Tag Archives: racism

My Documents, by Kevin Nguyen***-****

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3.5 stars, rounded upwards.

My Documents is the sophomore novel of author Kevin Nguyen. This story reimagines the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, asking instead, what if it was happening now, and what if those imprisoned were of Vietnamese descent?

My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review. This book is available to the public now.

Our protagonists are four young people, all of whom are cousins with the same last name as the author. Ursula is an ambitious journalist living in Manhattan; Jen attends New York University, partly because she hopes to connect more often with Ursula. Alvin is an engineering intern at Google; Duncan is still in high school. When the internment comes, Ursula and Alvin are spared, but Jen and Duncan are forced into a concentration camp.

This book is imaginative, and I liked the characters. We see how the internment affects those that are imprisoned, but also how their internment affects Ursula and Alvin on the outside; ultimately, of course, the family’s dynamics are altered forever.

The humor that is highlighted in the synopsis failed to materialize for me. There was the odd chuckle or two, but no more than I would expect to find in any novel.  This is pretty common. However, I found myself feeling a bit cheated at the end, because there was so much more that could have been done here. I felt as if a real statement could have been made, but the opportunity was squandered.

Nevertheless, I see Nguyen as a promising author, and one whose work I will continue to follow.

The Family Recipe, by Carolyn Huynh*****

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“We all need to feel needed. Otherwise, what’s the point of living?”

Carolyn Huynh made her authorial debut in 2022 with The Fortunes of Jaded Women. It was one of my favorite novels not only of that year, but of all the thousand-plus galleys I have read since I began reviewing. She’s back again with The Family Recipe, and it’s every bit as good as the first. My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the invitation to read and review, but make no mistake: I would have hunted this thing down and bought it with my Social Security check if it came down to it. I wouldn’t have been sorry, either.

This book is available to the public now.

Once again, our protagonists are Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans, mostly women, and once again, they are siblings and other family members that must come together; it isn’t a voluntary reunion. And that’s where the similarities between the first book and this one end.

Duc Tran, the patriarch, has laid out the terms by which his children may inherit his fortune. Once upon a time, he was the Vietnamese sandwich king, and in order to become his heir, each of his four daughters must relocate to a city she doesn’t want to live in, and revive a down-at-the-heels restaurant in a now undesirable end of town. It’s a contest; that is, unless Duc’s one son, Jude, succeeds in getting married within the one year’s time limit of the contest. If he can do that, he wins. (His sisters aren’t worried; who would marry Jude?)

The story is told from several points of view; these include the siblings, their uncle—a shady lawyer, and Duc’s best friend; their mother, who abandoned them when they were small, when her mental health collapsed, and never went back; Duc’s second wife; and briefly, Duc himself, who mostly serves as a mysterious figure that doesn’t even return to the States to lay out his children’s requirements, sending their uncle as his proxy.  As the story unfolds, we learn more about each sibling, and about the traumas they have experienced, as well as their successes.

The thing that makes it work so well is Huynh’s unerring sense of timing. It’s a dramatic tale, but it’s shot full of humor, as we see at the outset, when we learn the sisters’ names. Their father was a huge fan of the Beatles, and so the girls are named Jane, Paulina, Georgia, and (wait for it…) Bingo!

There are plenty of twists and turns, and the dialogue crackles. The internal monologues are mesmerizing. This book would make a fantastic movie.

Since I was reading this galley digitally, I highlighted quotes that I thought I’d like to use in this review, but there are 28 of them. Obviously, I cannot share them all here, but let that inform you, if nothing else here has, how much I love this book.

Highly recommended to anyone that has a beating heart, at least a passing interest in Vietnamese-American culture and/or family stories, and can use a few good laughs.

The Doorman, by Chris Pavone*****

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“It’s up to everyone to draw a line, and hold it.”

Chris Pavone writes white-knuckle thrillers, and he’s one of the best in the business. His new novel, The Doorman, is one you won’t want to miss. My thanks go to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Farrar, Strauss and Giroud for the review copies; this book will be available to the public May 20, 2025.

Our story rotates around three main characters, providing the point of view of each in turn; the setting is The Bohemia, an exclusive apartment building in New York City. Julian Sonnenberg, a middle aged art gallerist whose marriage is dying, lives there, as does Emily Longsworth, wife of the ultra-wealthy and ultra-hated Whit Longworth, racist war profiteer; and Chicky Diaz is the doorman, who sees all and hears all. They don’t know it yet, but their fates will soon be linked.

I’ve been reading Pavone’s novels for a long time, and each time he surpasses himself. The common thread that I treasure most, however, is his deep affinity for the working class, and his respect for women. In fact, I don’t know of any male novelist that is better than Pavone when it comes to developing female characters, and that is even more impressive when I consider his genre, because in most true thrillers, the pace is so fast and furious that there’s no time to develop any characters at all. Yet somehow, Pavone does it, and he does it without sacrificing the heart pounding, screaming pace that accelerates until the almost unbearable climax, which in turn is very close to the conclusion.

I was lucky enough to have access to both the digital and audio versions of this story; Edoardo Ballerini does a fine job narrating the latter. You can’t go wrong in either direction.

Highly recommended to those that love the genre and lean to the left.

Good Dirt, by Charmaine Wilkerson*****

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Charmaine Wilkerson is the author of the massively successful Black Cake. Her sophomore effort, Good Dirt, carries some of the same components—an impending marriage, a family heirloom, secrets and betrayals—but is nevertheless a very different story, and it’s an even better one. My thanks go to Random House Ballantine and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public on January 28, 2025.

Our protagonist is Ebby Freeman, which is short for Ebony. She lives with her parents in an affluent neighborhood in New England, but there was a fourth family member, her brother Baz, who was murdered during a home invasion; Ebby witnessed all of it, and has long carried the guilt of survivors. Could her ten year old self have done something to save Baz?

Now Ebby is grown, and plans to be married, but things don’t go as anticipated.

As in her previous novel, Wilkerson packs so many points of view into the story that I eventually stop counting, and although I am skeptical about this choice through much of the book, by the end I have to admit that she has carried it off nicely. Some points of view are urgently necessary to carry the plot forward; others, like that of the intended groom, Henry, are straight-up hilarious in places. Once again, we move not only between points of view, but time periods as well, reaching back into an earlier century, when some of her ancestors were enslaved. These passages aren’t entertaining, but they are necessary to provide clarity and urgency.

Ordinarily, I don’t read stories with wealthy protagonists, and make no mistake, Ebby’s family has a great deal of money; but having the family be African-American, and self-made rather than heirs to massive, often ill gained fortunes helped a great deal. Ultimately it was easy to bond with Ebby. When she experienced pain and rejection, I felt it, too. I carried her around in my head in a way that I usually don’t; over 1,000 reviews are in my rearview mirror, and only the truly special ones take hold of me as this one has.

Highly recommended.

You’ll Never Believe Me, by Kari Ferrell**-***

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My thanks go to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public January 7, 2025.

The blurb for this book had me at hello. Korean baby girl adopted by Caucasian Americans, who then become Mormons; a childhood and adolescence rife with alienation, discrimination, and ultimately a life of crime; prison time, followed by social crusades, among them prison reform, which is hugely necessary. I was all in, but that was before I read this thing. My own daughter is half Japanese and has to listen to “Where you from?” a fair amount, so this is a sensitive area for me, too. Racial teachings within the LDS (Mormon) church are a veritable minefield, and indeed, I can see how Ferrell’s upbringing would have been fraught.

And yet, the memoir that I read was not what I expected. The memoir, the blurb said, would be laugh out loud funny; I chucked a few times at the outset, and then was mostly just horrified. I received both the digital and audio galleys, and halfway through I abandoned the audio, because Ferrell, who provides her own narration, sounds so ebullient, so proud of herself, that I couldn’t take it. Reverting to the digital made it doable, but I found myself finishing it from a sense of obligation rather than a desire to read more.

Ferrell’s friends during her adolescence are what most adults would consider to be the wrong crowd. Truancy, petty theft, lying, drinking, and drugs are hallmarks. But Ferrell neither stays there as an adult, nor reforms herself once she reaches adulthood, though her parents, even though they divorce, likely can provide her with psychiatric treatment or counseling. Instead, she escalates, and commences stealing and defrauding her friends, pretending to need an abortion, pretending to have cancer, receiving so-called loans and gifts from those that don’t have a lot of money but love her dearly, and then disappearing. Steal in Utah, move to New York City. Steal in New York, go home to the folks in Arizona. And it continues until, at long last, she is arrested, tried, and convicted.

I tried to put my finger on what it is that makes me edgy here. Why do I not believe she’s all that sorry? Partly, it’s that other people appear only briefly and vaguely here. Of course it’s Ferrell’s life that’s the focus, but I would have expected some passages that flesh out the people that have loved her and tried to help her, even if it is necessary to conceal their identities as a matter of their own preferences. What happens to them later? What hardships, if any, do they suffer because of her actions? Instead, all of them come across as shadows, and as if they don’t really matter. I would have expected some emotion around reconnecting with some of these people, trying to make amends and financial restitution, even if they don’t want to see or hear from her. She talks a fair amount about the realization that her behavior is a form of self-sabotage, cutting herself off from positive relationships, but she doesn’t talk much about how she has sabotaged, or even completely blown up, the lives of others.

Lastly, I’m disturbed by some of her assumptions. The one that comes immediately to mind is when she reminds us—as if this is well known—that lying is fun. What??

In order for a memoir to be successful, the reader must be able to bond with the author. I have been unable to do that, either because Ferrell enjoys talking about her crimes and betrayals a little too much, or because she is unable to convey remorse in her writing; either way, I cannot recommend it to you.  

Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward*****

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Reading Jesmyn Ward always hurts so good. In Let Us Descend, she conveys the heartbreak and sense of betrayal a young girl, Annis, faces when she and her mother are sold separately by their owner—who is also her father–and the ways that she copes, and also the ways she is helped by the spirits of her ancestors.

My thanks go to Scribner and Net Galley for the invitation to read and review. I’m sorry to be so late here, and am grateful that the literary world has recognized this book for the masterpiece that it is.

You may have seen other reviews in which I complain and gnash my teeth over historical inaccuracies; sometimes I rant over an author’s failure to portray a child in a way that is developmentally inaccurate. There will be none of that here. Ward has taken the time and done the research, and so her well crafted characters aren’t compromised by sloppy background details. I had to take this story in small bites because it is excruciatingly sorrowful.  For part of it I listened to the audio version; this is a treat in itself, as Ward reads her own novel.

Some reviewers have taken issue with the amount of magical realism Ward employs. I disagree with them. How can any novelist portray such a story and such a character as Annis with any glimmer of hope, unless they employ these literary devices? Does anyone really want to read a book that is miserable at the outset, miserable in the middle, and miserable even at its bitter, wretched conclusion? Without hope, there’s not much incentive to keep reading, nor would it have been satisfying to write; but Ward will not and does not revise history simply to make her readers more comfortable. There was only one way to tell this story and be true to history and her characters, and Ward found it.

Yes, it’s a rough read, but it’s so well written that many readers must have smiled through their tears. Know that, of necessity, this story is absolutely loaded with triggers; assuming that you can navigate them without coming undone, I highly recommend this story to you.

Spirit Crossing, by William Kent Krueger

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Spirit Crossing is the spellbinding new novel in the Cork O’Connor series by William Kent Krueger. The book starts with two missing women, and an accidental discovery of a fresh grave. Readers faithful to the series will recognize the characters; there are enough of them, mostly related to one another, to provide depth and interest, without confusing the reader or making the plot too complex.

Lucky me, I read it free and early. My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria books for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

The story begins innocently enough, with the series protagonist, Cork, out berry picking with his son, son-in-law, and grandson, who is known by the Ojibwe nickname Waaboo. While searching for blueberries, they come across a fresh grave. Waaboo sees the victim standing before him, as if she is still alive, and he’s distraught because she is so unhappy. Waaboo is not the first one in his family to have this ability; nobody doubts that he sees what he says he sees. And so the men immediately wonder whether this is the grave of Olivia Hamilton, daughter of a wealthy Anglo, who’s been reported missing with massive headlines everywhere; or that of Crystal Two Knives, a missing Native girl whose name barely elicits more than a yawn from law enforcement.

And so right away, we are looking at not only the characters, but the longtime issue of missing Native girls and women, and the way that law enforcement neglects their cases for those whose families have money and connections.

One of the things I admire most about Krueger’s writing is the way that he incorporates urgent issues that especially impact the place where he lives—northern Minnesota—into the plot, blending them in so seamlessly that the reader isn’t distracted, because the issues are part and parcel of the mystery to be solved. He does the same thing with pipeline protests similar to the Dakota pipeline that lit up the headlines in recent years. Other aspects of the story include Ojibwe (Chippewa) culture and history, which is part of every book in the series, since most of the family is Ojibwe, and in this case, a character with a brain tumor. When significant events occur and the woman with cancer is the only one to witness them, did they really happen, or is it the brain tumor talking? This adds a layer of psychological tension not present in most of Krueger’s book; I’m not a fan of that subgenre, and am pleased to see that this doesn’t take over the plotline. It’s dealt with tastefully and without sensationalism.

Those that read my reviews know that I have an interest in seeing how authors develop child characters, particularly in a story such as this one, in which the child plays a major role. It makes me crazy when an otherwise competent author searches for shortcuts, such as a child that’s precocious or gifted, to explain away their own failure to craft the child’s character in a way that is honest developmentally. This is one more reason I enjoy this series. Yes, Waaboo has unusual powers, but he is still a small boy. The notion of going home without blueberries is a major blow. Tears threaten. I love the way Krueger develops this kid, and I can’t wait to see more of him in the future.

My one criticism involves a specific passage between the 88th and 90th percentiles, just as we rise toward the climax. Without going into spoilerish details, I will say that one character does something that everyone in the family agrees they must not do, and without any explanation, everyone in the family is fine with them doing it this time. This, of course, puts the character in danger, which anyone that’s paying attention can predict the very moment the action commences. It’s clumsy in a way that is atypical of this author, and I have no idea why he makes the choice he does, but it affects my enjoyment of the book, because suddenly I am not thinking as much about the characters as I am about the author. Having this occur a split second before the climax is especially grating.

On the other hand, I am picky. Very picky. I suspect that this passage will annoy only a small percentage of readers.

I do recommend this book, and this series, to those that love a good mystery. Although it can be read as a stand-alone, those with the time and inclination might enjoy going back a few titles, or even to the beginning of the series.

Trouble in Queenstown, by Delia Pitt***-****

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Delia Pitts has been writing mysteries for quite some time, but she is new to me. In Trouble in Queenstown, she introduces hardboiled sleuth Evander Myrick. Myrick’s friends call her Vandy, and that helps to distinguish her from her elderly father for whom she is named; he’s in a memory care unit.

My thanks go to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and St. Martin’s Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

At first glance, I thought that this detective fiction was set in New Zealand. Queenstown, right? But in this case, the locale is Queenstown, New Jersey. The story opens with Vandy cleaning up a mess in her office just as Leo Hannah storms in and wants to see Evander Myrick. He assumes Myrick will be a Caucasian male, and that Myrick herself is a member of the cleaning staff.

Oops.

Hannah comes to hire Vandy in the wake of his wife’s murder. He knows exactly who did it, he tells her, and he wants her to prove it, starting with some surveillance. Vandy isn’t sure she should take this job, but she has to pay top dollar to keep her daddy in the best facility, so she reluctantly signs on. As the story progresses, there are numerous twists and turns, and the violence escalates. By the story’s end, three different people have tried to hire her for exactly the same case!

The thing I appreciate here is the way Pitts addresses cop racism. So many detective novels require the reader to suspend belief, to assume that every cop is fearlessly dedicated to finding out the unvarnished truth and arresting the perpetrator of the crime, regardless of race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But as Vandy conducts her investigation, Pitts keeps it real. At one point the detective speaks with a salon stylist that worked on Ivy’s hair, and he tells her that Ivy was afraid of someone at home. Vandy asks if he contacted the police.

“’The police?’ He jerked his neck, pursing his lips as if I’d farted. ‘Girl, you think the cops came here?’ He sniffed. ‘You don’t look like a fool. Maybe I read you wrong.’”

Sadly, the second half of the book doesn’t impress me as much as the first half does. I have a short list of tropes that I never want to see again in a mystery novel, and she trips a few, including my most hated one. I won’t go into details because it’s too far into the story, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but when it appears, I sit back, disengage from the text, and roll my eyes. Ohhh buh-ruther. As I continue reading, I can see who the murderer is well in advance, and the climax itself is a bit over the top, though without the tropes, I mightn’t have noticed this last issue.

In addition to the digital review copy, I have the audio. The reader does a fine job.

The more mysteries a person reads, the staler tropes become. I am perhaps more sensitive than most readers, having logged over a thousand novels in this genre. Readers that have not read many mysteries are less likely to be aware of, and therefore bothered by overused elements, and so this book may please you much more than it did me. But for hardened, crochety old readers such as myself, I recommend getting this book free or cheap, if you choose to read it. Newer readers may enjoy it enough to justify the sticker price.

The Chinese Question, by Mae M. Ngai****-*****

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Mae Ngai is an award-winning author and a professor at Columbia University. In her third book, The Chinese Question, she examines the race relations and to some degree, the economic underpinnings of the Chinese diaspora.

My thanks go to NetGalley and W.W. Norton and Company for the review copy. I am disgracefully late, but when I began reading this book I realized that if I were to absorb and retain anything here, I would need to take it in small bites. That said, this is an unusually well researched work, and it’s well worth the time and attention of anyone interested in the topic.

Usually when I see research having to do with Chinese immigration, it is within the context of immigration to the United States, or an examination of the push factors of emigration, examining why Chinese chose to leave their native land and embark upon an expensive, dangerous, and uncertain journey to a place they’d never visited—in most cases—and where they usually did not speak the language. Instead, Ngai examines it as a global diaspora that includes English speaking nations, namely South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the United States. In doing so she is able to highlight the similarities of treatment, to put it politely, and also to dismantle some of the stereotypes that have rooted themselves in English speakers’ knowledge of history.

For starters, she wants us to know that Chinese immigrants were not necessarily “coolies” or indentured workers, and they didn’t always face conflicts with Caucasian powerbrokers. But there certainly were a great many blood chilling abuses, sometimes brought about by White fear of the “other,” but oftener from greed and the desire to exploit the Chinese working class and eliminate competition from the businesses of better off Chinese.

This study is adjacent to my own graduate study topic of many years ago, when I examined the “Model Minority,” and the attempt to counter the demands of U.S. Civil Rights activists of the 1950s and 1960s with the suggestion that Black people quietly accept abuse and quietly climb the economic ladder, or not, as Asians of Chinese and Japanese descent had supposedly done. Ngai demonstrates that Chinese immigrants weren’t all that quiet, and they weren’t all that accepting of maltreatment at the hands of employers and local officials. This is interesting material indeed, and I wish I had known these things sooner.

As a general read for a wide audience, this may be a four star book because it is dense and has an academic approach that not all pleasure readers will appreciate; however, for those with a strong interest in the topic, whether for academic research or personal knowledge and growth, it is hands down the best work I’ve seen in decades.

Highly recommended to those passionate about the issue.

It’s a Privilege Just to Be Here, by Emma Sasaki****

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Emma Sasaki makes her fictional debut with the darkly amusing story of a mother and daughter caught up in a scandal at a prestigious private school. My thanks go to NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for the audio galley. This book is for sale now.

Wesley Friends School is the prep school to which presidents and other high placed politicos send their teens, a place where they are nurtured as completely as any hot house flower, and then sent onward, hopefully to an ivy league college. Aki Hiyashi-Brown abandons her PhD and accepts a teaching job there in order for her daughter, Meg, to be able to attend; otherwise the tuition would be impossibly expensive. The school is overwhelmingly Caucasian, and so perhaps it’s unsurprising that Aki finds her face prominently displayed on all of the promotional materials the school disseminates, along with those of the few other teachers of color.

That’s all fine and good until the day when the fence outside is vandalized by spray paint reading, “Make Wesley white again.” Aki is ready to do what she’s been taught from the cradle: keep her head down, do her job, and not say anything. But Meg and her classmates have no intention of remaining silent. Before she knows it, Aki finds she has been assigned to be the head of the Racial Equity Task Force, a token job on a token committee that has more to do with appearances than with any actual desire for change.

She is given a script to follow and told not to offer up any of her own observations or opinions.

Soon, things spiral beyond the control of Wesley’s administration, and Aki is caught between doing what her bosses want her to do, and supporting her daughter and students in their quest for genuine change.

This book, which the author notes is based on her own experience, has me at hello. Though I am not a wealthy or connected individual, I did send my child to a private school for a few years, one which was very white, and which used my half-Japanese daughter’s face on its pamphlets a lot. I can’t not read this book, and whenever I have earbuds in, this is what I listen to. I find it well paced and engaging, setting just the right tone without over-moralizing or becoming strident. There are some great side characters as well; I like Aki’s husband and mother particularly, and appreciate the bond between Aki’s half-Japanese daughter and her Issei (first generation) grandmother.

However, my own husband is also Issei, and I asked him to listen to the reader during one of the many passages in which the grandma speaks to Aki in Japanese. “Is this reader’s Japanese as good as I suspect?” I asked, somewhat proud of my first year Japanese skills. He listened to two lines, laughed, and shook his head.

For this, I really do have to knock one star off my original five star rating. Perhaps if I had a digital review copy I could have rated that version higher, but I have what I have, and it’s problematic. Nevertheless, I appreciate this novel and the message it delivers, and I greatly look forward to reading whatever Sasaki publishes next.