pickA truly fascinating account of Chinese-American history as traced through the writer‘s family, through five generations, many who lived in a building in NYC‘s Mott Street. I was in awe with the amount of research that Ava Chin dug up about. She manages to track down their Chinese Exclusion files on both sides of her family. “They call it exclusion…but it is not exclusion, it is extermination.”
pickWow, this is brilliant! - Hilarious, smart, and provocative. More than a decade later since the script, it‘s all still relevant…… #beingasianamerican
pickA commentary on racial relations in contemporary times, this book was humorous, entertaining, introspective and heartbreaking in turn.
At its core is the story of racial relations in a white-dominated country, where people of colour are colonised (not using earlier methods), but through the appropriation of their cultures.
Although this book focused on East Asians, I think it holds true of any BBIPOC community in a white-dominated nation.
My haul from the Raise A Reader book sale - it‘s on again tomorrow. Anyone see a favourite book? 📚 where should I start? ❤️📚🐉
💬Here, she's laid-back and cheerful and like...a woman instead of a mother, which is utterly weird.
Oh god, it just strikes me that maybe she's got a crush on someone. Maybe it's George's dad. Eww. Can people in their late thirties even have crushes? That's, like, way ancient to have a crush. 💬
A bit like ‘Crazy Rich Asians‘ in that an American Born Chinese (ABC) is brought back to Asia and has to cope with a culture (in this case Indonesian-Chinese) and family that she knows nothing about.
Ch 8 - hilarious because it‘s obvious (from the quality of English) that the parents are setting up their kids on a dating app, but they don‘t realise and are thrilled that they‘ve found perfect (by their lights) partners.
pickChou‘s work is at turns farcical and revelatory. Ingrid Yang at the behest of her advisor has spent years dutifully researching and writing her dissertation on a celebrated Chinese poet. No matter she has hated it. She stumbles on a clue that sends her on a mission to learn the truth about the poet and her own life. Thought provoking, but a little uneven…3+/5 ⭐️.
so-soNguyen‘s family left Vietnam for the US when she was an infant, but her mother stayed behind. Now, Beth and her mother are estranged. She works hard to get to know her (birth) mother in adulthood, but the effort is rather one sided. Recollections of standoffish conversations and memories but nothing really substantial here.
This didn‘t really work for me. The writing was nice but the book lacked a flow and cohesive thread.
![[tagged book]](https://image.librarything.com/pics/litsy_webpics/icon_taggedBook@3x.png){kind=icon}
