Yi Jiang

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

On bearing witness

Interview by Yi Jiang

Each Maghabol boy possesses a unique relationship to his cultural background. For example, Emil is an “assimilationist,” striving to replace his Filipino identity with an American one. On the other hand, his son, Chris, seeks out Filipino culture and tries to “self-educate” even though he’s coming from an outsider’s perspective due to his father’s parenting. How did you go about depicting these differences, with all their nuances? 

As I wrote their stories, I had to put aside my own opinions to get into each character’s head. I tried to depict each in such a way that you understand as much as possible why they possess the attitudes toward their cultural background that they do, in order to grasp how each boy’s identity was forged from the struggle to survive within his specific personal and historical circumstances.

What drew you to the specific moments of Filipino and Filipino American history that you chose to spotlight, such as Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship or the 1965 Delano Grape Strike in California?

I wanted each storyline to be impacted either directly or indirectly by both personal and historical struggles because I believe that’s what happens in real life. I also wanted to touch on pivotal moments in Filipino American history that I wish I had learned about in school or at home instead of having to self-educate later in life.

At one point, Chris is conscious of the “privilege of distance” he holds in being able to stay ignorant of Marcos’ brutal rule. Could you elaborate on this concept? 

The more directly a political situation impacts us, the more conscious we are of that situation because that knowledge can be necessary to survive. On the other hand, if our day-to-day existence isn’t immediately threatened, then it’s much easier to be ignorant of—or, to ignore—what’s happening, and fail to clearly see the ways in which everything is connected. While this distance can be literally physical, it can also result from other aspects of our identity such as socioeconomic status, gender, race, etc.

Enzo’s sections take place as the COVID-19 pandemic is starting, and you capture that time of isolation with such exactitude—staring at frozen Zoom screens, idly moving cursors around while on calls, doomscrolling, etc. What was it like to write about 2020? 

For a while, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to delve into it. As I started to work on the novel, my editor and I talked about if it was too difficult to understand the impact of the pandemic while we were in the midst of it. There were also a lot of conversations in the book world about when people would be ready to read about the pandemic—some saying never! But as a writer, I often go back to James Baldwin advising us all to bear witness and am always asking myself what I can bear witness to. Ultimately, as someone both experiencing the pandemic for myself and teaching teenagers who were living through it, I felt like it had to be part of Enzo’s story.

What advice do you have for young people whose adolescence has been defined by the pandemic? 

That’s a hard question, and I’m probably not qualified to answer it! But I’d say, think about how you experienced/continue to experience the pandemic, how it impacted you, how it still impacts you. Find ways to tell those stories and ways to listen to others’ stories.

Everything We Never Had often brings up the collective versus the individual: the power of unionizing; the safety to be found in numbers; even the contrast between how Francisco fished in the Philippines (casting nets together) and in America (each person using a fishing pole). Can you share some thoughts on this dichotomy? 

Good catch! (Pun intended.) Community vs. individualism is a tension I’ve thought about a lot in my life. I’ve come to believe a balance is necessary—as individuals and as a society—to be healthy. Overreliance on one can be just as destructive as overreliance on the other. Of course, it took me a lot of lived experience and reflection to arrive at this belief, and it’s going to take even more trial and error to find out how to achieve that balance practically. And maybe my views will shift in the years to come. In the same way individuals like me struggle with this tension, so do cultures. That cultural/communal struggle, however, is much slower and harder to steer.

Speaking of fishing, it plays an important role—does it have any significance for you personally? 

Growing up, I definitely went fishing with my dad occasionally. But that detail found its way into the story thanks to Roy Recio of the Tobera Project, who was a great resource for my Watsonville research. He emphasized the need to convey the manongs [early 20th-century Filipino immigrants] as more than just field workers and suggested the idea of fishing as something that could be shared across generations. I then thought about how each character’s relationship to fishing might change over time.

The novel explores several beautiful, warm friendships between male characters. Do you think there’s been growth regarding the ways boys and men are taught to interact with each other? 

Yes and no. There’s definitely been progress in terms of topics like toxic masculinity, patriarchy and male loneliness hitting mainstream discourse in recent years, thanks to decades of work by feminists like bell hooks. Those are things we need to understand for there to be growth. I also personally see a lot more parents consciously trying to raise their boys to be fuller, more empathetic human beings. On the other hand, I think there are those who view such discourse as vilifying instead of healing because much of it—in the mainstream, at least—critiques without offering models of a way forward. As a result, some people have doubled down on a lot of those foundational identity markers of patriarchy.

Your descriptions are so poetic. What writers are you inspired by?

So many! To list a few, in no particular order: James Baldwin, Sandra Cisneros, Jacqueline Woodson, Patrick Rosal, Haruki Murakami, Jason Reynolds, Elizabeth Acevedo, Ocean Vuong, Sabaa Tahir. And so many others!

What made you decide to set the novel in California, Colorado and Pennsylvania? How were you able to create such distinct atmospheres for each setting? 

I’ve lived in all those states and was, therefore, already familiar with them to some extent. I also generally liked the idea of the family physically moving farther east with each generation. I did additional research for the sake of historical accuracy, especially about Watsonville and Stockton, California. Primary sources such as photographs, oral histories and periodicals were invaluable when it came to visualizing the details of those times and places.

 

Randy Ribay explores several generations and their different relationships to Filipino American identity and culture in his expansive family saga, Everything We Never Had.
Science Fiction & FantasyNonfictionFictionScience FictionLiterary FictionHistoryClassics

The Hold List: Hidden gems from heavy hitters

Feature by Meagan Vanderhill & Trisha Ping & Yi Jiang & Savanna Walker

The Host

Stephenie Meyer mastered the love triangle in her famous Twilight Saga, but Edward and Jacob aren’t the only Meyer heartthrobs. In her lesser-known sci-fi thriller, The Host, an equally intriguing love triangle (parallelogram?) forms between bad-boy Jared, sensitive Ian and Melanie—plus the parasitic alien borrowing Melanie’s body. After Earth is invaded by aliens, most humans become hosts before they can even begin to fight back, but a small group resists. When Melanie is captured, the alien Wanderer is placed in her body to to shut down the human rebellion. But Melanie won’t cooperate, and Wanderer finds herself inside a body that still desperately loves another. Wanderer and Melanie become unlikely allies as Wanderer begins to understand why humans fight for love. I find myself returning to The Host often and urge Twilight lovers (or haters) to give another Meyer story a try. When you do, let me know . . . Team Jared or Team Ian?

—Meagan Vanderhill, Production Manager

Thunderstruck

Most people know Erik Larson for his dual-narrative history, the deservedly omnipresent The Devil in the White City, or, my personal favorite, In the Garden of Beasts. However, 2006’s Thunderstruck deserves just as much praise. Like Devil, Thunderstruck centers a shocking, sensational crime—Hawley Harvey Crippen’s murder of his wife in 1910—within a historical event. But in this case, the event is more of a paradigm shift: Guglielmo Marconi’s attempts to patent and popularize radio communication. In a previous era, Crippen may very well have vanished before justice could be served. But thanks to radio, Crippen’s attempted escape to Canada was instead the first true crime news story to unfold in real time for a breathless readership. Larson weaves these tales together with his signature novelistic flair, producing highly entertaining portraits of the loathsome Crippen and the obsessive, passionate and at-times hilariously obtuse Marconi.

—Savanna Walker, Managing Editor

The Shuttle

Reading The Secret Garden (1911) has been a rite of passage for generations. But did you know that Frances Hodgson Burnett first earned fame and fortune by writing for adults? Burnett began her career selling romantic tales to magazines, publishing her first novel in 1877. Dozens more adult novels followed, the best of which is 1907’s The Shuttle. New York City heiress Bettina Vanderpoel has always wondered why her gentle older sister, Rosalie, cut ties to the family after marrying an English peer. Once she’s old enough, Betty crosses the Atlantic to get answers. Her adventure features a dastardly villain, a surly yet handsome lord, a crumbling estate (and an ensuing renovation to delight HGTV fans)and the most charming typewriter salesman in literature, plus plenty of trenchant observations on the differences between the English and Americans that still ring true. If you loved Downton Abbey or wish the works of Edith Wharton were a little less mannered, put The Shuttle on your reading list.

—Trisha Ping, Publisher

Outer Dark

Long before venturing southwest with Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses, his most famous titles, Cormac McCarthy plumbed his native Appalachia for visceral cruelty and mythological beauty. Outer Dark may be the most eerie, devastating book in his flawless oeuvre. After falsifying the death of his newborn son—the product of incest with his sister, Rinthy—and abandoning him in the wilderness, Culla Holme wanders through a dreamlike, nebulous Southern landscape populated with bizarre characters. Meanwhile, Rinthy uncovers the empty grave and sets off in search of her child. Alternating between the two siblings’ perspectives, the novel reveals the staggering violence and deep tenderness within the human soul, both of which McCarthy captured with peerless acuity over his seven-decade career. Each scene in Outer Dark has a torrential fluidity: As you drift through this haunting, remarkable creation, remember to breathe.

—Yi Jiang, Associate Editor

A breakout success can bring new attention to an author’s body of work—or, one book can so define them that it overshadows earlier titles that are just as excellent. Here are four overlooked books from great authors that deserve their own moment in the limelight.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

3 picture books to take you to the top of the class

List by Yi Jiang
STARRED REVIEW
August 6, 2024

3 picture books for the start of the school year

As the school buses begin to roll, these offerings will help young readers ease into back-to-school mode, and remind them that a world of stories is waiting to be discovered in each and every classroom.

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Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Ladybugs Do Not Go to Preschool

Review by Alice Cary

On the first morning of preschool, Ravi comes downstairs wearing ladybug wings and antennae. When he refuses cornflakes for breakfast, his mother tells him that it’s actually a bowl full of “aphids,” leading him to slurp it down. Later, when she suggests that Ravi brush his teeth, he replies, “Ladybugs don’t have teeth . . . but my mandibles could do with a clean—they’re full of aphid guts.” Such is the delightful back-and-forth between a mother and her imaginative son in Ali Rutstein’s Ladybugs Do Not Go to Preschool, a familiar tale of first day of school jitters with a creative twist.

Despite his reluctance, Ravi is a “curious sort of ladybug,” somewhat tempted by his mother’s promise of new friends and art projects. There’s a perfectly balanced interplay between Ravi’s worries and his mother’s support and encouragement. Kids will enjoy the exchange of ladybug details, although additional educational facts about these insects would have been a nice addition for eager learners.

Niña Nill’s cheerful art adds just the right touch, transforming Ravi and his bowl haircut into a ladybug look-alike, and adding subtle details such as an “Aphids” label to the cereal box. Nill puts elements like this on every page—Ravi’s red cheeks look like ladybug spots, and the house’s bright floral dining room rug, seen from an overhead perspective, makes readers feel as though they’re gazing into a garden scene.

Ravi’s worried expressions readily transmit his fears, which evaporate when he sees a helpful omen once at school, as well as other students’ imaginative costumes on the final spread. Ladybugs Do Not Go to Preschool overflows with imagination and humor, making it an excellent choice for young new students.

Ladybugs Do Not Go to Preschool overflows with imagination and humor, making it an excellent choice for young new students.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

That Always Happens Sometimes

Review by Alice Cary

Get ready to fall in love with Max, the irrepressible elementary school narrator of That Always Happens Sometimes. He’s full of energy and enthusiasm that constantly erupts like a volcano.

In Kiley Frank’s clever text, Max poses a series of questions that reveal his personality, such as “Have your electric pencil sharpener privileges ever been revoked because of an unfortunate incident with a crayon?”  On each spread, K-Fai Steele’s illustrations beautifully capture Max’s gusto and the path of debris—not to mention consequences—that follow. His parents and teachers try to rein him in with multiple checklists (items include “keep hands to myself”) and interventions (tennis balls on the legs of his chair to squelch his noisy movements).

Both Frank and Steele excel at conveying much with small, powerful flourishes. For instance, in the chaotic aftermath of Max’s parents trying to get him to school on time, Frank writes, “The car ride to school was very quiet,” while a full-page spread uses just a few strokes to show Max in the back seat clutching his backpack and his father gripping the steering wheel, fury flashing in his eyes and tight-lipped mouth.

Frank uses Max’s questions to reveal life at home and at school, and poses variations on his answers to move the story along in creative ways. Max repeatedly notes, “That always happens sometimes,” or “I always feel that way.”  One day, however, he says, “This has never happened before,” as he participates in an intriguing team-building exercise that produces surprising and affirming results for all.

Young and old readers alike will recognize themselves or someone they know in Max. That Always Happens Sometimes is a delightful book guaranteed to bring on both laughs and greater understanding of the many Maxs in the world.

That Always Happens Sometimes is a delightful book guaranteed to bring on both laughs and greater understanding of the many Maxs in the world.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

The First Week of School

Review by Alice Cary

Drew Beckmeyer’s The First Week of School is a game changer, an exceptionally creative back-to-school book that practically turns the genre on its head. It’s full of droll humor that will appeal to readers young and old. As the title suggests, it chronicles a first week inside an elementary school classroom, offering a bird’s-eye view of a variety of perspectives. In a clever, understated nod to the way people tend to pigeonhole both themselves and others, the students are given simple monikers such as the Artist, the Inventor and the Sports Kings, “who usually spend all Recess arguing about teams and never get to actually playing.” But at one point, readers learn that “The Artist is actually the fastest runner in the grade.” Beckmeyer even shares the perspective of Pat, the class’s pet bearded dragon; as well as the teacher (“the teacher gets her eighth cup of coffee before lunch”).

The plot thickens on Tuesday, when an alien called Nobody is beamed down from a spaceship, although everyone at school simply assumes this is the new student who was supposed to arrive next week. All sorts of unexpected, imaginative interactions occur: Nobody and Pat have a slumber party; the Inventor finds mysterious machine parts under his desk; Nobody takes an interest in the shy Artist’s drawings and even mounts an exhibition.

The First Week of School is a sophisticated picture book that packs an amazing punch, brimming with atmosphere and personality—and a wide range of activities, including a STEM lab, gym, show and tell, and recess. It overflows with wry comments, such as an escalating exchange about reading levels during storytime that ends with one student announcing, “I actually memorized this whole book. I read at a twentieth-grade level.”

Beckmeyer’s art style carries a childlike feel, adding authenticity to his narrative voice. Rendered in crayon, his many aerial perspectives take the reader from outer space and zoom in on the sun setting over the ocean and hilly terrain surrounding the school, then on the schoolyard and parking lot, eventually beaming readers—as well as the visiting alien—right into the classroom. In addition to being chock-full of pure entertainment, the diverse perspectives offered in The First Week of School remind readers of all ages that there are many ways to approach a classroom and the many unique, surprising personalities inside.

The First Week of School is a sophisticated picture book that packs an amazing punch, brimming with atmosphere and personality

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As the school buses begin to roll, these offerings will help young readers ease into back-to-school mode, and remind them that a world of stories is waiting to be discovered in each and every classroom.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Rosena Fung on juggling heartbreak and joy

Interview by Yi Jiang

Rosena Fung’s latest graphic novel, Age 16, explores the complicated relationships between three generations, jumping in time between the experiences of three 16-year-old girls: Roz in Toronto in 2000; her mother, Lydia, in Hong Kong in 1972; and Roz’s grandmother, Mei Laan, in Guangdong in 1954.

How did you come up with the narrative structure of Age 16? What inspired you to pick 16 as the specific age that connects your three main characters?

I knew I wanted to explore the lives of a girl, her mother and her grandmother, and how they intersect and are interwoven with each other. From the beginning I knew that I wanted multiple timelines to show how their lives and choices affect each other. Sixteen is such an intense time for many people, and in particular it was a time of major upheaval and change for my mom and my por por. It was a good way to parallel these lives together to show its many contrasts but also how the characters are so similar to each other. I owe a lot to my editor, who helped me sculpt this story into its final form.

Read our starred review of Age 16 here. 

In your author’s note, you describe how the book is based on your own family history. What was the experience like of writing characters based on real family members, with all their messy vulnerabilities and tender humanity?

Writing characters based on real stories and real lives can be so hard. I try to be accountable to the people I’m writing about, to make sure I’m being honest about my emotions but also to honor their own stories and where they’re coming from. Trying to inhabit their lives is part of the writing process, and also imagining how it will be received by them. It is often a precarious act of juggling these factors, while staying true to upholding the story I’m telling. Writing this book was definitely an emotional one as I confronted my own feelings and memories about my mom and grandmother!

This book brims with life—piles of glittery accessories in 2000s Toronto; fruit stalls crowded together in 1970s Hong Kong; fields full of laborers in 1950s Guangdong. How did you go about capturing a unique sense of place in each section? What kind of historical research did you have to do?

It was a combination of going through a LOT of photo albums, plumbing through the memories of both my mom and my own teenage self, and research about historical movements and context as well as many photo archives. I wanted to make sure each place was a character in its own right, because the spaces we live in inform our sense of self and growth. Throughout my life, I have visited both Hong Kong and Guangdong multiple times, and I hold on to those memories dearly. Sometimes a wayward scent or cacophonous noise in Toronto will bring me back to those places in an instant and suddenly I can see all the colors, the landscape, the food. I wanted this kind of vibrancy present in the book.

The contrast between each era is striking: China in the brutal aftermath of war is very different from Y2K Toronto. How do you balance grappling with the harmful behaviors of older generations, while considering the difficult—even unfathomable—circumstances from which those behaviors are born?

I think everyone has depths that even they can’t always see, including how past experiences and trauma influence their present-day choices and behaviors. It took a long time for me to understand this, how a person can hold so much but we only ever see the most surface layer. With this, I try to consider why someone would act in ways I don’t understand—not to justify or absolve harm, but to understand why, and from that place try to move forward together. I never got along with my por por, but through the process of researching and writing this book, I gained more clarity and admiration for her as a person.

When Roz, Lydia and Mei Laan get hurt, they often end up hurting others. How do you think one breaks this cycle of lashing out? What does forgiveness mean to you? 

This is a really hard question! I think this is something many struggle with, and I don’t have a clear answer. In the book, I try to show that each character gains a deeper understanding of each other and how the way they grew up, or the ways others have treated them, affect how they in turn treat others. Trying to know someone deeply is a start, and then isolating their harmful actions as a reflection of that trauma rather than internalizing it as deeply personal is a way to distance that harm. But that of course sounds easier said than done, and can be a lifelong process. Forgiveness to me means letting go. I don’t mean absolution or the absence of accountability for harm and its aftermath. But I mean getting to a place within yourself so that those words, behaviors or actions lose their barbs. I think forgiveness can’t happen if the other party can’t meet you halfway. But sometimes (often), life gives us no closure and we have to choose to move on—with or without the one who hurt you.

I try to be accountable to the people I’m writing about, to make sure I’m being honest about my emotions but also to honor their own stories and where they’re coming from.

In a world that is unkind to women’s bodies, food haunts these characters. But food also provides comfort and connection, especially in the context of Chinese diaspora culture. What thoughts went into your nuanced portrayal of food and how we treat our bodies?

First of all, I love food and any chance I can draw it or include it in stories, I 100% will. Food, consumption and bodies are such fraught battlegrounds where history, politics and misogyny play out. Women in particular are taught to deny ourselves food, pleasure and desire. Through this book, I wanted to make explicit the ways in which social expectations of how female bodies should exist are highly problematic and dangerous, and how we internalize these ideas as a given. But it was also important for me to highlight how women and girls are often forced to make certain choices to survive, depending on the context they grew up in. And some of these lessons (needing a husband to survive, needing a desirable body, fatphobia) get passed down to daughters. Many people have such painful and toxic relationships with food (girded by a capitalist industrial complex that benefits from our self-hatreds), and problematic conceptions of “good” or “bad” food, that I personally am trying to untangle and unlearn.

“The world can be made to fit you” is a gorgeous adage repeated throughout this graphic novel. What else would you tell your 16-year-old self, if given the chance?

“Keep all your Sailor Moon cards and lip glosses and magazines because one day you will be nostalgic for all of it and you will have to pay a lot of money to buy these things back again.”

Roz fantasizes about prom, but has to make a hard choice when she’s also invited to anti-prom. What would your ideal anti-prom night be like?

I am a homebody, so cozy in bed reading a book with a cozy cat and snacks next to me sounds like true bliss. BUT I would also love a party with a lot of glitter and sequins, all my friends, a drag and/or burlesque show, and a buffet. And Taylor Swift. The after party would be either at a Chinese restaurant or a diner. Or both, one after the other.

Can you speak more on the presence of cats (dear Millie!) throughout this book? 

I LOVE cats. SO MUCH. Millie is an amalgamation of my cat Foomy that my mom and I had when I was 16, and my current cat Coco (aka Bean). She is a mix of Foomy’s sass and habits with Bean’s sweet gray, beautifully rotund body. I wanted to use cats as a motif throughout each timeline to affirm repetition in the characters’ lives, but also as an excuse to draw them. My cat (and my partner) have been a source of support and an anchor while I wrote this book. They are my North Stars!

Rosena Fung weaves together the stories of three generations in Age 16.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & DrinkCookbooksBiography

Take a culinary tour of Asia with these 4 books

List by Yi Jiang
Chop Fry Watch Learn by Michelle T. King
STARRED REVIEW

May 2024

Take a culinary tour of Asia with these 4 books

With both sweeping and granular detail, three cookbooks and one memoir offer a scrumptious sampling of Asian cuisine.

Share this Article:
NonfictionFood & DrinkBiography

Chop Fry Watch Learn

Review by Yi Jiang

Michelle T. King’s relationship with Fu Pei-mei began in childhood, with the constant presence of Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book in her parents’ kitchen. She did not realize the extent of Fu’s impact or fame as the host of a beloved, long-running cooking show in Taiwan until years later. In Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food, this personal connection with Fu allows King, a “Chinese American by way of Taiwan” (how King depicts the complexity of her cultural identity), to illuminate the often misunderstood nuances within the relationship between food and “a people like China’s—riven by decades of war, dislocation, upheaval, and migration.” As King states, food is not simply a comforting taste of home, but “a fickle mistress: a poor approximation of a beloved dish may simply remind you of everything you have lost.”

King weaves history lessons, personal anecdotes and firsthand interviews into the thoroughly researched Chop Fry Watch Learn in order to paint the extent of Fu’s legacy. It’s a tremendous undertaking, which King tackles head-on as she cycles through a vast number of subjects, ranging from historical Chinese attitudes towards food and the women cooking, to the complicated relationship between Taiwan and China throughout the 20th century, to the muddiness of diaspora identity, to broader ideas surrounding domestic labor, feminism and globalization. King argues that food binds it all together, and readers are sure to find her diligent biography compelling.

Michelle T. King’s Chop Fry Watch Learn is an engrossing biography of famed cookbook author Fu Pei-mei.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooks

Koreaworld

Review by Yi Jiang

“You are about to read the story of a culinary revolution,” Koreaworld: A Cookbook proclaims as it launches into a frenetic exploration of Korean and Korean-inspired food spanning from Jeju Island to North Virginia. After focusing on more traditional offerings in its first half, this animated celebration jumps to new interpretations of Korean food, such as banana milk cake and Shin Ramyun with pita chips. Authors Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard provide their own musings on different preparation styles—using 7UP to flavor pickles, for example—while peppering in cultural history and modern context. The authors spotlight chefs throughout Korea and the U.S. and all their various influences, which span a bevy of cuisines, from Jewish to Chinese.

The sheer volume of restaurants and people profiled causes the book to meander in a fashion that sometimes feels scattered, but the abundance of eclectic detail will appeal strongly to diehard Korean food enthusiasts. Hong and Rodbard’s familiar rapport with many of their subjects lends a personal feeling to Koreaworld that is accentuated by Alex Lau’s stylish, energetic photography. Anyone interested in exploring the wild, exciting new frontiers of Korean food will find this book a fresh delight.

 

Anyone interested in exploring the wild, exciting new frontiers of Korean food will find Koreaworld a fresh delight.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & DrinkCookbooks

Zao Fan

Review by Yi Jiang

How complicated can breakfast possibly get? In Zao Fan: Breakfast of China, Michael Zee writes that the enormity of Chinese cuisine is “both terrific and terrifying”—and what is usually the simplest, smallest meal of the day is no exception. Yet Zee demonstrates a knack seldom seen in English-language cookbooks for succinctly yet fully conveying the vastness and complexity of Chinese cuisine throughout the delightful recipes featured in Zao Fan. From fried Kazakh breads to savory tofu puddings, Zee provides in-depth yet accessible insight into a thorough swath of breakfast foods.

Rarely does a writer’s passion for their subject matter leap as vividly as it does from these pages, which are chock-full of recollections of personal visits to restaurants and observations of traditional techniques. Zee accompanies the recipes with his own photos of the dishes in all their gorgeous mouthwatering glory—meat pies sizzling on a griddle, a bowl of Wuhan three-treasure rice, neat rows of Xinjiang-style baked lamb buns—which provide an authentic sense of immersion, as do his portraits of daily life in China. The neat, color-coded organization of the recipes into logical categories such as noodles and breads provides a remarkable sense of cohesion, making Zao Fan an absolute must for cooks across all skill levels.

Zao Fan collects traditional Chinese breakfast recipes in all their mouthwatering glory.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooks

Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice

Review by Yi Jiang

Often, cookbooks languish on our kitchen shelves, only to be referenced once in a blue moon—but the exuberant illustrations of Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice: A Thai Comic Book Cookbook will have you turning to its recipes for years to come. In 2020, Thai Belgian cartoonist Christina de Witte sought to further connect with her Thai heritage by taking language lessons, which is how she met Mallika Kauppinen, who started teaching Thai via Zoom after moving to Finland from Thailand. The result is this unique cookbook, in which cartoon versions of de Witte and Kauppinen lead you through the fundamentals of Thai cooking and an array of common recipes whose steps are whimsically drawn out. Tools, ingredients, stirring guidelines, timers, heat levels and more are diagrammed in a manner that provides both joy and exceptional clarity unmatched by most cookbooks.

Short comics offer context—the origin of guay tiaw, or “boat noodles,” for example—or pull you into a slice of Kauppinen’s childhood. Our guides are present throughout, drawn onto photos of their meals—floating in a pool of curry, grabbing fistfuls of rice and engaging in other such hijinks. From the liveliness of its writing to the brightness of its color palette, the vibrancy of every aspect of Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice captures Thai cuisine in such a way that you can almost taste its bold flavors just through reading.

With its vibrant illustrations, Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice captures Thai cuisine in such a way that you can almost taste its bold flavors.

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Recent Features

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With both sweeping and granular detail, three cookbooks and one memoir offer a scrumptious sampling of Asian cuisine.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & DrinkCookbooks

Zao Fan

Review by Yi Jiang

How complicated can breakfast possibly get? In Zao Fan: Breakfast of China, Michael Zee writes that the enormity of Chinese cuisine is “both terrific and terrifying”—and what is usually the simplest, smallest meal of the day is no exception. Yet Zee demonstrates a knack seldom seen in English-language cookbooks for succinctly yet fully conveying the vastness and complexity of Chinese cuisine throughout the delightful recipes featured in Zao Fan. From fried Kazakh breads to savory tofu puddings, Zee provides in-depth yet accessible insight into a thorough swath of breakfast foods.

Rarely does a writer’s passion for their subject matter leap as vividly as it does from these pages, which are chock-full of recollections of personal visits to restaurants and observations of traditional techniques. Zee accompanies the recipes with his own photos of the dishes in all their gorgeous mouthwatering glory—meat pies sizzling on a griddle, a bowl of Wuhan three-treasure rice, neat rows of Xinjiang-style baked lamb buns—which provide an authentic sense of immersion, as do his portraits of daily life in China. The neat, color-coded organization of the recipes into logical categories such as noodles and breads provides a remarkable sense of cohesion, making Zao Fan an absolute must for cooks across all skill levels.

Zao Fan collects traditional Chinese breakfast recipes in all their mouthwatering glory.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooks

Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice

Review by Yi Jiang

Often, cookbooks languish on our kitchen shelves, only to be referenced once in a blue moon—but the exuberant illustrations of Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice: A Thai Comic Book Cookbook will have you turning to its recipes for years to come. In 2020, Thai Belgian cartoonist Christina de Witte sought to further connect with her Thai heritage by taking language lessons, which is how she met Mallika Kauppinen, who started teaching Thai via Zoom after moving to Finland from Thailand. The result is this unique cookbook, in which cartoon versions of de Witte and Kauppinen lead you through the fundamentals of Thai cooking and an array of common recipes whose steps are whimsically drawn out. Tools, ingredients, stirring guidelines, timers, heat levels and more are diagrammed in a manner that provides both joy and exceptional clarity unmatched by most cookbooks.

Short comics offer context—the origin of guay tiaw, or “boat noodles,” for example—or pull you into a slice of Kauppinen’s childhood. Our guides are present throughout, drawn onto photos of their meals—floating in a pool of curry, grabbing fistfuls of rice and engaging in other such hijinks. From the liveliness of its writing to the brightness of its color palette, the vibrancy of every aspect of Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice captures Thai cuisine in such a way that you can almost taste its bold flavors just through reading.

With its vibrant illustrations, Noodles, Rice, and Everything Spice captures Thai cuisine in such a way that you can almost taste its bold flavors.
NonfictionFood & DrinkCookbooks

Koreaworld

Review by Yi Jiang

“You are about to read the story of a culinary revolution,” Koreaworld: A Cookbook proclaims as it launches into a frenetic exploration of Korean and Korean-inspired food spanning from Jeju Island to North Virginia. After focusing on more traditional offerings in its first half, this animated celebration jumps to new interpretations of Korean food, such as banana milk cake and Shin Ramyun with pita chips. Authors Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard provide their own musings on different preparation styles—using 7UP to flavor pickles, for example—while peppering in cultural history and modern context. The authors spotlight chefs throughout Korea and the U.S. and all their various influences, which span a bevy of cuisines, from Jewish to Chinese.

The sheer volume of restaurants and people profiled causes the book to meander in a fashion that sometimes feels scattered, but the abundance of eclectic detail will appeal strongly to diehard Korean food enthusiasts. Hong and Rodbard’s familiar rapport with many of their subjects lends a personal feeling to Koreaworld that is accentuated by Alex Lau’s stylish, energetic photography. Anyone interested in exploring the wild, exciting new frontiers of Korean food will find this book a fresh delight.

 

Anyone interested in exploring the wild, exciting new frontiers of Korean food will find Koreaworld a fresh delight.
NonfictionFood & DrinkBiography

Chop Fry Watch Learn

Review by Yi Jiang

Michelle T. King’s relationship with Fu Pei-mei began in childhood, with the constant presence of Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book in her parents’ kitchen. She did not realize the extent of Fu’s impact or fame as the host of a beloved, long-running cooking show in Taiwan until years later. In Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food, this personal connection with Fu allows King, a “Chinese American by way of Taiwan” (how King depicts the complexity of her cultural identity), to illuminate the often misunderstood nuances within the relationship between food and “a people like China’s—riven by decades of war, dislocation, upheaval, and migration.” As King states, food is not simply a comforting taste of home, but “a fickle mistress: a poor approximation of a beloved dish may simply remind you of everything you have lost.”

King weaves history lessons, personal anecdotes and firsthand interviews into the thoroughly researched Chop Fry Watch Learn in order to paint the extent of Fu’s legacy. It’s a tremendous undertaking, which King tackles head-on as she cycles through a vast number of subjects, ranging from historical Chinese attitudes towards food and the women cooking, to the complicated relationship between Taiwan and China throughout the 20th century, to the muddiness of diaspora identity, to broader ideas surrounding domestic labor, feminism and globalization. King argues that food binds it all together, and readers are sure to find her diligent biography compelling.

Michelle T. King’s Chop Fry Watch Learn is an engrossing biography of famed cookbook author Fu Pei-mei.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Until August

Review by Yi Jiang

On the same day each August, Ana Magdalena Bach travels by ferry to a Caribbean island, in order to lay a gladiolus bouquet on her mother’s grave. Afterwards, she spends the night in the same hotel overlooking a lagoon inhabited by blue herons. Against an evocative backdrop of jungles and beaches, this pilgrimage remains unvarying for eight years, until the opening of Gabriel García Márquez’s Until August, when Ana Magdalena makes the startling decision to have a one-night stand with a stranger. Upon each subsequent trip to the island, she seeks out a different man, embarking on a series of strange, often fraught affairs.  

García Márquez worked on Until August in his final years as dementia increasingly eroded his ability to write. Its publication comes a decade after his death, and García Márquez’s sons admit in the book’s preface that the Nobel laureate himself said, “This book doesn’t work. It must be destroyed.” But upon returning to the drafts years later, his sons believed the book to be better than García Márquez had judged, and decided that it was worthy of publication. 

Indeed, this novella, and its crisp translation by Anne McLean, avoids the disappointment of many other infamous posthumous releases from canonical authors. Part of its success can be credited to editor Cristóbal Pera’s care in piecing together García Márquez’s drafts and annotations. Although lacking the intoxicating complexity of García Márquez’s most famous works, Until August echoes the elegant mastery of time and change that propelled novels such as One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera into greatness. 

Each year brings lush depictions of change on the island—with its impoverished villages and shining tourist resorts—and in Ana Magdalena. Few novelists, even in their prime, are capable of matching the steady control and organic surprise García Márquez mixes into the evolution of Ana Magdalena’s marriage and family life back on the mainland. There is a quality of immediacy in every action in Until August, and readers will feel the thudding swings of emotion as a shout causes a silence that “remained vitrified for several days in the air of the house,” or Ana Magdalena watches a lover who sleeps looking “like an enormous orphan.” 

This brief offering delivers graceful insight into the fickle human heart, serving as an absorbing—if quiet—epilogue to García Márquez’s towering oeuvre.

This posthumous novella delivers graceful insight into the fickle human heart, serving as an absorbing—if quiet—epilogue to García Márquez’s towering oeuvre.
Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Faridah Abiké-Iyimidé takes us where secrets lie

Interview by Yi Jiang

British writer Faridah Abiké-Iyimidé knows architecture is a significant part of what makes boarding school novels so compelling. Readers long to read about unsettling towers, rumor-filled halls and hidden entrances leading to dangerous secrets—and they’ll find all these at Alfred Nobel Academy, the elite and foreboding boarding school that forms the setting of Abiké-Iyimidé’s sophomore young adult novel, Where Sleeping Girls Lie.

Abiké-Iyimidé has long held a fascination with old buildings. “Schools in the U.K. are very strange, because even if your school is literally one of the worst in the country, it might just happen to be also in a castle,” she says, on a Zoom call from her home in London. “My school is now shut down because of how bad it was. People were failing all the time, the teachers weren’t great.”

Despite this, her school’s stunning campus, which was built several centuries ago, provided inspiration for Where Sleeping Girls Lie. In the basement was the school shop, where students could buy uniforms and supplies. “I would always notice random doors there,” Abiké-Iyimidé recalls. One day, she found out that the doors led to tunnels from one of the World Wars, which the nuns (she attended a Catholic school, but is Muslim) would walk through to get to the town center. Abiké-Iyimidé wondered how anyone could be sure that there wasn’t someone hiding in the tunnels all the time.

Later, Abiké-Iyimidé attended the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, founded in 1495. There, she was able to walk through picturesque halls “built at a time I can’t even conceive of in my head” as well as observe superstitions and traditions of the kind that lend a distinct, fascinating atmosphere to the dark academia subgenre. “I love when a specific institution has its own code like, ‘On Fridays, we do this.’ When I got to university, I was told . . . if you walk on the grass, you will fail your final year. I remember seeing someone just jump on the grass because they didn’t believe it. I always wanted to check in with them to see what happened in the end.”

Tradition is key at Alfred Nobel Academy, a boarding school where students wear stiff uniforms that resemble “funeral attire” and get sorted into eight houses. “I’ve always grown up wanting to go to [boarding school]. Never could convince my mom to go and enroll me or anything,” Abiké-Iyimidé says. “With Where Sleeping Girls Lie, it’s almost like my fantasy of experiencing boarding school, while bad things are happening in the background. I want readers to feel like they want to attend this school. Obviously, not during this timeline. Because it’s a terrible timeline.”

Indeed, misfortune strikes almost as soon as protagonist Sade Hussein steps foot on Alfred Nobel’s campus, and not just because the school matron is snippy over the fact that the death of Sade’s father led her to show up four weeks late. Sade is befriended quickly by her new roommate and house sister, Elizabeth Wang, who is kind but seems distracted. Then Elizabeth goes missing, a mystery no one seems invested in solving—except Sade and Elizabeth’s best friend, pink-haired Baz. In her struggle to unearth the intricate circumstances behind Elizabeth’s disappearance, Sade finds herself surrounded by a captivating cast that includes three “popular for being pretty” girls nicknamed the “Unholy Trinity,” as well the boys of Hawking House, where infamous parties take place. Every one of these characters, whether friendly or hostile, carries their own secrets.

Part of the appeal of a school setting, according to Abiké-Iyimidé, is that “it’s a rare time in your life where your friends and community are always there. The idea of not having to go home—you can literally live with your friends—just sounds like the dream.”

Growing up, Abiké-Iyimidé was a fan of shows featuring boarding schools like “Zoey 101” and “House of Anubis,” which “make you feel like you can get away with a lot of things because adults feel less present in your life.” Such circumstances are ripe for “found families built from being forced to get to know people intimately and live with them.”

“The stories I’ve enjoyed growing up are the ones where I fall in love with the characters,”  Abiké-Iyimidé says. Even when writing thrillers, she takes care “to stand still sometimes and . . . look at these people as human beings—their interactions, the things they’re interested in and the things that make them who they are.”

Abiké-Iyimidé’s debut novel, Ace of Spades, was an international bestseller, and won the 2022 NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Literary Work in the Youth/Teens category—all of which is made even more remarkable by the fact that Abiké-Iyimidé wrote the young adult thriller when she was 19. “Now I’m 25. . . . I’ve got a fully developed prefrontal cortex and everything.” Although she’s proud of her debut, “I’m definitely not the same person. I always kind of joke that the person that wrote Ace of Spades is kind of dead.”

“With my second book, I really wanted to do a lot more character work and take the time to make sure that the story felt like a place that was lived in.”

“Every author struggles with the fear of messing up your sophomore novel,” Abiké-Iyimidé says. When writing Where Sleeping Girls Lie, “I wanted to play with mixed media and interesting formats.” Where Sleeping Girls Lie pieces together standard narration, flashbacks, interview transcripts, diary snippets and more. She created tension through “playing with structure” and “having the reader be . . . only allowed in through these small windows of time.”

“Making the reader not trust you or the narrator is very exciting,” she says. But Abiké-Iyimidé also had concerns beyond successfully crafting a thrilling mystery:  “With my second book, I really wanted to do a lot more character work and take the time to make sure that the story felt like a place that was lived in.”

Like Where Sleeping Girls Lie, Ace of Spades, which took place at the similarly prestigious Niveus Private Academy, explores institutional discrimination. “When I was writing Ace of Spades, I had a lot less hope,” she says. “Even though I see the world as a lot more bleak now, I think that hope is almost what I need in order to feel happy and to feel like I can continue talking about these things. So I think Where Sleeping Girls Lie is a lot more hopeful than Ace of Spades, just because my perspective has had to shift in order to survive.”

“Since I was young, I loved reading about political issues, particularly those that I would relate to as a Black Muslim woman. . . . I’ve always been interested in discussions around feminism.” When Abiké-Iyimidé started attending university, the #MeToo story broke in Hollywood. “There was a [similar] thing happening in the UK across different universities as well, where we were seeing a lot of kind of gentleman’s group chats being unearthed,” she says.

Abiké-Iyimidé was particularly interested in the passive participants: those who only silently participated or solely commented. Having attended an all-girls secondary school, university was the first time where Abiké-Iyimidé made a lot of male friends. She was taken aback by some of the things they would tell her. “They were like, ‘Oh, my friend did this awful thing, but you know, I look down on him for that.’ But you know, you’re still getting drinks with him every night and hanging out and essentially cosigning his behavior by being in community with him.”

In Where Sleeping Girls Lie, Abiké-Iyimidé wanted to highlight how such individuals are still indirectly linked to the wrongs their peers commit, despite seeming “nice” or not actively participating. “Even though there is the more monstrous kind of man represented in the story, I want the quieter, [but still] complicit people to also be spotlighted.”

“I really love writing unlikable Black girls, and I hope to get to write them forever.”

This principle of applying a fresh perspective carries over to her female characters as well. She finds the mean girl archetype to be “deceptively simple.” “There’s more going on under the surface with the mean girl,” Abiké-Iyimidé says. Specifically, “I really love writing Black girls as mean because I think oftentimes we are depicted as mean anyway. Or people portray us or receive us as being mean.”

“I really love writing unlikable Black girls, and I hope to get to write them forever,” she says. “Rather than trying to prove to an imaginary white reader that we’re not awful people, I lean into it even more. I’m like, ‘Yeah, we’re awful, actually. And you know, you should love us anyway.’” Having previously explored this in Ace of Spades with main character Chiamaka, who struggles with fitting in at her predominantly white institution, Abiké-Iyimidé continues in Where Sleeping Girls Lie to dissect “the idea of Black women having to strive to be the very best in order to get like, you know, even a small amount of recognition for their talents—and how that might develop into someone being very hard. And very not nice, or not appearing nice.” In Abiké-Iyimidé’s novels, Black “mean girls”—as well as characters of other races—often grapple with complex aspects of marginalization, sexuality and victimhood.

Another, more lighthearted common thread throughout Abiké-Iyimidé’s books is the reliable presence of a little animal character. Ace of Spades featured a cat named Bullshit who became a fan favorite, and Abiké-Iyimidé “thinks that I will always have those kinds of characters in my stories,” because she enjoys the “moments of levity” they provide.

But truthfully? “I am actually so afraid of animals in real life,” Abiké-Iyimidé says. It’s another way in which she’s “living out fantasies through my stories. . . .  I’m just so, so scared of them.”

Worry not, readers: As proof of Abiké-Iyimidé’s authorial powers, a very cute guinea pig named Muffin appears throughout Where Sleeping Girls Lie.

Photo of Faridah Abiké-Iyimidé by Joy Olugboyega.

Following the massive success of her debut novel, Ace of Spades, the author plunges readers into the halls of an ominous boarding school in her sophomore offering.
NonfictionArtArt

The Art of Fantasy

Review by Yi Jiang

The human mind possesses the ability to leave reality and travel to marvelous realms, and some of us seek to capture those impossible dreams upon a physical canvas. In The Art of Fantasy: A Visual Sourcebook of All That is Unreal, Florida-based writer and blogger S. Elizabeth explores the “sweeping though loosely defined art genre” of fantastic art and its “visual flights of fancy and imagination.” Through full-color reproductions of artwork across a variety of mediums—physical and digital—The Art of Fantasy investigates how artists capture their personal ideas of fantasy, which are just as often grounded in unfamiliar visions as recognizable lore. S. Elizabeth’s curation spans not only the well-known classics such as Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dali, but also fresh, contemporary artists such as Yuko Shimizu or Paul Lewin.

Readers will be entranced by colorful assortments of peculiar figures: Ed Binkley’s colored pencil “Corvid Priestess” gazes out regally, while an anthropomorphic rabbit wears traveling clothes in Carisa Swenson’s epoxy clay sculpture “Shining Apples.” S. Elizabeth’s exploration of fantasy landscapes in the book’s last section is particularly compelling and stylistically diverse. Foreboding alien invasions, apocalyptic castles and whimsical aircraft remind us just how unlimited our imaginations can be.

Through full-color reproductions of artwork across a variety of mediums—both physical and digital—The Art of Fantasy investigates how artists capture their personal ideas of fantasy, drawing on both unfamiliar visions and recognizable lore.

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