#BookReview: Mambo in Chinatown by Jean Kwok

Charlie Wong has led a sheltered life in New York's Chinatown.  At 22, she still lives at home with her father and her younger sister, Lisa.  Thanks to her father, the best noodle maker in Chinatown, she has a job washing dishes at the restaurant where he works.  But Charlie is clumsy and washing dishes for a living certainly isn't her passion.  Her late mother was once a star ballerina in Beijing, but Charlie must have taken after her father because she has not an ounce of her mother's grace, or does she?

Thanks to an ad Lisa sees in the paper, Charlie lands a new gig as a receptionist at a dance studio.  Wearing her aunt's hand-me-down bras and baggy clothes, she's nowhere near as glamorous as the dancers at the studio, but she loves being around them.  Unfortunately, Charlie is no better as a receptionist than she was a dishwasher.  Luckily, someone at the studio sees her potential as a dancer.

I loved Charlie's time at the studio.  It was light and carefree in comparison to the issues she dealt with at home.  As the eldest daughter of a man that spends most of his time in Chinatown, it's Charlie's responsibility to deal with the world outside of Chinatown.  She's the person that oversees Lisa's homework, deals with her teachers and fights for Lisa's chance to attend a prestigious school.  She's also the one person that questions her father's undying loyalty to her Uncle Henry, a doctor specializing in Chinese medicine.  It's true that Uncle Henry and Aunt Monica have helped her family out, but the way her father accepts his advice without any question puts Lisa in danger and Charlie is the only one that realizes just how much danger.

Jean Kwok is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors.  I appreciate that Mambo in Chinatown keeps one foot in the dreamy world of  "will the girl get the guy and win while doing so" and the other foot in the realistic world of what life is like for the children of immigrants.  Charlie's world is a little off-balanced overall, but thanks to Kwok's writing, she manages to find the balance in both and her happy ending.

384pp
Published: June 2014
Disclaimer: Copy of book received from publisher, opinions are my own.

#BookReview: Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset

Though the theme of passing is one we don’t see very often in present-day lit, it was popular in the early to mid-20th century. We’ve seen how it played out in Charles Chestnutt’s The House Behind the Cedars (1900), Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) and William White’s Lost Boundaries (1948). In each story, a character (or characters) makes the conscious decision to transition from being black or biracial to white as if simply shedding one’s skin or race guarantees happiness. As characters in the aforementioned books found out, in Jessie Redmond Fauset’s Plum Bun, Angela Murray soon learns that while white privilege may provide her with some creature comforts, there is much sacrifice to be made in forgetting who you are and from where you came.

Passing in public places had always been a game with Angela and her mother. While her darker skinned father and sister were left to entertain themselves in other ways, Angela and her mother, Mattie, used their complexions to frequent places where they might otherwise have been shunned, such as tea parlors and other places where society women gathered. If she had known what damage she was doing to her daughter, it’s doubtful that Mattie would have engaged in passing. Whereas Mattie was proud of her race and loved her husband fiercely, upon their deaths, Angela made the decision to leave Philadelphia and her sister, Virginia, behind.

Living in New York, Angela changes her name and tries to fit in with the other art students in her classes. In time, she begins a romance with a wealthy white man, not because she loves him, but because of what his race and money can afford her. She believes that she is happy, but, in reality, it’s just a superficial happiness that never lasts for long.

Meanwhile, her sister Virginia has brought herself to Harlem and is enjoying life. Surrounded by good people and good times, her life is held up as a mirror to Angela. What good is passing if you can’t relax and let your hair down and enjoy yourself? That really becomes the moral of the story. For all the perks that being white brings her, Angela doesn’t have any real friends. There’s no one she can be honest with about whom she is, except her sister, but her desire to be seen as white prevents her from spending too much time with her.

Without getting into the whole tragic mulatto theme, you’re safe in assuming that Angela does indeed play such a role. In trying to marry a man that wouldn’t love her if he knew she was black to loving a man that won’t love her because he believes she is not, her life is tragic indeed. With the exception of Lost Boundaries, where a whole family was passing, none of the stories have happy endings. It has to be difficult to cut one’s self off from family, friends, culture, etc. Even though people have been able to do it, I can’t imagine that the trade-off is worth it.

222pp
Published: 1928