To All the Books I’ve Loved Before

I’ve been thinking a lot about the end recently.

The end of the semester, to clarify. I bring this up because it will also be the end of my graduate career (assuming I pass my portfolio defense – more on that later!). As I reflect on what it means to be awarded an M.A. degree, I ponder if my relationship with literature has changed. Do I put literature on a higher pedestal now? Have my “immature” interests matured? Has studying children’s and young adult literature led me to love it more or hate the flaws I’ve come to notice?

Which brings me to this blog post. Its title is a reference to the movie, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, whose teen romance genre reminds me of what drew me to the very first book I wrote a blog post about: I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn. I realized only in hindsight that what makes this novel one of my favorites is that despite all of the books I’ve read throughout the years that featured romance in any way, it was the first in which I actually found the love interest attractive. In fact, it was the first I had read in which there was an Asian male love interest.

There exist many novels in which young Asian American girls fall in love, but predictably, their love interests are often white (or unidentified, and therefore white by default in the popular imagination). The movie alluded to in this blog post’s title is one example, alongside Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman, Butterfly Yellow by Thanhha Lai, Fake it Till You Break It by Jenn. P Nguyen, I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo, and many others. It is much more likely to see an Asian American teenage girl fall in love with a white character than another Asian American or someone of another ethnicity, which perpetuates the stereotype of the submissive Oriental. What about the Asian American boys?

One reason that Asian American young men are not depicted as love interests might be the Asian American literary trope that Asian men are frequently depicted as effeminate or having the characteristics of a woman. Reclaiming Asian masculinity from this disparaging association that erases their distinctiveness is vital, and there is some progress within Asian American young adult literature. Young Asian American men are occasionally depicted as attractive, such as in I’ll Be the One by Lyla Lee wherein the love interest is a famous model. Novels such as this and I Love You So Mochi disrupt the notion that only white boys are of interest and instead provide much-needed representation.

Yet we run into another problem when Asian American teens fall in love with one another and date in YA literature. A surprising pattern emerges: the relationships very often hinge on secrecy, lies, and/or defying parental expectations. Rent a Boyfriend by Gloria Chao and Frankly in Love by David Yoon are several examples in which relationships are faked for parental approval. Somewhere Only We Know by Maurene Goo chronicles a relationship that develops over a day of lies about professional work, and Romeo and Juliet gets a contemporary, Vietnamese American spin in Loan Le’s A Phở Love Story. When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon and A Taste for Love by Jennifer Yen feature parents who select dating partners for their children. Just a cursory glance at texts that feature young Asian American protagonists shows that romance is nearly always entangled with deception and parental involvement.

Despite this, these novels are engaging. Their protagonists grapple with parental expectations out of love for these family members, and the casual depiction of cultural markers is comforting. Rather than repackage tropes, these novels integrate Asian American experience with the familiarity of teenage romance. New characterizations fit in smoothly with canonical ones: respectfully reserved, shy young men, abrasively opinionated, good-hearted young women, physically attractive boys, and intellectually impressive girls claim their spaces in the pages. This genre will continue to expand, and with it, the conceptualization of what it looks like to be Asian American and in love will continue to grow. Asian American YA romance has much potential to delineate the “heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity” of Asian American culture advocated for by Lisa Lowe (66). 

Having explored the genre of Asian American young adult romance that was so special to me before this M.A. program because of how rarely I encountered it, I return to my question: do I love it more or do I hate the flaws I’ve come to see? My answer is that I still love it. Though I was initially dismissive of the importance of representation as I entered graduate studies, choosing Asian American children’s literature as my specialization has led to representation becoming more meaningful to me than before I had embarked on this exploratory journey. I’ve read and appreciated Asian American YA literature in the past, but this graduate assistantship has allowed me to validate it to myself and spotlight it for others to appreciate. What I’ve learned throughout my time as a blogger of children’s literature academia is that it is worth it to critically examine what captivates us. We’ll emerge with a more robust, complex understanding of all the books we’ve loved before.

-       (A.N.)

*Special thanks to Magical Reads Blog, which has a lengthy list of YA romances with Asian Characters. Definitely worth taking a look at!

https://magicalreads7.wordpress.com/2020/05/14/list-ya-romances-with-asian-characters/

 

Scholarly Works Referenced

Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Duke University Press, 1996. 

I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn

On my first day in the NCSCL office, I did what any avid reader would do: pull book after book off of the shelves in search of something that would fill the next seven hours “productively.” Sarah Kuhn’s I Love You So Mochi was an instant eyecatcher, a bright splash of pink amid book spines in varying shades of blue and black.

For this Vietnamese American, the title’s mention of mochi and the cover’s gorgeous background of cherry blossoms evoked a further attraction: a sense of affinity with the novel. As I read the dust jacket flap, I was introduced to one of the novel's most intriguing aspects – its juxtaposition of relatable Asian American teenage experience with unexpected subversions of the expectations that are imposed upon that identity. 


The novel depicts Kimi Nakamura, an American high school senior whose painting talent has guaranteed her early admission to a prestigious art school. The stereotypical Asian American parent’s distaste for any non-STEM/medical field career would seem to be the main conflict in the story, but it is not. Rather than disappoint her parents, this accomplishment is a great source of pride for her Japanese-born, American-educated mother, who is only recently able to pursue her own dreams to be a famous Asian American artist. Her fourth-generation Japanese American father runs a restaurant that “features ‘the best of Japanese, American, and Japanese American comfort food’” (23). But even with supportive parents, whose careers convey a well-balanced blend of Japanese and American identity, Kimi is completely uninspired to paint. When she receives a plane ticket to Japan from her estranged grandparents, she leaves her problems behind to explore her motherland. Kimi teams up with a (cute) aspiring doctor whose knowledge of the sights of Japan help her figure out what she wants to do with her future. As Akira takes her to different locations such as a bamboo forest, a temple, and a pug cafe, Kimi finds the courage to face the problems she had wanted to leave in America. And alongside her, the reader learns much about Japanese culture, customs, and sights.

What I appreciated the most about this novel was that Kimi experiences Japan as a tourist. Kimi knows very little Japanese. Her lack of etiquette knowledge makes for an embarrassing commute and immediately strains her relationship with her grandmother. She recognizes immediately the disjuncture between nature and nurture in identity formation: “It strikes me how discombobulating it is to be in a place where so many of the faces look like mine, but where I clearly don’t belong” (51). Even so, Kimi’s actions expose readers to Japanese interpersonal relations: small bows as greetings, use of last names with strangers, and even slang for cluelessness.

I Love You So Mochi’s treatment of language is one of its most striking aspects. Kimi is fortunate that her grandparents and Akira speak English well despite never leaving Japan, but they mix Japanese terms of assent such as “hai” (80), “sou da ne” (102) and filler words like “eto” (81) and “ano” (106) into their otherwise English conversation. Akira even describes “gairaigo––loan words. There is quite a bit of Japanese-style English” (100). The reader can easily pick up Japanese vocabulary without a dictionary, and nothing comes off as overtly didactic.

Additionally, food – be it shrimp burgers from Japan’s McDonald’s, a secret stash of limited-edition Snickers, or peanut butter and chocolate mochi from her father’s restaurant – helps Kimi find common ground with the people she wants to get to know and experiment with what is unfamiliar.

This novel is a delightful journey through a young girl’s search for her own identity in the land of her heritage. Her sketchbook accompanies her everywhere she goes, and her descriptions of clothing provide insight into her moods, values, and dreams. With each deepening relationship, Kimi investigates how determination, culture, and her own family’s history shape the future she wants for herself. Readers will delight with each step Kimi takes, whether running from deer, strolling with her crush, or towards her real passion.

- AN

Top Ten Best Love Stories in YA

In honor of ol' St. Val's Day, I'm borrowing The Broke and the Bookish blog's most recent Top Ten Tuesday meme: Top Ten Romances in Books. I'm keeping my list in the YA realm, because these books about hormone-laden teenagers are almost always good fodder for a love (or infatuation) story. In no particular order, l'amour:

1. Anna and Etienne, Anna and the French Kiss. I've mentioned this book before, and for good reason. It's simply enchanting, and the romantic tension and build-up from friendship-to-more between Anna and Etienne is spine-tinglingly good.

2. Lyra and Will, His Dark Materials trilogy. These two go from childhood innocence to teenage sexual awakening together. Their realization of love is electrifying, and their destinies are heartbreaking.

3. Duck and Dirk, Beautiful Angels. Francesca Lia Block writes about oddball characters that, after much searching, find a place to call home. Duck and Dirk, two gay teenagers coming of age in the fraught 80s, find each other, and it is beautiful.

4. Cate and Finn, Born Wicked. Finn is the bookish boy-next-door type, and Cate is the stubborn, strong, and fiercely secretive young woman who loves him. Their forbidden first kiss in a closet is intense.

5. Lennie and Joe, The Sky is Everywhere. Lennie is dealing with the intense grief of losing her sister when Joe, the new guy in town, offers a distraction she didn't know she needed. Author Jandy Nelson deftly navigates the complexities of falling in love while nursing an already broken heart.

6. June and Day, Legend. Day is an outlaw in a dystopian future Los Angeles. June is the highly trained Republic officer tracking him down for arrest. Well-matched in wit, secrecy, and hand-to-hand combat, they fall first in like, then in love.

7. Briony and Eldric, Chime. The friendship between charming and creative Eldric and charming and tormented Briony blossoms with such a sense of fun and sparring wit that you'll want to be part of their secret "Fraternitus Bad-Boyificus."

8. Ash and Kaisa, Ash. Malinda Lo envisions a Cinderella story wherein Cinderella falls not for the prince, but for the court's huntress. Ash's dawning realization that she loves Kaisa raises the stakes in this magical story.

9. Katsa and Po, Graceling. I'm a sucker for romances where the two love interests fight each other. Katsa and Po are both fierce fighters, gifted in lethal abilities. What starts as an adversarial relationships blooms into a romantic one as they team together to, you know, save the world.

10. Hazel and Gus, The Fault in Our Stars. Oh my God, this book. Hazel and Gus are normal teenagers just doing what normal teenagers do, only they met at a support group for teens with cancer. So, they're not normal. But they are amazing. Just read the book. Just do it.