Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Yet in all of her obnoxiousness, I find myself loving Jayne anyways, bullshit and all.īottom line: Don’t let the Peeps-yellow cover and cute graphics fool you-this book tackles a LOT more than you’d expect. I’m not fed saccharine lines about protagonists that I’m clearly meant to love. When together, the sisters never try to masquerade as anyone they’re not, and I think this pretty aptly sums up Yolk, too: I find this story, Choi’s writing, so refreshing because it never tries to be more than it is. Most of all, the dynamic between Jayne and her older sister June-so reminiscent of Fleabag and her sister Claire-in all of its messy, spiteful, bewildering glory, compelled me from their very first scene together. In its chaos, it affords its East Asian characters dimension no one can be predicted, let alone pigeonholed. It’s sarcastic and sad and infuriating and validating and laugh-until-you-have-stitches funny. It’s hard for me to encapsulate all that this book is. We internalize, to vary degrees, self-loathing.Īnd this manifests in many ways for image-obsessed Jayne, who grapples with an eating disorder, depression, a crushing need for validation (particularly by white men), and complex love for a sister whose mortality comes into sudden, startling relief. Moreover, the book touches on the ways in which relationships with family and culture intersect with our lives as women of colour in the West, as we absorb Eurocentric beauty norms, live with culture clash, and manage cognitive dissonance on behalf of not only ourselves but also (white) society at large. Her relationship with her sister, in particular, is fraught with immense love and pain. In Jayne’s case, this ambivalence, a devastating push and pull between loyalty/love/hurt/resentment, borders on dysfunction. What this book does best, I think, is capture the complex ambivalence that characterizes the love between an Asian kid and their immigrant family. I am reminded, once, again, of the power of representation: I appreciate Yolk for being one such affirming presence for me. It left me feeling not only seen, but also vindicated. There are certain things-inside jokes and quirks and insecurities-that you only understand if you grew up as the kid of Asian immigrants this book touched on a LOT of those things. Reading this book felt like commiserating with a friend. To tell you the truth: Jayne Baek makes my heart hurt. I feel like I’d probably never be friends with her if we existed in the same universe, but I also can’t bring myself to hate her. Even if I do find her a little despicable sometimes (the way she is with guys? white guys in particular? kill me NOW). Her life is a hedonistic whirlwind of hot mess after hot mess-it’s all very starving Gen Z artist trying to make it in the Instagram age in New York City.Īnd yet… Jayne is all the more real for it. Yolk’s protagonist is chaotic, flighty, obnoxious, superficial, and painfully aware of herself at all times. Our realities aren’t separated by many degrees, in truth. I think the thing that both terrifies and magnetizes me about this novel is how Jayne could be me and I could be Jayne-in some alternate, messier life. Spontaneous buddy read because i never read anything without lily if it can be helped Review & rating to come! (i ended up on 3.5)ĭoing my favorite thing (judging books by their covers) Me: i just finished yolk and it could be anywhere between 2.5 and 4.5 Lily: i just finished yolk and it could be anywhere between 2.5 and 4.5 So we'll be kind in our rating this time.īottom line: Who knows anything! But I think I liked this. And as established, I am capable of loving Mary HK Choi and equally inclined to appreciate suffering. While Emergency Contact is a hard yes from page 1 to page 347, or whatever, this was a yes/no/maybe so constantly and it never changed.īut I love sisters. This book made me go back and forth a lot. There are no two characters in a contemporary YA romance with a cover that sweet and lovely that suffer so much. That's probably why I love Mary HK Choi's Emergency Contact so much. So this book, which is both a) so sad, so filled with suffering, and b) a source of deep and profound confusion to me in terms of what I think about it (and I am someone who cannot feel confused without feeling dumb, and immediately feel angry whenever I feel dumb, in a vicious cycle that makes me seem like an eleven year old boy with a Fortnite addiction and a tendency toward tantrum-throwing).well, it checks the suffering requirement twice over. But it is my sweet spot, my comfort place, what I know. Nobody loves pain and anguish and sorrow except Disney movie villains and people who work at the airport. Something about me is that I love to suffer.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |