50books_poc | Entries tagged with asian pacific islanders

This came into my possession via the latest Humble Ebook Bundle, and I am so glad it did. This is how glad I am: I am about two-thirds of the way through it and I can't wait to finish before I tell you all how good it is.

The protagonist, Hanna, is sixteen, manic depressive (and explicitly, canonically prefers that descriptor to "bipolar", Because Reasons), and Finnish-"island girl" (Hawaiian?), raised (for most of her life) in Dallas. She describes herself as biracial and bicultural, and she's bilingual in English and Finnish - and the codeswitching is genuinely plausibly represented.

The dude she ends up hanging around with a lot is the same age, Latino, and bilingual in Spanish and English - again, really nicely represented.

The story takes place in creepy smalltown Texas. It's sub/urban fantasy and abusive parents and a critique of the medical-industrial complex and teenagers having (complicated, not always happy) sex lives all tied up in tight, funny monster-killing brilliance. It's lovely.

( Content notes. )

wordsofastory.livejournal.com

41. Alaya Dawn Johnson, Racing the Dark

The first book in a YA trilogy set in a Polynesia-inspired world (with elements from several other cultures; I recognized a few Japanese things in particular), it's a bit hard to describe the plot, because it's very episodic and involves many, many twists and turns. The main character is Lana, who grows up on an idyllic rural island before finding out that she is destined for something big. Her attempts to escape that destiny start off the plot. The other main character is Kohaku, a young man from an urban center who has come to Lana's island to teach and do anthropological research. Back home, he lives with his deaf sister, Emea. Other important figures include a scary floating death spirit, a man who is half water-spirit, a fortune-teller, healer, and witch who knows more than she's telling, and a young man from a nomadic tribe who does not believe in the magic used by the rest of the characters.

This book involves a lot of mature topics (including abortion, suicide, murder, prostitution, and torture, to name a few), which I know isn't unusual for YA books, but the sheer number of "bad" things surprised me. Despite all that, it's not really a depressing book. Everything is handled with the seriousness and weight they deserve, but they're not dwelt on. In general, I found the book to be very fast-moving and entertaining. The writing is not the most beautiful, but man, does Johnson do plot well. This book is very much a page-turner, and it gripped me and didn't let go. I can't wait for the sequel to come out!

Current Mood: busy

oyceter

I have been reading! I have just been very bad at posting to the comm.

Davis, Tanita S. - A La Carte
Seventeen-year-old Lainey already knows what she wants from life: become a celebrity chef, get her own Food Network show, and come up with lots of awesome vegetarian dishes. But she and her best friend Sim have grown apart—he's hanging out with the partiers while she could care less—and to keep him close, Lainey's willing to do a lot more than she thought. (more)

Headley, Justina Chen - North of Beautiful
Terra Rose Cooper is gorgeous: tall, thin, blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Or she would be, if it weren't for the port-wine stain covering the entire right side of her face. Her life is also perfect, or it would be, if her father didn't emotionally abuse everyone in the family, if her brothers in China and Seattle would only check in, if her mother didn't fear driving and overeat since her sister (Terra's aunt) died in a car accident. (more)

Ly, Many - Roots and Wings
Grace's grandmother Naree has died, and her mother Chandra decides that they must hold a Cambodian funeral, despite having cut all ties to the community Chandra grew up with in St. Petersburg, Florida. When they return to Florida, Grace seizes on the chance to find out more about her family history—why her grandmother's face was scarred, why her grandmother and mother moved away before she was born, and most importantly, who her father is. (more)

Woodson, Jacqueline - After Tupac and D Foster
D Foster shows up in the narrator and her best friend Neeka's lives shortly after Tupac is shot for the first time, and she leaves shortly before he dies. D is a kid in foster care who looks forward to the day her mom will come back to her, and her life is worlds away from that of the narrator and Neeka, who aren't allowed to go past their block, who are looked after by their moms. (more)

mllesays.livejournal.com

In Coming Through Slaughter, Michael Ondaatje reimagines the life of New Orleans jazz originator Buddy Bolden — who was never recorded — and spins scant details and one lone photo into a poetic fever dream of a novel. In glimpses, short scenes, hymns, and epistolary-style documents, the novel uses the unstructured, improvisational style of jazz to tell the story of Bolden's life and his unexpected descent. He was a cornet player like no other, loud, a parade favorite; he once disappeared for two years without a trace, and he spent the last years of his life in an asylum in northern Louisiana, where he never played a note.

This book is small, only about 150 pages, and it prefigures the book that made me love Ondaatje first, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. I wouldn't recommend to readers who need a structured narrative or who dislike experimental forms. But I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in Dixieland jazz, New Orleans, strange tales about fairly tragic characters, prose poetry, or epistolary fiction. Fans of Ondaatje's more traditional books should also find something of interest here.

rcloenen-ruiz.livejournal.com

I hope it's all right to post about poets as well. While the book below has been classified as poetry, it's actually more than that.

Here's a brief review:

Eileen Tabios is one of the most prolific Filipino-American poets. She has a varied and exciting body of work in which the desire to engage the reader in a conversation is central.

"The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes" is an account of the passing away of Eileen's father as well as an account of the historical and political reasons behind their leaving The Philippines. There are plenty of poignant images in this book, and while it is classified as poetry, it could also be easily read as a memoir.

While this book is highly personal in its account, it is also very much political. The poet talks of the mail-order bride phenomenon, the phletora of Filipina penpal sites on the Internet, the objectification of the Filipina and how she has been transformed into a commodity.

Alongside this, is the personal aspect of the poet coming to terms with the loss of her father. The poet reminds us of the transcience of life, our own human frailty and our vision of our parents.

Here is a poignant line that I think would resonate with many readers:

I want my father immortal, but that’s beyond my control.

This book is available also from amazon.com as well as from Marsh Hawk Press
Eileen's blog can be found here.

annwfyn.livejournal.com

I've just finished this book, and my brain is still rather clogged up with stray thoughts that I haven't processed yet, so I apologise if this review isn't very coherent.

First of all, I want to say that 'Anil's Ghost' is an amazing book. It is really really really good - the kind of good that gets inside your heart and your head and leaves you feeling slightly breathless after each chapter. The second thing I'd like to say is that this isn't an easy read. Michael Ondaatje started out as a poet, I believe, and like many poets, it shows in his writing. He writes through imagery, through capturing individual moments. His writing style isn't exactly linear, and his stories tend to twist and turn around in time, as if caught by some kind of current.

( Review follows with some light spoilers )

Current Mood: accomplished

firecat

This book is the second of the multi-author Crimson City series created by Liz Maverick. I listened to the unabridged audiobook, narrated by Rebecca Rogers.

In this urban paranormal romance, vampires and werewolves are barely tolerated second-class citizens in a city run by humans. They are negotiating an alliance, but it's difficult since they hate each other so much. A young werewolf -- the granddaughter of the Grand Dame Alpha, the leader of the werewolves -- and an outcast vampire executioner-for-hire are assigned to solve a series of vampire murders. They fall in love, which is forbidden by all the norms of both of their clans.

This is the first paranormal romance I've read (except for the Anita Blake series), and the first book by Liu. So I'm not sure how many of its quirks are quirks of the genre itself, vs. quirks of this author. I found it odd that the vampires heat up bags of blood in the microwave and buy sunblock at the local drugstore when they want to go out during the daytime. And that the werewolves obligingly chain themselves to the bedposts during the full moon so they won't rampage through the city killing everything in sight. (Who lets them out of their chains?) But these oddities didn't stop me from finding the book entertaining.

I like that money and class are part of the story, although I didn't think it was adequately explained why the vampire protagonist was poor. (In other words, I suspected him of being poor so the reader would like him.)

I was worried that I would find the romantic relationship awful, but I didn't - the characters are well matched and they treat each other as equals for the most part. I have a bit of an aversion to romances that turn around "We met each other 24 hours ago, but we are in True Love and Will Always Be Together No Matter What." But that's probably just how the genre works.

There's a subtle undercurrent of gender-play in the book, not only with the main protagonists (who are somewhat gender-reversed - she is more kickass and he is more gentle) but also with some other characters. It is nice to have a female protagonist who wears striped tights and has pink hair, instead of the traditional beautiful leggy blonde with boobs out to there.

( nitpicking and spoilers )
Folks who have read other Liu, do the books in her own series feel different to you than this one, which is set in another writer's series?

kizmet-42.livejournal.com

This book was selected for the county wide community reading program here last year.

I've been reading a lot about race on Scalzi's Whatever blog this past week, and this book fitted in with that discussion well. Monica's issues with how she's treated as a Japanese ("nisei" refers to first born generation of immigrant Japanese parents) person who feels herself as American before Japanese. The internment camp experiences she had aren't what I expected (but I knew next to nothing about them before reading this book) in that as an American citizen, she was permitted to leave the camp for a life in the Midwest.

While her feelings are present, they lacked the strength and passion I expected. I'm at a loss to know if the example she gave in the memoir of how the Japanese resist the outward show of emotions explains her reticence, or if she truly was able to accept the injustice of the situation and deal with her life in a "what's done is done" mindset.

I'm not a fan of memoirs, but having read this one, I would like to read more, in particular about these internment camps. Therefore, I recommend this book. Her memoir of her childhood often amused me. The story of her mother talking to her teacher nailed the child's point of view without any reference to how she as an adult must now interpret it. It felt true and childlike - very authentic voice in that story.

Edited to correct spelling errors.

meganbmoore.livejournal.com

Schuyler Van Alen is a modern goth emo teen who attends Duchesne, a prestigious, exclusive school for New York’s terminally rich. Naturally, she hates all her snobby classmates and lounges around with her equally disaffected best friend, Oliver. Her opposite number is the bitchy and elite Mimi, who isn’t happy when her twin brother, Jack, the most popular boy in school, starts having an interest in Schuyler. Mimi’s best friend, Bliss, secretly hates everything Mimi stands for, but goes along with it to be in the In crowd, until she falls for bad-boy Dylan, who is also Schuyler and Oliver’s friend.

No, Gossip Girl’s cast didn’t get renamed, I promise.

Virtually every student at Duchesne can list off a few presidents in their background and trace their lineage at least as far back and The Mayflower. There’s careful explanations about how the truly classy rich don’t show off their wealth and endless brand name dropping, exclusive clubs, exclusive fashions, etc. But then a student is found dead and drained of blood, and Schuyler and Bliss start to notice they’re feeling strange and developing strange habits. Like eating raw meat.

( more )

rachelmanija.livejournal.com

A food-centric memoir of growing up in a huge Indian family in and around Delhi. Jaffrey became a teenager when India got its independence - a time of joy and horror, as the country gained its freedom and then tore itself apart in the violence that came with Partition.

But Jaffrey's childhood was more happy than not, despite the presence of a low-key but appalling family rift caused by an uncle's emotional abuse of his own children and favoritism of some of his nieces and nephews. There's not a lot of drama but a great deal of humor, well-observed family dynamics, and a wonderful sense of place and time.

Jaffrey grew up to a famous food writer, and her memories are full of the scents and tastes and family rituals surrounding food. It's impossible to read without getting hungry. And by relating the food to its role in culture, family history, and personality, the food itself becomes the story.

Though she mentions some horrifying accidents and tragedies, albeit in an understated way, the overall mood of the story is one of nostalgia for a flavorful and largely fondly-recalled childhood. Though Jaffrey was something of a misfit, by the end of the book she's beginning to find her own voice and destiny. Amusingly, she never cooks anything good in the entire book - but she eats well, and remembers well. The rest, we know, is history.

Click here to buy it from Amazon: Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India (Vintage)

There's a recipe section at the end!

annwfyn.livejournal.com

Another two Nalini Singh reviews. As a note, I'm wondering if multiple books in a series count as individual books for the '50 books in a year' challenge, or if they should just count as one? I'm feeling slightly guilty, as I'm working my way through this series quite quickly and it sort of feels like cheating.

If anyone wants to let me know, that would be lovely.

Anyway, on to the reviews!

( Reviews lie beneath, with many spoilers )

Whilst I'm posting - I'm looking for new cook books. Ideally not curries, or similar, as my partner is Sri Lankan and so we probably are fairly good for curry type recipes. Other than that, I'm totally open minded. Obviously, written by PoC, if possible. I only mention this as the userinfo actually states that cookery books are valid books to add to the 50 book challenge.

Current Mood: bouncy

annwfyn.livejournal.com

Two radically different books for me to review today.

First of all, the one I started first, and finished last.

'Dead Aid' by Dambisa Moyo

I picked this book up randomly in Waterstones. Dambisa Moyo is from Zambia, but left in her teens to pursue her education. She's studied economics at Harvard and Oxford, and worked for the World Bank. She also believes that international aid is currently destroying Africa and needs to stop.

First of all, I have to say that I feel like I am far far to uninformed on this subject to be able to critique this book properly, or really at all. I don't know enough about Africa, or enough about the aid industry there, although a lot of what she said was both painful (as a well meaning western liberal) but seemed to ring very true.

( Read more... )

And now the other, slightly less brain-worky read of the week.

'Visions of Heat' by Nalini Singh

'Visions of Heat' is a sequal to 'Slave to Sensation' which was one of the book recs I picked up here. It follows a few months on from where 'Slave to Sensation' left off, and although it does feature the same characters Sascha and Lucas are no longer the focus. Instead it's the story of a new couple - Faith DarkStar and Vaughn, the were-jaguar.

( Review follows. But beware! Spoilers lurk within )

Current Mood: busy

annwfyn.livejournal.com

First of all, this is the first book I've read which I got from recs here. Everything I've reviewed or read before has been picked up randomly in bookshelves. I can't remember who recommended 'Slave to Sensation', I'm afraid, but I would like to thank them very much.

So, on with the review! I have to say when 'Slave to Sensation' arrived from Amazon I have to admit I did briefly panic. The title, the half naked man on the cover and the very purple blurb on the back briefly had me convinced that I'd bought a bad Laurell K Hamilton rip off, at best, and soft p0rn at worst. I wasn't much soothed by my flatmate, who wandered in, picked it up, coughed, apologized and put it down again as if she'd found me reading Penthouse.

However, for anyone who might have the same response, don't! I won't lie - 'Slave to Sensation' is at least 50% romance, and there is a good dollop of dubious hormonal activity between the two leads, but that doesn't stop it from being a good story, with some really strong characters, and a really interesting world/plot which is really what kept me engaged.

As a note, Nalini Singh also fills her world with a really diverse mix of people - a lot of the characters are very clearly marked as PoC. Sascha, who is the lead character, for example, looks Anglo-Indian (her father is Anglo-Indian, I believe), but also has Japanese heritage. I can't remember if Lucas (the hero) is white or not, but I know several members of his pack are marked as dark skinned, and the heroine's mother is of mixed European-Japanese heritage. Race is also brought up a couple of times as an issue characters face, although it's not hugely relevent to the plot.

( Plot summary with some spoilage )

I really enjoyed this. It wasn't deep reading, but it did cheer me up hugely, and I have to say I found both leads really strong, very sexy, but still real and three dimensional enough to keep me engaged. The world is an interesting one, and whilst the plot was kinda a backdrop to the romance, it was actually nicely thought out and had me hooked. I wish Nalini Singh had done a little more with the villain - he was fantastic, but rather underused.

I've already ordered the next in the series from amazon, and suspect that Nalini Singh is going straight to the top of my 'comfort reading' pile for some time.

Current Mood: accomplished

stephiepenguin.livejournal.com

I started to do the challenge in August 2008, and then failed to post reviews to this community. Following

oyceter's example, I'm just going to briefly post about the books I've read in the first six months of this challenge (with links to bigger reviews if I posted them in my own journal), in the hopes that I will not be overwhelmed by my backlog and therefore post nothing for another six months.

I elected to do a modified 50 books poc challenge - for the twelve months IBARW 2008 to IBARW 2009 I am reading books by Malaysian authors, or ethnically Chinese authors, because although this is my personal experience I very rarely have read them. The plan is for me to have a new challenge every twelve months.

1. Miss Chopsticks - Xue Xinran (translated)
The problems with the rural to urban migration in China weaves through everything in this novel, an exploration of the prejudice against the floating population and the impact of the hukou and the way this impacts women in particular. I am a big fan of Xinran's books, she always reveals a very hidden part of China and especially focuses on women. more here

2. The Woman Warrior - Maxine Hong Kingston
I'd never read any of Kingston's work before, so this was an interesting, at times confusing, but still good introduction.

3. Lust, Caution - Eileen Chang (translated)
Collection of short stories, really awesome stories about women and adventure and China.

4. Empress Orchid - Anchee Min
So it turns out I am not really a big fan of Anchee Min's writing. I found Empress Orchid a novel filled with unsympathetic characters and I raced through just trying to get it over with.

5. Evening is the Whole Day - Preeta Samarasan
This is lyrical and beautiful and engaging, and you're so unsuspecting, one minute it's depressing family politics and the next minute BAM you're in the middle of the 1969 Malaysian race riots. A++ recommend. more here

6. Sweet Mandarin - Helen Tse
Autobiographical exploration of the Chinese diaspora, more of a family history than anything else. more here

7. The Canonisation of Deities (vol 1-3) - unknown (translated)
This is quite graphic, more the words than anything else. The version I read was in Chinese and English, and sometimes I had to pause in reading the English to check out the Chinese because it was so gruesome that I thought there had to be a mistranslation. My mum assures me the ones she read were just as graphic when she was a child. Educational but gruesome.

8. The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng
The horror of reading about WWII and the Japanese in Penang is made the worse by being from Penang. The beautiful, evocative descriptions are compelling on their own, you can close your eyes and see them but when I closed my eyes I could see them, and knowing what happened to my beloved island meant I took a very long time to read this.

9. Growing Up Asian in Australia - Alice Pung (ed)
Identity and nationalism and culture and this was fantastic, a collection of short stories, and some of the stories were just like mine! Which was exciting. This is not all Chinese so sort of doesn't fit, it features other stories as well. A++ more here

10. Tale of Two Cities - Qiu Xiaolong
A book in the Inspector Chen murder mystery series. This one was the same as always, some murdered woman and the man who did her in, and Inspector Chen caught up in the politicking of early 1990s Shanghai.

11. Mao's Last Dancer - Li Cunxin
Autobiography of a student running away to the USA.

12. Zhu, Wen - I Love Dollars and other stories of China (translated)
This very cynical look at humanity in general, and Chinese society, was very bleak and pessimistic. At times there were strains of something worthy in humanity, and was a very effective way to discuss the identity issues in China in the late 1980s-early 1990s. more here

13. Guo, Xiaolu - A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
The story of a young Chinese woman who has travelled to the UK to learn English, and the ways in which she grows, and what it reveals about us as individuals and collective (and the ways in which we refuse to change). more here

14. Lee, Jennifer 8. - The Fortune Cookie Chronicles
An exploration of the paths of Chinese food, the way it has adapted and the way it has had to adapted. Also a great exploration of social justice, race issues, business, identity and the immigrant experience. more here

15. Dai, Sijie - Mr Muo's Traveling Couch (translated)
Mr Muo is China's first psychoanalyst, and this is his road tripping adventure filled with misfortunes and an unsure ending. It was an uncomfortable read, mostly because it was so confronting about fetishes and and really terrible attitudes to women.

oyceter

Not including text for all the Liu's I read, or else this would be super long.

Singh, Nalini - Visions of Heat
Faith NightStar (this is a PsyClan name, not a pretendian one, I think) is one of the world's top F-Psy; she forecasts business trends with unerring accuracy and can even be prompted by triggers, further upping her value. But lately, she's been getting visions of horrible violence, disturbing because the Silence has supposedly wiped emotion from all of the Psy. She ends up getting help from a leopard Changeling clan, though she's instantly attracted to a jaguar Changeling, Vaughn. (more)

Manning, Frankie, with Cynthia Millman - Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop
So, for those interested in lindy hop history, the second and last sections were the most interesting for me. There's not much sociological analysis, but as a first-hand narrative, we probably aren't going to get anything better, given that Shorty Snowden and Whitey White passed away a while ago (Norma Miller! Write a biography?). For those interested in show business, I suspect the other sections will be much more interesting. (more)

Liu, Marjorie M. - Tiger Eye
"If you did not bring me here to kill or fight, then I was summoned to pleasure your body." He looked like he would rather impale himself face-first on a bed of nails. (more)

Liu, Marjorie M. - Shadow Touch (more)

Morrison, Toni - Beloved
I wish I had more to say about this book -- I felt like I missed tons while reading it, as it is not a good book to read when one's brain is not working, like mine. (more)

Liu, Marjorie M. - The Red Heart of Jade (more)

Singh, Nalini - Caressed by Ice
I probably won't continue with the Psy-Changeling series after this; the prose is just too clunky and the characterization isn't good enough to catch my interest. (more)

Liu, Marjorie M. - Eye of Heaven (more)

Liu, Marjorie M. - Soul Song (more)

Current Music: Diamond Hoo Ha Man - Supergrass

oyceter

Hrm, since I usually write things up on my LJ, I figure I will try to do compilation posts here each month. Also, I'll link my manga write ups here as well, though I won't be counting those toward my own 50 books (partly out of embarrassment of my total manga tally each year...).

Chu, Carl - Chinese Food Finder: The Bay Area and San Francisco
I am generally leery of English-language write-ups of Chinese food; in my experience, they tend to portray Chinese food as something exotic and foreign at worst and as something non-normative at best. More importantly, the Chinese food that they talk about is not my Chinese food, which is normal, everyday and comfortingly familiar. Also, either I can't figure out what the books are talking about because the names are funny transliterated English (ex. "Dragon Phoenix Soup") that make sense in Chinese but not really in English or because they're talking about stuff that I don't eat very often (ex. banquet food from the seventies). (more)

Zia, Helen - Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People
Contrary to expectation, this is not actually a history of Asian Americans. For that, I would grab Ronald Takaki's Strangers from a Different Shore. Instead, this is a history of the politicization of Asian Americans as a group and the formation of an "Asian-American" identity, as opposed to many separate groups (Chinese Americans, Cambodian Americans, Thai Americans, etc.). (more)

Manga

Yoshinaga Fumi - Antique Bakery, vol. 01-04 (Eng. trans.) - Fun food porn!

Yumeji Kiriko and Ubukata Tou - Le Chevalier d'Eon, vol. 01 (Eng. trans.) (minor spoilers for premise) - FREAKING INSANE!

Ogawa Yayoi - Tramps Like Us, vol. 11-12 (Eng. trans.) (spoilers)

Tateno Makoto - Yellow, vol. 01-04 (Eng. trans.) (minor spoilers at the end) - better than anticipated, but still had a lot of yaoi tropes I dislike

Urushibara Yuki - Mushishi, vol. 02 (Eng. trans.) - continues to be one of my favorite new series

CLAMP - xxxHolic, ch. 135-143 (HUGE SPOILERS!)

CLAMP - Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, ch. 156-164 (HUGE SPOILERS!)

littlebutfierce

While looking for resources for POC-written YA books, I stumbled upon Paper Tigers, which focuses mainly, but not exclusively, on books about the Pacific Rim & South Asia. They've got a lot of reviews up. Not all the books are by POCs, but still, looks like a decent site to check out.

2. Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith, and Sexuality - Edited by Sarah Husain. ( Read more... )

3. Growing Up Brown: Memoirs of a Filipino American - Peter Jamero. ( Read more... )

4. Translations of Beauty - Mia Yun. ( Read more... )

littlebutfierce

I am so excited that this community exists! I have major issues w/the white feminist Inga Muscio (especially w/her book on racism), but one of her ideas that I liked was to only consume media by women for a period of time, I think a year, just to shift her thinking a little. While I won't be doing that for POCs, I think the prompt to deliberately read POC authors will be v. v. good for me. I hope folks will keep posting link lists of POC authors as they find them. I'll be searching for one of YA writers, myself, & will post if I find a useful one.

I write brief notes on my reading journal (

furyofvissarion), & I'll cross-post the POC ones here. I'm afraid I generally don't write v. long/in-depth reviews (I'd never get myself to do them!), but hopefully @ least mentioning what I'm reading will help expose some authors to other folks.

1. Restoried Selves: Autobiographies of Queer Asian/Pacific American Activists - Edited by Kevin K. Kumashiro, Ph.D.

I was chuffed to see a few folks I know in here, hee. Besides that, I definitely appreciated that they included mixed-race folks, & obviously there was also a lot of talk about the pressure to either be queer or Asian, depending on which situation you're in. One essay talked about starting a group for queer Asians & getting a lot of resistance for wanting to keep it closed (to queer Asians). Ohhhhh I could identify w/that one. In this person's case, it was even suggested that they allow white men who were interested in Asians (rice queens!!) to attend events. Barf. Anyway, this is the sort of book that I think is radical just for existing; a lot of the content felt like conversations I've had w/my friends, or journal entries I've written, & it was v. validating to see these concerns shared publicly in print.