This book won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2021 and deservedly so. It is set in San Francisco in the 1950s, and tells the story of 17-year-old Lily Hu, a Chinese American who begins to question her sexuality after developing a relationship with Kath, a white girl in her class. The stand out aspect of it is that the beautiful and complex writing dares to offer up comparisons to novels that are published for adult readers. Where it really stands out, though, is in its balance of both historical realism and hope, a balance we so rarely see in queer stories.
In many ways, Lily’s story evokes the expected joys of YA romance novels. We see the trope of the complicated first kiss. We watch a friendship — rooted in teenage angst — blossom into something more romantic. The simplistic third-person figural narrative allows us to see into Lily’s mind, which questions the experience of falling in love.
However, the placement in society and it's insistence on realism makes the possibility for a happy ending something one could only hope for rather than expected. Did it happen? I hoped that Lily and Kath would run off together, move into their own small one-bedroom in the city and spend all their nights at the Telegraph Club (the fictional lesbian bar that brings the girls together) with their new network of queer friends.
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