Chemistry
By Weike Wang
Publication Year: 2017
Type: Fiction
Genre: contemporary, romance
Read on 2019-06-13
View additional specs on this book in Muhan’s 2019 Reading Survey ➞
★★★★★
So beautifully true to first gen Chinese immigrant experience. Many coincidental similarities to my life, but above all so wonderfully cerebrally chemically reflexive on what it is to be the child of Chinese immigrants, how it feels to navigate that relationship in adulthood and face the impossibility of their meteoric achievements (it really does feel sometimes like you’d have to “colonize the moon” to outdo them).
Protagonist reminds me of some of my emotionally hardened scientifically inclined Chinese American female friends. Women in male-dominated fields, who take no bullshit but put up with a lot. She reminds me of me, too, I guess, minus the science.
Writing and plot points on inter-cultural/racial dating reminds me a lot of Xiaolu Guo in A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. Sort of a dispassionate first-person narrative that rly cuts out the fluff and unnecessary dialogue, gets straight to the point, but with room for poetic moments.
See me review this book in this video!
