by Samantha White
Northwest Asia Weekly
tile queen
Hannah Alcalf
Salaam Reads/Simon & Schuster Books, 2022
A year after the death of her best friend Trina Low, Najwa Bakri entered her first scrabble bee in hopes of recovering and moving on with her life. Picking the same game where Trina died might not have been the best idea — but perhaps, Najwa wasn’t ready to drop her. Too bad the same cannot be said about Najwa’s teenage rivals. With the Scrabble Queen Trina gone, the crown is looming, and the line for the next monarch is long.
What started as a contest — albeit a highly competitive one — quickly turned into something more when posts started appearing on Trina’s previously inactive Instagram account. Mysterious information suggests that Trina’s death wasn’t easy — and that someone in the game might have something to do with it. As Najwa struggles to find out who was behind the posts, and possibly Trina’s death, secrets are revealed as people begin to reveal their true colors.
“The Queen” is a huge mystery, full of red herrings and twists you might not see. Alkaf does a good job of disappointing readers with a couple of characters that don’t look like they could be the culprits – that’s the mystery you want.
Set in a Malaysian teenage scrabble competition, the story is incredibly full of clever wordplay and clues in the form of scrabble. Alkaf’s attention to detail on word value and the strategy behind the game is impressive. I don’t think I would look at the game the same way.
Mystery aside, The Queen is a tale of grief. There is no one way to grieve the loss of a loved one, and Alkaf showed that to Najwa and Trina’s friends and family. Everyone close to Trina handles her death differently – just as everyone handles it differently in real life.
Four Aunts and a Wedding
Jesse Q Sutanto
Berkeley, 2022
Meddy Chan and her family are back, as chaotic as ever. In this sequel to “Dial A for Auntie”, the Chen family married again in the future. But this time, it’s not the job, it’s Meddy’s own. When she was getting ready to marry her college sweetheart Nathan, Meddy just wanted to let her mom and three aunties enjoy the experience, so they hired a Chinese-Indonesian family business like theirs to handle things.
Medie was hesitant at first, but when she met wedding photographer Staphanie — who reminded Medie of herself, even misspelled her name — she felt a lot better about her wedding vendor. But the night before the wedding, Meddy overhears Steffany discussing how to take out a target, and learns that her vendor is the real mafia, and they are using Meddy’s wedding as a cover to do business.
Enter Meddy’s mom and aunt who refuse to let anything get in the way of seeing her happily married. As in the book’s predecessor, joy ensues as five women fight the Mafia and try to stop the murders, while getting Maddy married. The illogical antics of the older women broke me — from the second aunt’s obsession with tai chi, to the unwitting drug lord tendencies of Meddy’s mother, to their rivalry and bickering. But behind the hilarity is a group of women willing to do anything for Meddy. Seeing Medie — who finds herself often shy of her relatives — slowly realizes it’s beautiful.
“Four Aunts” also deals with the Asian diaspora. While Meddy and Nathan’s family may have a Chinese background, that’s all they have in common. These differences are especially pronounced with Meddy’s mum and aunt – unsurprisingly – when they go to the UK they sweetly and playfully try to integrate into the local culture, where the wedding is held and where Nathan’s family lives, really shows that not all Asians are the same.
portrait of thief
Grace D. Lee
Small Indemnity Books, 2022
Across the Western world, the fact that museums display cultural art from around the world—loot from wars, conquests, and colonialism plundered from other nations—truly troubles Harvard senior Will Chen. So when a mysterious Chinese benefactor contacts the art history student, he offers an intriguing (and highly illegal) job offer – stealing back five centuries-old loot from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace. A priceless piece of Chinese sculpture – he couldn’t help but be intrigued by him, especially after paying $50 million for the job.
Will’s team has every heist archetype you can think of. His sister Erin is their liar and she can get her way out of anything. His best friend Daniel Liang, a preppy with steady hands, is their thief. Irene’s roommate Lily Wu is their free time racer. Will’s friend Alex Huang was their hacker, an MIT dropout as a Silicon Valley software engineer.
Inspired by true stories of Chinese art disappearing from Western museums, “Portrait” is ostensibly a heist novel. We saw the crew figure out ways to work together to get the job done (including watching the “Eleven Oceans” movie, a hilarious way to prepare to rob the museum). As college students, they’re not even flawless, but that makes it all the more relevant — showing readers that it’s possible for us to successfully steal priceless art too.
But aside from the heist, Lee does a great job of balancing this part of the story with themes of diaspora, Chinese American identity and all its complexities, and art colonization. The story is told from the perspective of five characters. They are all different, complex individuals. They were messy and packed with baggage — like many of us — and seeing their diverse backgrounds, their ties to China, their Chinese-American identities, and the reasons for taking the job underscores not the fact that Every Asian – in this case Chinese – is the same.
Samantha is available at info@nwasianweekly.com.
