recently read: interior chinatown
15: by charles yu, ocean vuong's poetry book and the best 5 books I read this year (along with the worst)
Knowing what book someone is reading and what parts they resonate with most can be so intimate. It reveals their interests, where their head is at, and what excerpts are so significant that they will mark up a page because they think it’s worth revisiting at a later time. I’m fascinated by what books others gravitate towards and I find that it helps me get to know them better and gives me a small glimpse into who they are at their core. No one asked for these book reviews, but maybe it’s my way of showing who I am and what I’m interested in – beyond the clothes, the products, and my career. Or at the very least, encourage some to look up from their phones and instead towards the pages of a good book.
Book no. 7 of 2023
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
A story written in a really clever and unique format that touches on topics of race, assimilation, Asian American history and representation, immigration and the American Dream. I didn’t love it but glad I read it and appreciated it nonetheless, though I wish it would have delved deeper throughout, rather than just in the second half. I appreciate the woven-in history lessons and the ways the author covers oppression olympics, the fetishization of Black men and Asian women and the ways Asians are often generalized and seen as a monolith, specifically Asian men, a demographic often overlooked and degraded in the media.
Underlined quotes:
“To be yellow in America. A special guest star, forever the guest.”
“You get exactly what you wanted. Didn’t you? Or did they give it to you. The thing you thought you wanted. The role of a lifetime is one you can never bring yourself to quit. Doing well is the trap. A different kind, but still a trap.”
“But at the same time, I’m guilty, too. Guilty of playing this role. Letting it define me. Internalizing the role so completely that I’ve lost track of where reality starts and the performance begins. And letting that define how I see other people.”
“They’d lost the plot somewhere along the way, their once great romance spun into a period piece, into an immigrant family story, and then into a story about two people trying to get by.”
“The next word, and whatever you say after that, will determine a great many things about it, will either open up the story, like a key in a lock in a door to a palace with however many rooms, too many to count, and hallways and stairways and false walls and secret passages, or the next word could be a wall itself, two walls, closing in, it could be limits on where the story could go.”
“The first times start turning into last times. There are a few years when you make almost all of your important memories. And then you spend the next few decades reliving them.”
Book no. 8 of 2023
Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
I’m going to be honest — I don’t think I’m sophisticated or intellectual enough to get poetry!!! But I’m trying!! Still, I found Ocean’s words to be really beautiful and soft and gentle, as he tackles tough subjects of romance, family, war, and desire.
Underlined quotes:
“Tell me it was for the hunger and nothing less. For the hunger is to give the body what it knows.”
“Don't we touch each other just to prove we're still here?”
“But only a mother can walk with the weight of a second beating heart.”
“If you must know anything, know that the hardest task is to live only once.”
“Maybe we pray on our knees because god only listens when we’re this close to the devil.”
“Even sweetness can scratch the throat, so stir the sugar well.”
“The gunfire is the only sound of people trying to live a little longer and failing.”
My favorite books I’ve read this year so far:
And my least favorite:
More recently read: