Yoo, Paula - Good Enough

Patti Yoon is trying to be the Perfect Korean Daughter by getting the concertmaster position for the All-State Orchestra, getting into HarvardYalePrinceton, scoring above 2300 on her SATs, and volunteering at her church. But she's still trying to figure out what parts of it she wants, and what parts of it she only wants because her parents do. And then there's the cute trumpet player in the orchestra, who is definitely not part of The Plan.

The story itself is not extraordinary, although Yoo throws in a few curves at the end that I hadn't been expecting. What makes the book more than your average "Asian kid faces academic pressure, must learn what she wants" is the writing, which is sprinkled with lists ("How to Make Your Korean Parents Happy, Part 1") and recipes for assorted Korean dishes with Spam.

It was extremely odd reading this book. In some ways, it's very close to my own experience (outside of the fact that I was in Taiwan). In others, it's very not. I wasn't a good daughter like Patti; I quit piano and refused to take AP Physics and pushed as hard as I could to not do "practical" stuff and hated being first, even as I did take the SATs and practice who knows how much. Because of that, I kept wanting to reach in and shake Patti and tell her not to just do whatever she wanted, as I understand parental pressure and the desire to make your parents' sacrifices worth something, but to... think more. To question. And she does in the end, but I think I wanted more. That said, I do like that even though her parents are a big part of the plot conflict, they do not drive the plot conflict.

My other problem is the way the book posits rebellion and freedom as a white male thing. Patti does come into her own later, but I very much resent that one of the big factors in her doing so is falling for a white guy and hanging out with him more. Even before that, one of the signs of her desire to not conform is her love of a white male pop band. The unintended message is then made worse when, influenced by a white guy, Patti brings the idea of rebellion back to her Korean church group and the group also begins to rebel in order to get her a date with the white guy. I do think Yoo complicates things further by having Patti later realize that the other church group members also wanted to do their own thing and that she was projecting conformity on to them, but it would have worked much better for me had most of the characterization been of the other church group members, as opposed to the hot white guy.

That said, one of my favorite parts of the book was Patti and her relationship with the violin and with music. It's a nice counterpoint to the joke "Violin or piano?" and you can just tell how Yoo loves music as well, from classical to informal jamming.

- rilina's review

Na, An - The Fold

Joyce is dying to catch the eye of cute multiracial kid John Ford Kang, though he can't even tell her apart from her lab partner. Then Joyce's aunt sweeps into their family's life and offers to pay for eyelid surgery for her. Her older sister Helen disapproves, but what does she know? Helen's always been smarter and prettier and cooler. Her best friend Gina thinks she should totally go with it.

I read this right after I read Good Enough, which was an interesting comparison. Both stories about Korean-American girls, but Joyce's family owns a Korean restaurant and she's not much concerned with academic achievement. Clearly the theme here is about beauty, which I theoretically find more interesting than Yoo's book. However, Na's prose is extremely flat, and I felt her characters never came to life. Although she explains Joyce's dilemma, as well as problems going on with her family, they felt like explanations, not explorations.

I am also far more radical than Na when it comes to beauty myths. Na compares eyelid surgery with braces or dieting I think to kill the particular stigma eyelid surgery has in the eyes of well-meaning white people and to normalize it as a modifying-appearance thing, but she doesn't tackle the larger question of the beauty myth, societal pressure to be beautiful, and the ever-changing definitions of beauty, much less how that myth perpetrates racism and sexism for Asian women. I'd much rather have a more in-depth examination of the problems of eyelid surgery coupled with a takedown of the extremely problematic way white people use eyelid surgery as a means to reinforce their impression of the need to "save" Asian women from their patriarchal society, as well as proof of Asians being less politically forward.

So... the book tackles some interesting questions, and I especially liked what Na did with Joyce's sister Helen, but overall, not a very fun read.