Author: The Arts Are Life

I am a writer and musician. Lover of music, movies, books, art, and nature.

Book and Movie Review: for colored girls (in Memory of Ntozake Shange)

May 3, 2019

Categories: uncategorized

A few months ago I watched Tyler Perry’s film adaptation of the choreopoem and play for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf by the late dancer and writer Ntozake Shange. I have been meaning to write a blog post after seeing the movie because it just possessed so much raw energy for me, and also Ntozake Shange passed away this past October (this is the New York Times obituary), so I wanted to dedicate this very belated post to her legacy. Disclaimer: the jumbled words on this page will never do justice to her life and her writing.

The film version is about a group of Black women living in New York who each have a different story, and they support each other through their shared struggles. The film, I must say, is a lot easier to appreciate if you read the choreopoem beforehand, and while I thought the film was incredibly moving, I read the poem after and definitely appreciate it more. The film is not an easy watch; the struggles these women endure are domestic violence, date rape, PTSD, depression, abortion and drug addiction, struggles that make them spiral deep into depression. Through it all, though, they support one another through and through, and it was enough to have me sniffling like a whiny little crybaby afterwards (I swear, I was a snotty-faced cry-baby toward the end of this film. I couldn’t stop crying after I went to bed.) This film is deeply engrained in my memory, not just because of the incredible cast, but because of their intense battles to survive in a world where their husbands, boyfriends and society treats them like they are worthless and cannot see their beauty. Historically, mental health has a stigma in American culture, particularly in communities of color, and Black women have often been portrayed as possessing this superhuman strength and not giving in to crying because people often see crying as a form of weakness. However, tears are human, and this film and play shows that the Black female experience doesn’t exist in a monolith, and to pigeonhole all Black women’s struggles would mean obscuring all the complex human emotions these Black women feel when they have to endure so much pain in their lives. And this film shows that yes, if you’ve gone through a lot of stuff, you’d better be okay with crying it out and not feeling like you have to be silent about your pain, because crying is what makes us human.

The movie was excellent, and it made me wish I had read the play before seeing it in order to better appreciate the legacy Shange left behind, especially because it gave background information about Shange’s inspiration for her choreopoem. During the 1970s, Shange collaborated with various other women in California who were musicians, publishers, writers and academics. Shange said that her exposure to female writers such as Zora Neale Hurston and taking courses in the Women’s Studies program at Sonoma State College provided her inspiration for her writings about women. She then moved back to San Francisco to study dance, and discovered that dance was an outlet for her to freely express herself as a Black woman.

Knowing a woman’s mind & spirit had been allowed me, with dance I discovered my body more intimately than I had imagined possible. With the acceptance of the ethnicity of my thighs & backside, came a clearer understanding of my voice as a woman & as a poet. The freedom to move in space, to demand of my own sweat a perfection that could continually be approached, though never known, waz poem to me, my body & mind ellipsing, probably for the first time in my life…I moved what waz my unconscious knowledge of being in a colored woman’s body to my known everydayness.

Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, p. xi

Shange joined a troop of Black female dancers called The Spirit of Dance and also worked in the public schools as an adjunct professor in the Ethnic Studies program, and after several performances with the troupe, she left the company to begin production of for colored girls. She began the play as a series of seven poems. The seven Black women who would each tell their stories in these poems did not have names because Shange wanted the viewer to focus on the narratives rather than the names of the characters (the colors of their dresses represent their characters.) Shange and her choreography partner Paula Moss staged the play in various spaces in the San Francisco area: the Women’s Studies’ departments, bars, cafes, and poetry centers. Many people came to see their play in its early performances, but when Moss and Shange moved to New York to take for colored girls to the stage there, only their friends and family came for the showings. One of these friends was Oz Scott, who helped Shange and Moss stage the production for a New York audience, and as time went on, Shange also recruited more poets and dancers who were interested in the production. In December of 1975, when they put for colored girls on at a bar called DeMonte’s, Shange had let Scott take over the directing of the play, and when she did this, she let her creation grow on its own, and said that “as opposed to viewing the pieces as poems, I came to understand these twenty-odd poems as a single statement, a choreopoem.” (Shange xiv) She also learned the importance of putting those poems on a stage instead of just writing it in a book (“those institutions I had shunned as a poet–producers, theaters, actresses, & sets now were essential to us,” Shange xiv.)

Honestly, reading this entire foreword to the play has not just helped me appreciate Shange’s for colored girls, but also the performing arts as a whole. Dance is such an important avenue for our bodies to express themselves, and works well with other mediums of performing art, such as music and theatre. For Black women, dance is especially powerful because it allows for that freedom of expression that American society didn’t always allow for Black women. Misty Copeland, for instance, made history as a Black ballerina in predominantly-white spaces, but she had to struggle hard to access these spaces since she grew up without racial or class privilege that her fellow ballerinas benefited from. Even when she struggled with body image issues, she learned to accept her curves and not try to fit mainstream stereotypes of ballerinas. The Alvin Ailey Dance Theater is another prominent example: a few years ago, I was doing a paper on dance for a philosophy course, and I used this performance that the theater put on for Ailey’s work “Revelations.” The performance is not only incredibly lovely, but it also conveys the importance of dance for Black artists like Shange. The dancers in “Revelations” own the entire space onstage, so they have the freedom to move however much they want. The video goes back to African-American music traditions, namely gospel and blues, using traditional songs such as “Wade in the Water.” Seriously, even though I have watched this video more than once, it still moves me to see these beautiful artists carve out this space for their own, where they can celebrate the beauty of being African-American.

If you haven’t seen for colored girls yet, I recommend it, but I also recommend you read the choreopoem first if you can score a copy of it. (you can find it on Amazon here) I was better able to contextualize the movie when I read the play afterwards. And here is the trailer for for colored girls. I still get chills every time I watch it. Rest in Peace, Ntozake Shange and may your powerful legacy live on in the lives of young women and young Black women everywhere.

for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem by Ntozake Shange. 64 pp.

For Colored Girls. 2010. Rated R for some disturbing violence including a rape, sexual content and language.

Movie Review: Inside Llewyn Davis

June 5, 2019

Categories: movies

I have been wrestling for quite some time now with whether to pursue music as a career or keep it as a hobby, and then after seeing The Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis just now, I have all these other questions coming up in my mind about having a career in music. I heard that this movie got a lot of awards and even some Oscars nominations, so I went ahead and gave it a go. The Coen Brothers’ other film, A Serious Man, was, well, okay, but I actually liked Inside Llewyn Davis.

Inside Llewyn Davis takes place in Greenwich Village, NYC, in the 1960s. The title character, Llewyn Davis, is trying to cope not only with the death of his music partner, Mike, but also not having money to pay his rent and struggling to make it as a folk musician. He gets frustrated many times when his friends and acquaintances ask him to perform for them because his last album, Inside Llewyn Davis, was a flop and he sees this as a complete failure. Even when he gets a gig playing a novelty song with Jim (Justin Timberlake) and Al (Adam Driver) he at first thinks the song is silly, but can’t afford to not take the gig because he doesn’t have any money.

Throughout the movie, I asked myself a lot of questions. Even as a classical musician, this movie really struck a cord with me because like Llewyn, I had a narrow idea of what success entailed. In one scene, when Llewyn visits his sister, Joy, she digs up his old records and he tells her he doesn’t want anything to do with them. When she suggests he give them away to people, he tells her that in the music business you’re not supposed to release music if it’s not perfectly packaged. In other words, according to Llewyn, practicing music shouldn’t sell and if you want to be a serious musician, you can’t do anything with your old records if they don’t fit your expectations. In another scene, the Gorsteins invite Llewyn over for dinner and Professor Gorstein has Llewyn perform for them and their family friends at dinner. When Mrs. Gorstein joins in with Llewyn, he blows up at her and says that he doesn’t play free gigs like this one because he is a serious musician who performs to make money, not to entertain other people. However, when Llewyn ends up meeting an actual music producer, the music producer isn’t enthused with Llewyn’s performance because he doesn’t connect with him on a deep level with the music. Llewyn waited a long time because he thought that getting signed to a record label would automatically make his life less miserable, but in fact, the guy he ended up obsessing over could care less about his performance.

The question of whether professional musicians should accept free gigs or only do paid ones is a complicated matter, because on the one hand, if it’s for a good cause, you should offer your services. However, playing free gigs isn’t in fact sustainable if you plan on making music your main source of income. But this idea that I must wait for the perfect paid gig, from my personal experience, has stifled me somewhat. Although I do want to get paid for my musical performances someday, I know that I have a day job so that I can perform for free if I wanted to because I would be making a salary that would allow me to get instrument repairs or instrument insurance. I have thought about playing for K-12 students at some point, or for animals since studies show animals enjoy classical music. It’s not because I want to make money; I do it because I love animals and younger kids. However, Llewyn can’t afford to play for free because he has to pay his rent.

I am getting a little sleepy, so I’m going to nod off to Dreamland, but just some final thoughts:

-the cat in the film is adorable.

-I really like how the film doesn’t give all these statistics about the music industry but instead, with its moments of silence and bleak but beautiful cinematography, time to reflect on the philosophy of music and what success truly means for artists.

-The same club, The Gaslight, that Llewyn performs at is in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and it’s where Midge, a comedian during the 1950s, performs her stand-up routine.

-John Goodman is an excellent actor.

-Oscar Isaac is not only good-looking (did you see The Last Jedi?) but also an incredible guitarist and singer.

-Carey Mulligan is a great actress. And a great singer as well.

-Adam Driver and Justin Timberlake are awesome. And also great singers.

-What does it take to communicate with one’s audience?

-How do musicians challenge their own arrogance? In one scene, Llewyn (dare I say it?) pulls a Kanye West on a female performer and heckles her during her performance, causing him to get kicked out of The Gaslight.

-the starving artist stereotype: does one have to “starve” to be considered a true artist?

Inside Llewyn Davis. 2013. 1 hr 50 min. Rated R for language including some sexual references.

Album Review: Stripped by Christina Aguilera

June 4, 2019

Categories: music

These past few days I listened to the entire Stripped album by Christina Aguilera. I listened to “Fighter,” “Soar,” “Beautiful,” “Can’t Hold Us Down,” and “Dirrty” before, but I hadn’t listened to her other songs on the album. So I decided to give it a go because I was nostalgic for some good old early 2000s music. I’m just going to touch on just a few of the songs on the album. I’ll probably talk more about it in the future.

First and foremost, this is the rawest album yet, next to Joss Stone’s Introducing Joss Stone (another excellent album.) As much criticism and mixed reviews as she got, Christina Aguilera, in my personal opinion, put her heart and soul into this album. I like her early album Christina Aguilera because while it’s categorized as pop, it’s also this mature lovely album about sexuality, womanhood and other things. “I Turn to You” is one of my favorite songs and makes me cry nearly every time.

In Stripped, Christina takes that maturity up to another level. She uses the piano and strings in the most symbiotic way to create this organic collection of personal lyrical narratives. In “Impossible,” her ballad with Alicia Keys on piano, she starts off with Alicia playing a simple calm piano solo and interludes with some syncopated singing. Then she dives into a chilling 3/4 blues, jazz waltz with drum tats and brass, interluding with her deep soulful voice, conveying the pain of trying to read the mind of a guy who won’t tell her how he really feels, a real feeling that happens a lot of times of everyday relationships. In “Cruz,” she opens with a chorus of resounding voices, then goes right into a beautiful rock ballad. The chords have this lovely emotional complexity that shows the versatility of her voice. “Cruz” reminded me of “The First Cut is the Deepest” by Sheryl Crow because both songs integrate country and rock music and add a powerful dash of soul. I love how in this song she goes back and forth from G major to F major to G major to F major back to G major. The song evokes a bittersweet longing to be free, a longing that Christina feels to leave a painful situation, and we hear the freedom in her unbridled voice as she belts out the end of the song in the key of G major.

Another thing that makes this album truly one of my favorites (and as a staunch music lover, that is hard for me to say because I have a lot of “favorites”) is her free use of the key E minor. The key of E minor is one of my favorite keys because it evokes this beautiful darkness that is just hard to describe in words. In “Keep on Singin’ My Song” Aguilera uses E minor to its utmost advantage, opening up with a simple introduction of humming and soft singing, then plunging into this poignant raw piece about not looking back at the past and moving forward with what you want to do with your life, even if it’s painful to do so or if other people don’t like it.

Around the 4:13 mark of the song, she slows down the tempo, giving the listener about thirteen seconds to contemplate the rough-shod ride she just took us on through the song, and then picks it back up around 4:26 with just her and the chorus, and then moves back into a rhythmic 4/4 beat with the percussion keeping the tempo. Around 5:22, the drums and the flutist bring a beautiful close to the song.

In “Walk Away” the song opens with a lone piano waltz (it reminded me of “Dangerous Woman” in a way because that song, too, is in the form of a waltz. Also “Fallin'” by Alicia Keys has the same time signature and key as “Walk Away,” so I thought about that while listening to the song), and Christina brings us into a chilling mezzo-forte first verse, and then crescendos into a gut-wrenching chorus, backed by strings, piano and percussion. Hearing this chorus each time gave me chills up and down my spine because she doesn’t try to beat around the bush or pull any punches about illustrating the pain she suffered for the longest time. Honestly, while listening to this song at work, all I could envision was myself dancing alone in an empty studio to this song, contorting my body dressed in a black long-sleeved leotard, leaping around, sliding across the dance floor, my body moving in time to Christina’s rhymes. The middle of the song she crescendos and falls into the softness of the third verse, and then crescendos back into the chorus. I would love to play this song on my cello just because even though I can’t directly relate to Aguilera’s personal struggles, it doesn’t take much for her to such me in with her mature, powerful lyrics. I mean, seriously, if the lyrics don’t strike some kind of emotion in you, then what will? Gosh, listening to this song was one thing but actually reading the lyrics just heightened the overall suspense of the album. It reminds me of “Love on the Brain” by Rihanna because both songs present gritty portrayals of emotional abuse in relationships and how it psychologically messes up the survivor of this abuse because they know deep down they need to leave the relationship, but the perpetrator’s power is so life-threatening and the trauma so enduring that it is easier said than done to “just leave” an abusive relationship.

She also uses the E minor key in one of her most famous songs “Fighter.” I first heard this song when I was around eight years old. A friend had gotten me a mix of 2003 hits and “Fighter” was one of those hits. Every time I listen to it, I want to hit a punching bag or go back to tae kwon do to finally get my black belt. Somehow when I hear songs in the key of E minor I see a portentous black cloud hovering over an empty landscape, so that’s why E minor takes on such a dark tone for me as the listener. It reminded me of “U + Ur Hand” by P!nk because both songs are in the key of E minor and they also punch us in the ears with their heavy rock beats and thematic material.

As a classical musician, hearing Stripped was like listening to a piece by a Romantic-era composer. The Romantic era of music, which emerged from the Classical music period around 1830, allowing for a great deal of freedom in composing music, and composers such as Peter Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann and Gustav Mahler embraced passion and used music as a means of expressing deep emotions, such as depression and infatuation. Composers also branched out from the traditional orchestra format and experimented with woodwinds and percussion. Beethoven helped usher in this new approach to music by referencing other aspects of life, such as nature, in his works, and making sonatas and symphonies less strict-sounding. His “Ode to Joy” is a famous example, with its grand sweeping gestures and booming majestic chorus. A lot of Romantic-era music I have noticed uses the key of E minor because it is such a brooding key. While listening to Stripped, I thought about all the Romantic-era compositions that use E minor, and the list is inexhaustible. Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in E minor smacks you in the face with E minor; the entire symphony is passionate and the last movement is a turbulent beautiful tangled-up web of pain, grief and yearning. Schumann’s Cello Concerto is another example; it is so hard to play in part because it is so emotionally complex. Schumann suffered with mental illness and so the player must feel what Schumann was trying to convey through the movements. While practicing it, I had to read up on the piece to understand what kind of emotional expression I needed to bring to the piece.

I could talk about this album for ages. Heck, I would love to do a deeper musical analysis. But there’s only so much I can say about how much this album touched me on a personal level. This blog can’t do justice to how incredible and powerful Stripped is for me. Aguilera’s songs have lifted me, inspired me to keep going even when I don’t feel like I can. Here’s one of the songs:

New TV Show!

January 10, 2020

Categories: TV shows

So I was on a flight, and the flight offered access to free TV shows and movies, so I wanted to watch a show that I hadn’t seen before. I wanted a comedy because I saw the film Judy while on my trip and it was really sad and made me cry, so I wanted to watch something that would make me laugh. For the first flight I watched A Black Lady Sketch Show, which, if you haven’t seen it, is so funny I had to literally clamp my hand around my mouth to suppress all the giggles that threatened to rush forth and disturb my fellow passengers on the plane. Then since there were only three free episodes I could watch (although I’m grateful I even got it for free at all) I moved on to another show in the comedy section. Parks and Recreation was an option but it only showed Season 2 and I assumed that I’d get lost if I didn’t watch Season 1. Then I saw Fleabag, and I remembered it won quite a few awards recently, and I checked Rotten Tomatoes and it got 100 percent, so I took a chance. And I’ve never looked back since. Once you go Fleabag, you will never go back.

Why, you ask?

Fleabag is a comedy-drama about a young woman living in England (we don’t know her real name, we just know she is named Fleabag), and she really doesn’t have her life together. She runs a café but is in a lot of debt, and she goes through a series of boyfriends who end up thinking she’s too sarcastic and weird for them. In addition to being dumped by numerous bad boyfriends, her overachieving rich sister, Claire, and her are not on good terms. Things get even weirder when she goes by her dad’s place (her mom died) and meets her godmother, who is dating her dad. When I first saw the show, it reminded me of the film Frances Ha. If you haven’t seen Frances Ha, it stars Greta Gerwig as a young late-20-something-old woman named Frances who, like Fleabag, is trying to figure her life out. Unlike her friend Sophie, Frances cannot afford to move to Tribeca, a more expensive neighborhood of New York, and doesn’t have financial assistance from anyone, so she moves to a less expensive neighborhood with roommates. I thought about this movie because both Frances Ha and Fleabag are so relatable for every woman (or person of any gender really) in their late 20s who sees everyone has their life together and, well, they feel their lives just don’t measure up.

I binge-watched Season 1 (just finished it.) One thing that I find unique about Fleabag is that Fleabag always speaks to the audience, aka breaking the fourth wall. Not since the Disney Channel Original Movie Quints have I seen the protagonist break the fourth wall. It just makes you feel like you’re actually meeting Fleabag in real life. And honestly, I wouldn’t mind meeting Fleabag, because she says what is on her mind and I find her awkwardness totally relatable, even though I can’t relate to her situation totally. She kind of reminds me of a combination of not just Frances Halladay in Frances Ha but also Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm because Larry is always brutally honest with people even when it often gets him in trouble with others. Fleabag also reminds me a lot of the web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, which stars Issa Rae as J, who is, as the title says, an awkward Black woman. There is one guy who asks Fleabag out on the subway who is this really annoying character who ends up dumping her, and he reminded me a lot of A, a character who is constantly trying to hook up with J even though she doesn’t like him. J and A hook up after J gets drunk on too much punch at an office holiday party, and after A is constantly assuming that J wants to be his girlfriend because they slept together.

Even though Fleabag is a comedy, it also has its sad moments. Early in the show, Fleabag reveals that her friend, Boo, killed herself after she found out Fleabag slept with her boyfriend. The two of them were the best of friends and they started a gerbil-themed café together. But now that Boo is gone, Fleabag becomes depressed and flashes back frequently to memories of her and Boo when Boo was still living (I got really sad each time she flashed back to Boo when she was happy and then Boo when she was about to commit suicide.) Fleabag’s godmother has the nerve to tell her one time at dinner that she should give up running the café since she has no money left to run it, but then an investor who at first declined Fleabag a loan for the café (after she flashed her bra at him during their meeting), sees her in tears and she tells him about Boo’s suicide and how she feels like she is always ruining things for people. He then has a change of heart and goes over the process of getting her a loan again. This ending gave me hope because I was so stressed out whenever Fleabag and her godmother interacted since the godmother was treating Fleabag like she was a nobody and her father felt embarrassed by Fleabag’s behavior toward her godmother.

I am getting tired now, so unfortunately I cannot write anymore. However, I am pumped to watch Season 2 and tell you more about it!

Book Review: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

June 7, 2019

Categories: books

This morning I just finished this incredible memoir called The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. I saw the trailer for the Netflix adaptation and wanted to see the movie, but I’m one of those people who has to read the book first then see the movie (Precious and For Colored Girls are the few exceptions where I saw the film adaptation, then read the book afterwards.) So I went to the library and lo and behold there’s a display for World Water Day smack dab in the middle of the library’s back section. Not only did I find the documentary Tapped, about the bottled water crisis, but I found The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. I was interested in learning what I as a consumer could do to help the environment, and even just educating myself on these environmental issues such as clean energy and water consumption was a starting point.

It took me a while to complete this book not because of its length (it’s around 200 pages) but because I normally read fiction, so I was reading all these novels and kept renewing The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind because I was determined to finish every book that I checked out from the library, whether it was fiction or nonfiction. I devoured The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. It is an incredible read. William Kamkwamba takes us to his life in Malawi, a country that struggled with making education, clean water and clean energy accessible to its residents and was struck with famine in 2002, causing millions of deaths. William’s family struggled to pay for his school fees and because of this, he could not attend school, so he went to the library every day and read books. William came across some books on wind energy, and sought about making his own wind turbine to bring electricity and water to his village. People in his village laughed at him, and he often faced bullying from his classmates for going out every day and finding discarded materials to use for his wind turbine, but he persisted because it was the only thing that gave him hope. William takes us through the process of how he built his turbine out of recycled materials, and it is fascinating how he did it. What inspired me is that even though the parts of the turbine kept falling off (and even ripped off parts of his skin when he tried to reattach them to their proper places) he never gave up on himself. His first turbine powered people’s cell phones and radios, and brought clean energy to his village, and he was able to speak at a TED conference on clean energy and his journey to bring wind power to Malawi. Not only that, but he was able to go back to school later on in his life after many years of not being able to go to school.

This book inspired me, too, because it taught me that even things we throw away or think have no value can be used for many different things. Gay Hawkins, in her book The Ethics of Waste, says that value doesn’t exist in and of itself, but only when human beings give a thing a sense of worth and put it to use. William could have treated the old bicycle parts and PVC pipes like trash to never be touched or used, but he couldn’t afford new shiny parts, so he worked with what he had. Even though the parts had slime and weren’t the newest coolest parts, he took lemons and made serious lemonade by using what he knew from reading books on renewable energy to create something useful from scratch. I read a New York Times Magazine issue on climate change and how we will need to adapt to rising temperatures, worsening natural disasters, and other consequences of burning up the planet. It talked about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green Deal plan, and how people were divided about it. However, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind reminded me that renewable energy is our last hope if we seriously want to, if not completely wipe out, at least mitigate the effects of climate change on our planet and our own individual lives.

Through sharing his experience, William also reminded me of the importance of education in one’s life. Even when he wasn’t in school, he read a lot of books, and this helped him unlock his potential more than anything else. Speaking for myself, I love reading to this day, and at a point in my life where I cannot afford graduate school, I am catching up on all the pleasure reading I didn’t make time for during my years in college (except for winter and summer breaks, where I inhaled books as if they were air.) Growing up, I always carried a book around with me, even at the times when it wasn’t always called for, such as parties. When I read, I uncover new worlds that I didn’t think existed. It’s important to read and watch the news to stay aware of things, but it can be draining sometimes, so I sometimes have to switch off and read a nice book instead (I know if someone has to read the news for their job, that would be hard, but it might be doable, I dunno.) Reading is not only one of my few forms of self-care I can’t get enough of, it’s also my education (besides, well, life, of course.) I feel a lot less lonely, too. Friends in real life are a must, but friends come and go, so when that happens I try to stave off feelings of loneliness by reading. Reading reminds me that I’m not the only one with problems and that everyone in life struggles with something.

Overall, I highly recommend you read this book! It is incredible and I cannot wait to see the film adaptation! 🙂

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope. William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. 273 pp. 2009.

Movie Review: Late Night

June 17, 2019

Categories: movies

This is one of the few times I have seen a movie without reading what it’s about or watching the trailer for it. But I’m glad I saw it at any rate. Late Night is a brilliant film about a late-night show host named Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson plays her so well) who struggles to keep viewers interested in her show. Her writers’ team, all white and male, doesn’t have any original ideas and she has fired quite a few people from her staff because they do not live up to her high expectations, so they feel intimidated and threatened just because she’s a powerful woman in charge. Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling) is a recent transplant from Pennsylvania who used to work at a chemical plant but applied to be a writer for Katherine’s show and got the job even though she lacks the qualifications for it. When she first walks into the writer’s room, the men assume she is Katherine’s assistant and ask her to fetch them food and do other administrative things. But Katherine has her be a part of the brainstorming process because people have criticized her for not having a woman on her writer’s team even though she is a woman. All of the men on the team, once again, feel threatened that a woman has joined their boys club.

This film reminded me somewhat of The Devil Wears Prada because like Katherine, Miranda Priestly runs the show and does not suffer fools on her Runway magazine team, so it’s no wonder that everyone keeps telling Andy Sachs, one of the applicants for the job as Miranda’s personal assistant, that so many other young women want that position just as much as she does. Andy, however, doesn’t take Miranda seriously, and in one famous scene of the film Miranda is examining two belts and Andy laughs out loud from the corner, telling Miranda that the belts look exactly the same, so there was no point in fussing over them. Miranda calls her out for thinking that she knows everything about fashion when she has no idea how to properly dress for the job. Like Andy, Molly tries to impose her ideas on Katherine in just her first few days on the job, giving her ways to improve the show and outwardly criticizing it in the writer’s meeting to Katherine. Katherine then tells Molly that she’s not going to take advice from her since she is inexperienced with being a writer.

However, unlike Katherine, Miranda continues to disrespect people throughout the film and still maintains her distance from Andy even when Andy starts dressing nicely and losing weight to impress Miranda. Toward the end of the film, Emily doesn’t get to go to Paris with Miranda because she gets sick and falls short in her work, even though she’s been Miranda’s assistant longer than Andy has, and so Andy goes to Paris and meet these famous fashion designers. But when she starts letting Miranda’s demands take over her life, she loses touch with herself and even storms off on her friends when they make fun of Miranda. Toward the end of the film, Miranda says that she sees herself in Andy because like Miranda stepped over Nigel (she promised him a job at a new fashion magazine, but devised a plan so that someone else got it and not him) Andy stepped over Emily by becoming better than her at her job. Andy realizes that she’s not cut out for this job anymore because while she got to work for this really prestigious person, she still never got treated with genuine respect and was just acting like this cool person so that she could keep her job. When Andy leaves, Miranda still treats her with disdain, no reciprocating Andy’s hello when Andy waves at her.

In Late Night, Katherine fires Molly after she tells her and the other writers that she has to go to a gig and can’t stay for the meeting, but then realizes that she’s better off going to Molly’s show instead of sitting in the writer’s room while her team pitches unoriginal ideas to her. When she goes, she hears Molly talking about how she was fired and how Katherine hates her, and volunteers to go up after Molly. When she starts off her sketch by calling Twitter stupid, her audience doesn’t laugh, but when she changes the topic and jokes about her age and being a woman, she gets laughs and her show soon makes headway. One of the guests on her show got famous for her videos of her pretending to sniff her dog’s butt and Katherine made fun of her for it, and the girl stormed off in the middle of the show. After Katherine starts using Molly’s material and letting go of this need to be distant from people, she starts respecting her guests, and even gets a hug from a girl who appears on her show. This shows that while it’s important to work hard and take your job seriously, it’s important to learn from other people even when you are the boss and not always take yourself so seriously. Katherine at first wouldn’t tell any of Molly’s jokes, but when she does the audience likes her more.

Another reason I love this film so much is that it addresses the issue of diversity in the business of late-night show writing (and comedy in general) in a way that recognizes that the conversation around diversity is more than just dropping a person of color into a room and saying “yay, we’ve fulfilled a quota.” I was really excited when I read that Mindy Kaling wrote and produced the film, and Nisha Ganatra directed it. It’s one of the few comedy movies I have seen produced, written and directed by women of color. Even though progress has been made, diversity and other social justice issues can’t just be settled by one movie. It’s about having these frequent conversations about diversity in the entertainment industry, because when we stop talking about, we get the same majority-group people produce and write these films, leaving young women of color with no role models who look like them. Even though Katherine is a woman, she is white and as time goes on she understands how she benefits from being white, even producing a sketch where she hails a cab for two Black men and jokes about being a “white savior.” Molly is the only woman of color on the writer’s team and the staff members treat her like a token when they first meet her. However, through her hard work and willingness to learn new things, Molly proves to the staff and Katherine that she’s not a token and she got the job because she actually was excited about it. The film addresses sexism in the workplace, but also the intersectionality between race and gender because Katherine and Molly’s experiences as women are just as different as they are similar.

The movie also showed the amount of work that goes into being a writer for late night shows. Molly stays up well into the night at the office during her first few weeks there because she is determined to keep her job at the show, even when Katherine doesn’t recognize her hard work. When she first starts, the writers tell her that in order to stay on the team, she has to not assume she knows everything and that she needs to write a ton. She comes to the first couple of meetings with an agenda detailing what improvements Katherine should make for the show, and Katherine flips through it, but then tosses it on her desk in boredom and tells Molly that she doesn’t care about her silly agenda and to do her job and write, even if the jokes don’t all make it to the show. This taught me that getting a job is hard, but the hardest part is taking criticism. I always go back to that quote by Ira Glass about doing a lot of work as a creative. He said that even though creatives have good taste, when we first start writing or creating this work it’s just not that good and not everyone’s going to like it. The solution to not beating yourself up and quitting your career as a creative? Keep creating. Just show up and do the work. None of the writers on Katherine’s show (or any late-night show for that matter) had the time to wait for inspiration; they just had to write the jokes, give them to Katherine, let them get dumped and then write some more. And of course, when you get overwhelmed, it’s important to take breaks (then again, everyone’s situation is different, and not everyone gets to take that break time from their writing.)

I thought it was kind of cool that Seth Meyers appears in the film. When Katherine fires Molly, Molly goes to Seth Meyers looking for a job as a late night host writer for his show. He hires her after she tells him how she worked for Katherine, but Katherine hears about this and dissuades her from working for Seth because Molly taught Katherine to not give up and she really needs her for the show. I thought this was interesting because unlike Katherine, Seth Meyers actually has women of color on his writing staff, and they even get their own segments on his show. Amber Ruffin, who is Black, and Jenny Hagel, who is Latina, star in a segment of Seth’s show called Jokes Seth Can’t Tell, where Amber and Jenny each take turns telling jokes about race and gender that Seth, being a straight white male, does not feel comfortable telling. The sketch always ends with Amber and Jenny convincing Seth he should tell a joke and then after finally giving in, he tells an offensive joke and Amber and Jenny pretend to be offended. Amber and Jenny also have their own separate segments when they address social issues going on in the news.

But overall, I thought this movie was amazing and I would love to see it again. #WomenofColorRockComedy. 🙂

Late Night. 2019. Rated R for language throughout and some sexual references.

Movie Review: Silent Voice; The Movie (content warning: mental health, bullying, ableism, suicide)

July 10, 2019

Categories: movies

This past week I watched the film A Silent Voice, a Japanese language film that came out in 2016. And I must say, I don’t remember crying at a movie like this since Babel (although I am by nature a cryer, so I’ve cried at a lot of films.) The film opens with a young man named Shoya who is about to commit suicide, but then it flashes back to how he became depressed. Shoya is popular in school, but then a new student named Shoko Nishiyima arrives to the school and she tells her classmates she is hearing impaired and communicates through writing in a notebook. However, because kids are mean, Shoya and some of the other kids bully Shoko, stealing her notebook and ripping her hearing aids out of her ears and throwing them out the window. Shoko later transfers to another school and the teacher calls out Shoya for being behind the bullying. When Shoya tries to divert the blame from himself by calling out the other students who bullied Shoko, his classmates all turn on him and Shoya finds himself with no friends.

Fast forward to high school, and Shoya is depressed and suicidal. He blocks out people’s faces, not looking people in the eye because he thinks no one wants to be his friend anymore, except for another outcast whose bicycle is almost stolen had it not been for Shoya unintentionally sticking up for him. Shoya runs into Shoko and tries to apologize to her, but she finds it hard to be around him or anyone after dealing with so much bullying early on. Shoya meets Shoko’s sister and mother, and of course because he bullied Shoko, they are less than happy to see him show up at their house to hang out with Shoko. However, as the two loners realize they are outcasts to their classmates, Shoya and Shoko become closer, and Shoya, like a few of his other classmates, even has learned sign language to communicate with Shoko. However, the film gets darker when one of Shoya’s classmates, Naoka, continues to bully Shoko, telling her on a Ferris wheel ride that she hates her and even hits Shoko. Shoko always apologizes even though her tormentors should be the ones apologizing, and at first I wondered why this young woman was apologizing when all she did was be her normal self (and even going out of her way to do nice things for her classmates, such as erasing hateful messages that Shoya’s classmates wrote on his desk.) But then later in the film I found out that Shoko thinks she is the cause of everyone’s problems, that if she weren’t hearing impaired or even alive, then everyone would be better off without her (in reality, I think this is some B.S. because her classmates’ insecurities were the real reason they bullied her in the first place. What a bunch of cowards.)

I didn’t know how I was going to like this film. A friend of mine insisted we watch it, and so I did, and by the end I had to watch yet another episode of Brooklyn 99 because my eyes were puffy from a little over two hours of crying. This film hits a lot of topics: bullying, suicide, depression, loneliness and what it means to be a good friend. It takes place in the modern era where we have cell phones and social media, and examines how technology can connect us and yet make us feel lonely. When Shoya truly connects to Shoko and apologizes for bullying her, when he actually looks into her face and sees her crying, he realizes that Shoko’s compassion is what truly helps him keep living. This part is what brought me to tears (also seeing Shoya’s friend cry and hug him when he comes back to school after being injured from the fall.) I also cried because Shoya, after meeting with Shoko and sharing this beautiful heart-to-heart dialogue with her, breaks down into tears when the X’s on his classmates’ faces (because his depression is so deep, he can’t look them in the eye) disappear and he finally experiences life and sees its beauty.

This film also shows the severe impact that bullying can have on people. Shoko tries to commit suicide while at a festival, and Shoya saves her, nearly falling to his death himself. Shoko tries to kill herself because her classmates have made her feel, for the longest time, like she was worthless. It serves as a reminder of all the youth lost to suicide from bullying, such as Tyler Clementi, a student at Rutgers University who committed suicide after his roommate recorded Clementi kissing another man and posted it online, or Brandy Vela, who killed herself after her peers tormented her online. These are not the only suicides that have happened, which really shows that while yes, these suicides are sad, they can be prevented by having more effective anti-bullying legislation in place. More people are talking about how to prevent bullying and suicides, but we need to keep talking about it, because if we don’t, the problem’s not actually going to get fixed.

The Japanese humanist educator, Daisaku Ikeda, once said that differences among people are a given. This is what makes each person unique and our world such a richly diverse place, resembling a garden in which many kinds of flowers bloom in profusion. That is why we must not only recognize that people are different, but also respect and learn from one another. That should be our basic perspective. Accordingly, regardless of creed, we must always respect others as human beings first.” (The New Human Revolution: Volume 21, page 99, Daisaku Ikeda) Just because Shoko had a disability didn’t mean something was wrong with her, but because her classmates hadn’t met anyone else who was hearing impaired and were so used to conforming with each other, they viewed Shoko’s disability as a flaw rather than as something that was simply just different from their able-bodied selves. However, Shoko has boundless compassion for her classmates even when they are mean to her, and as Shoya grows older and has come to terms with his own experiences of being an outcast, Shoya starts to appreciate what he didn’t appreciate before: Shoko’s compassion. Because she was bullied, Shoko made it her mission to feel for Shoya’s pain, and later on, he makes it up to her by saving her from committing suicide and having the guts to apologize (because his other classmates couldn’t muster the courage to do so.) Embracing differences, not necessarily pretending they don’t exist, is key to being a good ally, and sometimes all a good ally needs to do is just show up for someone and listen to them. Shoya wasn’t an ally before because he made fun of Shoko’s disability, but he later becomes an ally and fosters a bond of trust with her.

I definitely would watch this movie. Even though it was stressful to watch because I myself went through painful mental health issues, and watching this film triggered memories of my worst depressive episodes, I had to watch it so I could understand what my mission was as someone who had gone through that. I needed to understand that I’m not alone in my experiences with depression, and that seeking help is so important.

Speaking of which… 1-800-273-8255 is the Suicide Prevention Hotline. Not doing this to be cheesy or because every article I read about mental health has it at the end, seriously. If you or a loved one is considering suicide, call this number. Seriously, there’s a reason Logic has a song about it.

Book Review: Freedom

June 25, 2019

Categories: books

Last night I finished the book Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. Even though the novel is almost ten years old (it was published in 2010), it is relevant now more than ever and I highly recommend you read it. I’m glad I found it at the library because I found it at Half Price Books and was about to buy it, but some inkling of intuition told me that I could easily score a free copy of it at the library, so I waited patiently and went to the library to find it. At first I couldn’t find it and was a little sad, but then a librarian helped me out and I found it on a display shelf for books of the month (or some kind of other theme, I forgot.) Bingo! I though, and I immediately started reading it.

What I love about this book is how very similar it is to the writing styles of Michael Chabon and Jonathan Safran Foer, two of my favorite authors. Normally I prefer first-person narratives to third-person narratives. I don’t know why, that’s just what I’ve always preferred. But so far, I’ve read Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon, Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer, and this novel, and I’m starting to realize that maybe I’m not as biased toward first-person narratives as I thought I was. Franzen, like Chabon and Foer, uses the third person to allow the reader insight into the characters that we might not have gotten if were read it in the first-person. I’m not saying first-person isn’t insightful, but we only get to read about the situation from the main character’s point of view (or whoever’s point of view it is, if it’s a novel with more than one character, such as The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon.) In Freedom, Patty and Walter Berglund are an American couple living in Minnesota. They seem to have the perfect life on the outside: they have two children, they live in a neighborhood that is becoming more and more gentrified, Walter has a great job and Patty seems to be the talk of the town, albeit not always in a good way. But as the book goes on, we find out that Walter and Patty aren’t the perfect couple, and are in fact quite imperfect in so many ways.

The book is genius not just because of its eloquent writing, but also because there’s an autobiographer who writes Patty’s biography so we gain extensive backstory into how she became who she is. Patty’s mom, Joyce, grew up poor, but her father, Ray, grew up rich, and so Patty and her sisters Veronica and Abigail grew up living this privileged life. However, Patty gets raped and her parents don’t handle it very well, and so this sours the relationship between her and her parents. Patty befriends this girl named Eliza, who seems shy but turns out to be quite controlling of Patty, criticizing her and even refusing to let Patty see her singing and playing her guitar. Eliza is friends with a guy named Richard Katz, who goes to Macalester College with Walter. Patty and Walter meet at one of Richard’s gigs, and when Eliza ditches her, Walter keeps her company and soon they become a couple.

Flash forward more than a few years, and Patty and Walter are doing better than they ever did. Patty gets to stay at home with the kids Jessica and Joey, and Walter goes to his cushy job at 3M. But Richard Katz comes back home having still not succeeded much in his career, still sleeping with women and mooching off of Patty and Walter’s good will. Then Walter gets a job at a coal company, and the guy who runs it wants to clear off land for a private sanctuary for cerulean mountain warblers because they are the guy’s favorite bird. Even though Walter grew up as an environmentalist, the fact that he would allow for mountain top removal in West Virginia just so the cerulean mountain warbler can have its own space, especially since they guy said they were dwindling in number, is beyond ironic. It gets even more twisted when Walter has an affair with his assistant for the Cerulean Mountain Trust, Lalitha, a young woman in her late 20s who is working with Walter to raise awareness of overpopulation and how it is killing the planet. What’s more twisted for the family is that their son, Joey, becomes a Republican and starts living with his girlfriend Connie because he can’t stand living with Patty anymore (it’s shocking for them because they are liberal.)

If this novel taught me anything, it’s this: we can talk all we want to about freedom of speech, freedom from financial stress, and our free country (and, most recently, freedom gas.) But no one is free of suffering. In Nichiren Buddhism, the only thing that truly sets us free is realizing that suffering is a part of life and that even if we’re suffering, we can turn that suffering into something positive. There are two kinds of happiness: relative and absolute. Relative is short-lived happiness: you get the dream job, the perfect spouse, the GPA that lands you into a top-tier grad school. But those things only make you happy for a short time because they require a lot of hard work and you may not even like every part of the dream job, or you might end up burning out during grad school, or after a few years of your relationship, you might end up sick of your partner. You’ll find things to escape from your pain and misery, but those end up being temporary solutions to a larger problem. Then there’s absolute happiness, where even if you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, you got a divorce or any other kind of thing that makes you suffer, you can turn those sufferings into impetus to to keep going no matter what. It seems that even though Walter and Patty have the perfect life, they don’t, because all this other stuff comes up in their lives and they aren’t prepared to deal with it. Walter is unhappy in his marriage, and even though he seeks escape from his problems through his involvement with environmental work, he still can’t shake the fact that he’s sick of being married to Patty and is lovesick for Lalitha. Lalitha also suffers because Walter is still married to Patty but still, in the end, loves Patty deep down, and Walter’s personal life is starting to affect his work rapport with Lalitha. Lalitha is pretty much the only person of color in the book, and even though the book doesn’t directly say it, it’s almost like she’s a prop for Walter. Walter doesn’t treat women very well, and neither does his friend Richard, but Lalitha is both a woman and a person of color. In one scene, a white man confronts Walter at a store and makes a derogatory comment about Lalitha’s race towards him, showing how even though Walter and Lalitha love each other, they still have to deal with bigots, people who live in the prison of racial bias and prejudice. The racist who confronts Walter about his relationship with Lalitha can’t free himself of his own ignorance, and deep down, even though the book doesn’t talk about it, this ignorance causes him, too, to suffer. Every character in the book goes through some sort of pain, which serves as a reminder of why literature is so important. Literature lets us know that we aren’t alone in our suffering, and that other people have problems, sometimes greater than our own.

There’s an archetype I studied in my English class: man vs. nature, and this book works a lot with this archetype. Walter seems to live a very Walden-esque life. For those who haven’t yet read Walden, it’s by the philosopher Henry David Thoreau and in the book he talks about how he dropped everything, went into the woods, built himself a shack and journaled about nature and politics. Even though Walter seeks an escape through nature, he can’t escape his own ego. He sees nature as a way to get away from the people he held most dear in life, and this causes him to just suffer more. Walter leaves his cushy job at 3M so he can do conservation work, but it’s not a totally selfless pursuit because he’s really doing it to escape his relatives and his family, who never seemed to understand him or take him seriously. However, he is still not free because he must deal with the environmental consequences of his project. The Cerulean Mountain Trust isn’t in the end sustainable at all even though it proposes a conservation sanctuary for a species of birds and thus helping it from going extinct, it still degrades the environment because it proposes clearing land for this sanctuary, thus putting people’s livelihood at risk and endangering other species. Freedom isn’t really freedom if it causes another being suffering, and the novel says that clearly through the actions and thoughts of its characters. Even though Walter and Patty are liberals, and seem to be free of biases and open minded, they are not free because they still have biases and are tethered to their pasts, and this affects their view of the world and their political views.

Overall, I really liked this book.

Freedom. Jonathan Franzen. 562 pp. 2010.

Movie Review: If Beale Street Could Talk

June 26, 2019

Categories: movies

I didn’t think I was going to cry when I saw this film. But alas, by the end I found my shoulders quaking as I erupted in tears. And while I was of course super ecstatic when Regina King won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for this film. I didn’t truly understand at the time why she won the award because I hadn’t yet seen the film. It wasn’t until I saw the film that my appreciation for Regina King’s acting deepened.

The film, based on the novel of the same name by James Baldwin, is about a young Black couple, Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt and Tish Rivers, living in Harlem. Tish announces to her family that she is pregnant with Fonny’s child and while her mom, dad and sister, Ernestine (played brilliantly by Dear White People’s Teyonah Parris) celebrate her pregnancy, Fonny’s family does not. Tish not only has to deal with Fonny’s family’s disapproval of her, but also Fonny’s incarceration. Victoria Rogers, a young Puerto Rican woman, accused Fonny of raping her when she has to point out her rapist in a line of Black men. Sharon, Tish’s mom, goes to Puerto Rico to tell Victoria that Fonny didn’t rape her, but it doesn’t end up working too well. Even when they are young, Tish and Fonny still live in a brutal world where police will still accuse them of doing things just because they are Black.

This film is important because racial injustice is still a messy reality even though social media has allowed people to spread awareness of incidents of this injustice. In Fruitvale Station, for instance, the white lady Oscar Grant meets earlier at the grocery store records the moment where the white police officer holds Oscar and his friends hostage and accuses them of starting the fight on the train, when in reality the white inmate of Oscar’s started the fight. However, at the time James Baldwin wrote If Beale Street Could Talk, there was no social media or smart phones. Barry Jenkins, the film’s director, illustrates this point by putting historical photos of white police officers beating Black men and arresting them. I know the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” is overused, but in this case, it’s more relevant than ever. Even without physical words, seeing these brutal images of police brutality in the 1960s reminds us how important it is to talk about the intersectionality of criminal justice and racial injustice, even if it is hard to discuss.

I was sad I never got to see it on the big screen, but the benefits of seeing a movie like this on a DVD player is that you get to watch extras, such as deleted scenes and a behind-the-scenes look at the film’s production. Also, like, let’s be real. If Annapurna Productions can give us gut-wrenching films like Detroit, they can certainly deliver a gem like Beale Street. The deleted scenes, while they didn’t make their way into the film, are key to the storyline and left me trying to catch my breath because the acting is just so brilliant. Also, watching the feature about the making of If Beale Street Could Talk was pretty awesome because I learned about why Barry Jenkins made the film, the inspiration behind the costume design and makeup, and why the cast was perfect for this film. I got to hear what the actors had to say about their characters and hear about what Barry Jenkins loved about working with these actors. In one powerful scene, Fonny’s family confronts the Rivers family about Tish’s pregnancy, and I swear, I was snapping my fingers the whole time and my mouth stayed in an “O” shape for as long as I can remember because there were so many disses that Ernestine, Sharon and Fonny’s mom dished out to each other.

Barry Jenkins was the perfect director for this film. If you haven’t yet seen his film Moonlight, I recommend you watch it. While you don’t of course have to watch it before watching If Beale Street Could Talk, watching Moonlight and then watching If Beale Street Could Talk gave me a greater understanding of why Jenkins chose a certain lighting or way of zooming in on the characters. The cinematography of Moonlight (courtesy of James Laxton) was incredible, and I don’t think I will ever get tired of this film for that reason. I honestly wouldn’t know how to describe the beauty of Jenkins’s filmmaking, because it has its own unique style. The lighting, the focus on the characters’ facial expressions, and the brilliant beautiful music score made Moonlight a kind of beautiful that’s just super hard to describe unless you see the film for yourself. It’s the same with Beale Street; you just need to watch it to know why it’s so incredible.

And of course I would be remiss if I didn’t also recommend you read the novel If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin. I first heard about it when I heard they were making a movie based on the book. Before that I had read Go Tell It On the Mountain and Giovanni’s Room, and I also saw the documentary on James Baldwin called I Am Not Your Negro (if you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend you do so. Powerful film.) But I didn’t know about If Beale Street Could Talk; maybe I had passed by it in the library and ruffled through its pages, but I didn’t read it until I saw the trailer for the film adaptation. When I heard Barry Jenkins was directing it, I immediately grabbed a copy and started reading. I devoured that book like it was a delicious meal; it grabbed me and didn’t let me go. Baldwin’s raw depictions of sexuality, Black womanhood, Black masculinity, love, pain and racial injustice got deep down into the pits of my soul and tugged so hard at my heartstrings I thought I would pass out. It sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. The cast of Beale Street wanted to pay tribute to a legend (aka James Baldwin) and they certainly delivered that tribute through their hard work and dedication during the production of this film. Incredible novel and film. This review doesn’t do justice to how moving both of them are.

If Beale Street Could Talk. 2018. Rated R for language and some sexual content.

Book Review: China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan

June 26, 2019

Categories: books

First of all, I have to say that Kevin Kwan never fails to amaze me with his incredible writing. I first saw Crazy Rich Asians while browsing the bookstore one time, but I had other books to read, so I put it back on the shelf. Then I finally read it and enjoyed it. For those who haven’t read it, it’s about this economics professor named Nicholas (“Nick”) Young. Nick takes her to Singapore to meet his family, and Rachel discovers that they are super wealthy. Turns out that Nick’s mom, Eleanor, hates Rachel and thinks that if Nick marries her, it will cause the family to go into financial misfortune since Rachel doesn’t come from means. The trip ends up being stressful for Rachel because she has to deal with everyone’s criticisms about her marrying Nick. Rachel moves back to New York, telling Nick to not come see her because she thinks that it will cause further pain for his mother and the rest of his family.

In China Rich Girlfriend, the sequel to Crazy Rich Asians, Nick and Rachel are back in New York and are planning to get married soon. However, Eleanor disrupts the wedding and tells Rachel about her long-lost father, who she hasn’t seen in years. Eleanor tracked down Rachel’s father and tells her to come see him. Rachel meets him and finds out that she has family in China that is richer than even Nick’s family in Singapore. She even meets her brother, Carlton, who she hasn’t met before. His friend Collette is a super-wealthy model who spoils Rachel during her visit while also dealing with her parents’ disapproval of her love for Carlton and not Richie, the super-rich guy they were trying to get her to marry. Meanwhile, Astrid Leong, Nick’s cousin, is dealing with a terrible marriage to Michael, who didn’t come from wealth but is now a tech billionaire, and her love for Charlie Wu, another tech billionaire who was Astrid’s first love before Michael. Kitty Pong is trying to go undercover after her breakup with Alastair Cheng lands her in hot water, and seeks the advice of Corinna, who tells her to dress down and behave in ways that won’t give her away as Kitty (this ends up backfiring badly.) At the core of all this nonsense is Rachel, who just wants to have a nice marriage to Nick and not have to deal with all the drama that comes with being married to one of the richest guys on the planet.

If anything, this novel taught me that while money itself isn’t the root of all evil, it’s what people do with money that can really mess someone up. We’ve all heard the phrase “Money doesn’t buy happiness,” and while it’s good to have money to pay your bills, rent, and occasional luxuries, spending lots of money just because you have a huge inheritance doesn’t ultimately lead to satisfaction. Colette and her friends spend a lot of money shopping and going out to eat, but Colette lashes out at her parents and even towards the end lashes out at Rachel, calling her ungrateful and a bad friend even when Rachel didn’t do anything to upset her. Colette wants more and more stuff, but she always ends up feeling unfulfilled. Even though Nick comes from wealth, he still wants to live a more down-to-earth life with Rachel without worrying about his inheritance. Even though Rachel’s brother and parents have lots of money, Rachel still holds strong to her roots because her single mother, Kerry, raised her to persevere even when they struggled financially living in a pricey place like New York. When Carlton sees Richie embarrass Colette by proposing to her and then throwing a tantrum when she tells him no, he bets all the money he has on drag-racing Richie, unaware that he already got in a very bad car accident and nearly died. When he fumes about it, Rachel goes to comfort him and convince him that it’s not worth it to fight back with Richie. Carlton tells her in fury that she needs to get out of his life and that he wishes he never met her, but then realizes what he said and breaks down into tears. Rachel doesn’t let anyone’s pretentiousness get to her because she dealt with it with Nick’s family, and this makes her one of the few down-to-earth characters in the novel.

All I can say is, I can’t wait to read the last novel in the trilogy, Rich People Problems. And I hope they make movies for the second and third novels of the trilogy. 🙂

China Rich Girlfriend: A Novel by Kevin Kwan. 481 pp.