upbringing would have been and how it likely was involved in the development of schizophrenia. What also anchors this text is Lee’s enduring relationship with a Pakistani woman. In this respect, Lee’s memoir is one of the few that considers the queer Asian American experience from the women’s perspective. Though the memoir ends with Lee’s struggle with the day-to-day experiences of a woman afflicted by mental health issues, it is more than apparent that Lee turns to writing as a way to help document her complicated life journey and to find some level of empowerment, however provisional, that exists on the page. Readers will also be incredibly buoyed by Lee’s glorious prose.

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