Review: Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Wow. WOW. This book. THIS BOOK!!!!

I am sorry I keep repeating myself, but this book has rendered me a bit speechless. It is one of the best historical novels I’ve ever read, and certainly the best queer YA historical novel I’ve ever read. The writing is so beautiful, and the book unfolds almost cinematically, in a series of short scene-like chapters that paint such a vivid picture of 1950s San Francisco that I felt like I was walking its streets alongside the characters. Lily Hu, the main character, has grown up in Chinatown. She befriends a classmate, Kathleen Miller, and the two of them visit the Telegraph Club, a lesbian bar. Lily uncovers her lesbian identity and learns about the beauty and danger of queer identity in the 1950s, and how it intersects with the challenges faced by Chinese immigrants to the US at the height of the Cold War, after the Communist revolution led by Mao Zedong.

I don’t know how Malinda Lo managed to create such a sense of dread hovering over the entire story. Maybe it’s just by virtue of this novel being set in the 1950s–not a great time for queer people in the US (or anywhere??)–but as Lily explores new parts of San Francisco, meets new people, has new experiences at the Telegraph Club and elsewhere, the reader cannot help but feel a sense of impending doom. When will the other shoe drop? And yet, that sense of doom did not detract at all from the beauty of Lily and Kathleen falling in love. I’m so impressed by the way Lo balanced these two sides of the story.

As a historian, I appreciated the goals of this novel so much–to recover stories (especially queer POC stories) that survive in the historical record often only in fragments. Historians reconstruct them as best we can, but we can only go so far. I could tell, even before reading the extensive author’s note at the end, that this book was thoroughly and rigorously researched. In short, it’s an exquisite novel about a portion of the past that is essential for us to remember. Run, don’t walk, to get a copy.

Review: Arvin Ahmadi, How it All Blew Up

How it All Blew Up, the 2020 novel by Arvin Ahmadi, is a short book, at around 260 pages of text. The plot moves very fast: after another student blackmails him and threatens to out him to his conservative Muslim Iranian parents, Amir (our main character) skips his graduation and flies to Rome on a whim. While there, he is able to live outside of his family, meet other gay men, and explore his sexuality. The novel is very well-constructed and is told mostly in flashback, interspersed with interview transcripts from Amir and his family in an airport interrogation room. Because of this structure, the reader already knows where the plot is going to end up–with a confrontation between Amir and his family on an airplane. You’re just not sure how it gets there, and that structure did keep me turning the pages.

As a person who found meeting other queer people pivotal to my coming out, that aspect of Amir’s journey of self-discovery really resonated with me. At times, I wasn’t sure to make of the depictions of Italians (too stereotypical? I haven’t spent enough time in Italy around Italians to know). Apparently there’s been some controversy surrounding the marketing of this book as “gay Muslim representation” even though Amir does not discuss his religion very much. Can you identify as Muslim without practicing the religion? I think you can. I was raised Catholic, but do not practice the religion; however, my Catholic upbringing very much shaped my growing up, so it’s an integral part of who I am. That aspect of the book did not bother me, although I understand why some readers would be disappointed. While some of the plot elements seemed contrived, I overall really enjoyed the themes of this book, and found Amir’s efforts to understand his queerness as defined against others quite relatable.