Headley, Justina Chen - Nothing but the Truth (and a Few White Lies)

[oyceter]

Wow, am I glad that the recent trend is YA POC chicklit (is this a recent trend?), not depressing depressingness.

Patty Ho -- and don't get started on her name, because she's heard it all before -- is hapa, half-white and half-Taiwanese¹. As expected, she's angsty about this, but since this is YA POC chicklit instead of the aforementioned depressing depressingness, she manages to get some self-esteem at math camp, find out more about her family, and just have fun.

I don't think I can be rational about this book, because I spent most of it reading and flailing, thinking, "OMG! People! It is a book about me!" And not me as in "bookwormish shy girl" (which I have encountered more often), but me as in "Taiwan and Bay Area and potlucks and language divides and trying to figure out where you fit in when you're not quite one thing and not quite the other." I mean, it is not about me as well, since I'm not Taiwanese (am Chinese from Taiwan) and I'm not multiracial, but it is also more about me that so many other books that I've read that it is still a joy to find.

I hope someday just finding myself in a book won't be this rare.

But there is a math whiz who reads romances! And a cool Chinese kid from LA and interracial dating (and POC-POC interracial dating)! And! OMG! Headley distinguishes between Taiwanese and Chinese and among Taiwanese and Mandarin and Cantonese and I would love her just for that. But that is not all, because she's got a little in the book about the KMT and Taiwan and the 228 massacre and, and!

I mean, it is not happy material, but Headley doesn't make it the center of the book, but she also doesn't gloss over it. It's just there, part of Patty's background, and I grinned and grinned, because how many times have I done the entire "I'm from Taiwan. No, I don't speak Taiwanese. No, I'm actually Chinese, and you shouldn't call me Taiwanese because it's pretty politically fraught. No, my parents were born in Taiwan, but my grandparents are from China." And usually I do not mind, but it is just so nice to have a place where I don't have to explain.

And not just that, but there is Stanford and the Bay Area, and you can tell Headley has lived here before.

Patty, from a very white suburb Seattle, gets off at SFO for the first time and looks around, astounded at all the Asians, and I wanted to hug her and say, "Hi, welcome home!" (even though I am sure that is rather obnoxious).

The book itself is fairly standard YA POC chicklit, though it's got a strong focus on female relationships (friendships and family), and you can tell Headley's very dedicated to overthrowing stereotypes about Asians even as Patty hates things like her mom's lectures. I definitely snorfled in recognition when Patty's friend Jasmine rolls her eyes at the white girl in camp who feels out of place at an all-Asian sushi restaurant and pulls the "you eat what?" thing.

I can also see littlebutfierce's point about how the emphasis on the beauty of multiracial people can get a little overwhelming at times, but as she says, given that Headley's own daughter is multiracial, I don't blame her. The focus is definitely on empowering Patty, and while some parts are too slick (I wanted a deeper look at Jasmine and Anne and Auntie Lu), it's a fun and fast read.

I'm very glad I have her next book on hold at the library.

also, taiwan! bay area! a chinese experience that reads like mine as opposed to joy luck club!


¹ kate_nepveu has a good post on the Hapa Project and the terminology of "hapa" that I agree with, though this book uses "hapa" as a neutral term (the author does explain its history as derogative, but not its history as a word to describe Hawai'ians in particular and not Asian multiracial people as a whole). So I will use it this once and then use "multiracial" in the rest of the write up. Whew, that was a long footnote.


Links:

- furyofvissarion's review
- yhlee's review
- buymeaclue's review
- gwyneira's review
- magicnoire's review

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Yay, I'm glad you liked it! I love when I can see bits of myself in books like that. Er, not that it happens often. And I was thinking the other day that the only time I've ever seen the (admittedly rare!) Finnish-Filipina pairing in any kind of media was in Johanna Sinisalo's Troll, where there's a mail-order bride. :P

I appreciated Headley having people get Patty excited about being mixed (hell, it sure beats feeling like an unknowable freak--ahem, childhood!), but... yeah. I thought the "OMG I'm so jealous of you! Hapa girls are hot!" thing went a little into creepy territory. If someone told me that stuff now I would be a little squicked.

[oyceter]

*nods* Yes, definitely. And it's hard enough getting books about Chinese people, much less POC cultures that people are even more unaware of.

Yeah, the "I'm so jealous of you" scene was sort of... eh. I didn't mind Brian doing the "I look at you and think of what my kids will be like" as much, but that's because he's thinking about issues and whatnot along with looks.

Also, I was thinking, "But the unspoken rule about being a potluck kid (or family friends' kids) is you don't rat on other potluck kids to your parents!"

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

...how much math is in this book?

[oyceter]

Oh doh! I wanted to say that one of my small complaints was that there wasn't enough math. Also, there are more math-related metaphor type things -- something about groups and sets, and Patty scribbles fake proofs in her notebooks (Prove: Patty Ho's Life is Ruined). So I'm not sure how much those would push your math buttons. In the acknowledgments, it looks like Headley checked with two math people, and with kids who went to the math program in the book (SUMaC), so one hopes it's somewhat accurate, though I don't know enough to say.

I'm not quite sure if you'd like it -- it's definitely chicklit in the trendy, breezy voice, but while some of the metaphors are a little awkward, some parts are genuinely funny, and I love love love how many different Chinese people there are in the book (first gen, multiracial, third gen, etc.). It also had much less romance and much more finding yourself than I had expected, which I liked. And also -- Stanford! You can so tell that the author went there and loved it and knew it. Like, there's the bookstore and White Plaza and Hoover Tower and Green Library all the funny abbreviations like CoHo.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

It sounds like it might be worth a try anyway. Group theory sounds interesting. :-) And funny Stanford abbreviations!

[oyceter]

You can explain what group theory actually is to me ;).

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Hee! Well, a group is a mathematical object defined by the following things:
- an associative operator, usually denoted *, such that (a*b)*c = a*(b*c) for all a, b, c in the group G
- it has an identity element, usually denoted e, such that a*e = e*a = a for all a in G
- each element a has an inverse a^-1, such that a*a^-1 = a^-1*a = e

That's a start...I'll have to see what the book actually talks about. ^_^

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Not that recognizing yourself is always a good thing: I totally was Leonard Neeble in Daniel Pinkwater's Alan Mendohlson, the Boy from Mars, which is sort of sad, when you think about it. XD

This sounds pretty interesting. I'm normally allergic to chicklit-type books, but I'll keep an eye out for this.

Have you read When Fox is a Thousand? I've only just started it, but I haven't read any reviews of it by anyone yet, and I'm wondering what the general run of thought about it is.

Although it'll be a while before I finish it: I've just got my hands on the Death Note novel. XD

[oyceter]

Hee, oh dear. But it was just: Taiwan! In a book!

I am not sure what other people will think of this book, just because my reaction is so personal and hard to separate from my Taiwan love and Bay Area love and culture love.

Is that the Larissa Lai one? If so, I've got it, but every time I try to read it, I stop after a few pages for some reason.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

XD I was also Laura Ingalls: kind of clumsy, never the Pretty One or the Sweet One, always seeming to end up in some sort of trouble without meaning to, because it Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time. And I read them when I was living in the Serengeti, so I think I had an unusual perspective on it, living in an area about as wild as the prairies were in her time.

Well, Nothing... certainly sounds like an interesting glimpse into an experience different from my own. :D

Yeah, it's the Lai one. So far, the bits narrated by the fox I really like, the bit I've read with the dead Chinese poet narrating I like, the bits dealing with the girls in modern times: dead boring. Hopefully I'll start seeing some of the sections tying in soon. I think I'll scream if it's one of the sorts of books where the parallels are all metaphorical or symbolic.

[oyceter]

Hrm, ok. I forgot why I didn't latch on to it, but I will try again some time. You've read Fudoki, right? I sort of want the Lai to be Fudoki, only in China with foxes.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Well, unfortunately, it's going to be in Canada with foxes, as the modern-day sections follow a Chinese girl living in Canada. :)

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Totally OT, but I was just catching up on a few recent vols of a manga called Renai Catalogue by Nagata Masami and thought it might be something you'd like. A lot of stuff in it is typical shoujo, but I was really impressed with the story of one of the main character's friends (who is also a major character and often gets her own chapters). She's really overweight, and after a long time of being down on herself and then dieting and gaining weight back and all the stuff you'd expect to end in her losing weight and getting the guy, what happens is that she comes to accept herself the way she is and gets engaged to a guy who loves her as she is, too (plus she's not sweetness and light, she actually has a pretty horrible personality a lot of the time, and that doesn't change either). She's not "manga overweight", either (like how usually stick thin manga girls complain about being overweight), but is actually drawn as being overweight.

[oyceter]

Oh interesting! I'm guessing it's not licensed? Do you remember who the publisher is (so I can look at Kinokuniya)?

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's not out in English. It's Margaret Comics and just ended a few months ago with vol. 34.

[oyceter]

Cool, thanks!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

This sounds awesome. Do you think a smart 9-year-old would be too young for it?

[oyceter]

I think so! Some of the family history is a little adult, but the language is very breezy and fun.