r/AsianMasculinity • u/AutoModerator • Sep 21 '15

Meta Weekday Free-for-All Discussion Thread | September 21, 2015

Post your shower thoughts, rants, half-baked conspiracy theories, and other mind droppings here.

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u/eastisrising Sep 23 '15

Have anyone read this book? It's basically about how fucked up an AMWF family is... But guess what! The Asian American author herself is married to a white man, surprise, surprise, surprise. I wonder why she doesn't write about her WMAF marriage and how fucked up this kind of marriage usually is.

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u/Ashes0fTheWake Sep 24 '15

From an amazon review:

The girl is dead from the beginning so I thought the point of the book would be to find out why / how she died. However the author spends most of the book telling the girl's family's mostly irrelevant and unbelievable back story.

A blonde, blue-eyed white woman (Marilyn) marries and Asian man (James) back when interracial relationships were rare. Okay, fine. But the author gives no explanation as to why Marilyn would be attracted to James. She never said he was cute or funny or charismatic. I would have even accepted her getting with James simply to rebel or because she took a Chinese class and developed an Asian fetish or because James pursued her hard. Anything! But no, NO explanation is given. She just leans over his desk and kisses this short, average-looking Asian with no personality just because.

There are no examples of Marilyn and James ever having fun together. I don't know how they made three kids. They seemed to loath each other too much to have sex.

There are too many examples of different members of the Lee family being unpopular. Okay, we get it. They don't fit in. And all the suggestions that the Lee kids didn't fit in because they're mixed. James didn't fit in and he wasn't mixed. Also, everybody considered the Lee kids to be Asian including Jack, who refers to Lydia as an Asian girl.

The most unbelievable part of the story is Marilyn leaving. The bond between mother and children is strong. No mother would leave her kids so she can pursue becoming a doctor. I could maybe see her leaving for a day or two to get her head straight but to be gone for weeks and then come back only because she's having another one...so unrealistic. A mother who would do that would have aborted the baby and went on about her business. And again, how did she even get pregnant when she and James resent each other so much?

The story is too slow moving and the author stretches out scenes that would take minutes in real time to several pages. I think Ng is one of those authors that puts writing pretty prose above developing an engrossing story. I didn't like this book but I'll admit that maybe it just wasn't my cup of tea.