Days of Distraction

Starred review from December 23, 2019
Chang’s incisive debut follows a 25-year-old Chinese-American woman as she balances an interracial relationship, her career as a technology reporter, and a drive toward self-discovery. After narrator Jing Jing’s white boyfriend, J, announces his plans to move across the country for graduate school, she follows him from San Francisco to Ithaca, N.Y. On the cross-country road trip with J, she discovers a heightened sense of her racial identity; while visiting high school friend Becca in Portland, Ore., Jing Jing quickly acknowledges her relative privilege as an East Asian compared to darker people of color after Becca, who is white, insists that “Asians have it really bad—the worst.” Similar interactions in Ithaca make her feel out of place compared to her life in California, prompting her to remember and reexamine her close childhood friendship with white girls in the Milk Club (“the name did not have overtly racial origins, but practical ones, since each girl got a carton of milk at lunch”) and consider how her ability to fit in among white people can erase her sense of self. As scattershot freelance assignments dry up, she occupies herself with research into discrimination of Chinese women throughout U.S. history, seeking a sense of purpose while J keeps a busy schedule. As J becomes condescending toward her efforts to improve their apartment, Jing Jing begins to feel estranged from him. When her father makes an uncharacteristic call from China and reveals that he’s been drinking heavily, she decides to visit, relieved to have a reason to leave Ithaca. Chang’s humorous, timely observations on race, technology, and relationships lend immediacy to the narrator’s chronicle of self-awareness. This introduces a formidably talented writer.

January 1, 2020
A coming-of-age tale for the 21st century. "People think I'm smaller than I am." This is the opening sentence of Chang's debut and--as the reader soon learns--a sly summation of the novel as a whole. A first-generation American and the daughter of Chinese parents, the unnamed narrator finds that people frequently see in her what they expect rather than what she is. But, more often than not, she shrinks herself to fit these misperceptions. She stays silent when her boyfriend, J, calls her his "little sweetheart." She gives up trying to teach J how to pronounce the family nickname that he insists on using. At work--a tech publication--she chooses not to press the point when her superiors refuse to seriously discuss giving her a raise when she discovers that she's earning less than all of her colleagues. Even in a world in which social media lets ordinary people become extraordinary, the protagonist asserts that she is quite simply ordinary--a consumer of other peoples' lives, not the creator of one. J's decision to enter a graduate program in upstate New York gives her the chance to leave the high-pressure microcosm of San Francisco and start again. Chang has won acclaim for her short stories, and, stylistically, her debut novel can be seen as a collection of linked microfictions. The text is composed of brief vignettes and the narrative is discursive, but this does not mean that the story feels choppy or disjointed. Instead, the novel's form encourages the reader to slow down, think about what they've just read, and figure out for themselves how the pieces fit together. The narrator's meditations on themes like racism, capitalism, the role of technology in our lives, and complicated family relationships are simultaneously uniquely insightful and accessible to anyone who has grappled with these issues themselves. Beautifully crafted and deeply thoughtful.

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Starred review from November 1, 2019
As one of the few women of color in her office, the narrator of Chang's stunning debut struggles to feel heard. A staff writer for a tech publication, she's often told she needs to stand out more to be noticed. Her requests for a raise remain on hold, though managers assure her that someone will take care of it. When a new executive comes in, her dissatisfaction grows as she realizes the overwhelming lack of diversity in the tech industry and the minimal efforts to correct it. Her boyfriend's decision to attend graduate school in Ithaca gives her the perfect excuse to leave and start fresh across the country. However, the move to small-town New York triggers an exploration of her identity as an Asian American, and what it means to be in an interracial relationship in a dominantly white society. Chang portrays early adulthood with elegance and an offbeat humor that complements her poignant and deeply significant observations of life as a woman of color. She explores the struggle to be free in an oppressive society with incredible insight and clear, captivating prose that set her apart as a striking new voice in literature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)