Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A Chinese American college student heads to Taiwan for a summer abroad. Lily Chen’s Chinese has always been an embarrassment—good enough that she can order in restaurants, but not fluent enough for talking to her grandparents in a meaningful way. In a bid to feel more confident, Lily has signed up for a summer of intensive language study in Taiwan, where she’ll finally learn to speak, fit in, and be Chinese enough. Things do not go according to plan, of course, because—as Lily is about to find out—identity is much more complicated than a list of vocabulary words. Once again, Kuang uses a deeply flawed protagonist to examine a larger issue, in this case the uncertainty of the Chinese diaspora as it searches for a motherland that can’t be found. Lily’s brash narration takes up this case easily enough, laying out how different the Chinese American experience is from one community to another and how impossible identity is to pin down—Kuang is arguing that there’s no single Chinese American way of being, no archetypal Chinese American story. Lily’s experiences and emotional journey are deeply real and often uncomfortable; her narrative flits between rumination on the nuances of language and what’s lost in translation, worries about how others perceive her, and where to go for lunch. Her long-held issues with her identity aren’t going to be transformed in just one summer, but they’re very real and relatable. As ever, Kuang raises uncomfortable questions about history, ethnicity, and identity and leaves it for readers to determine whether Lily has come to the right conclusions and how much growing up she still has left to do. A visceral exploration of language as a bridge and a barrier. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

In the virtual interview exam for a summer language program in Taipei, Lily Chen could smoothly answer, “I’m a rising sophomore at Yale University, and I’m majoring in East Asian Studies,” never mind the cheat sheet taped to her screen. Lily didn’t fully inherit her Chinese immigrant parents’ language fluency and is determined to acquire the ability to communicate with her aging grandparents in Guangdong. She’s always been a good student. If she’d been more like her underachieving older sister, her mother insists, her “father would have killed himself a long time ago.” No pressure there. On the other side of the world, Lily hopes to construct a new identity in Chinese, ensconced at National Taiwan University where buildings aren’t “named after dead slave owners.” Beyond studying, Lily manages to alienate herself from her roommate over a boy, her fellow students ostracize her, and she gains an unflattering reputation even among teachers. Despite clever enhancements of Taiwanese history, identity, immigrant politics, and biting social commentary, best-selling Kuang’s (Katabasis, 2025) second non-fantasy title (following Yellowface, 2023) ultimately veers too close to performative tedium. HIGH-DEMAND

Publishers Weekly
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A Yale freshman travels to Taipei for an immersive Chinese language course in hopes of connecting with her roots in this pensive outing from bestseller Kuang (Yellowface). Lily, the narrator, was born in China and raised in the U.S., where she steadily lost her ability to speak Mandarin amid her determination to assimilate. Though her grandparents still live on the mainland in Guangzhou, where she was born, the narrator chose to study in Taiwan for the summer because the “place had nothing to do with me,” leaving her free to make mistakes. Some of her missteps are unexpected, as when JC, a classmate and internet-famous polyglot, invites her to skip class and visit a hot spring with him. After an awkward sexual encounter, which she’s prepared to brush off as a “funny story between friends,” JC tells others in the program, embellishing the details, and the rumor damages Lily’s relationships with her classmates and teachers. Making matters worse, she learns her grandfather has just passed away, and that she’s lost the chance to talk with both grandparents in their native tongue. Lily’s earnestness is heartfelt and poignant, especially as she reels from grief. The result is a touching story of fading heritage. Agent: Hannah Bowman, Liza Dawson Assoc. (Sept.)