Book Blog #414: Taipei Story by R.F. Kuang

 

Title: Taipei Story

Author: R.F. Kuang

# of Pages: 279 (ebook)

Genre: Adult, Contemporary, Memoir

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Synopsis: College freshman Lily Chen is off to spend the summer in Taipei at an intensive language program like so many Chinese American students before her, hoping to connect with the culture she inherited but never fully understood. But a promising start quickly unravels. Her classes are grueling, her roommate is driving her insane, and a reckless trip to the hot springs with a guy she barely knows soon has her classmates viciously gossiping. She feels adrift, a foreigner in a country she thought would feel like home. Then shocking news Lily’s grandfather has passed away. The loss forces her to grapple with now-unanswerable questions about her family history. As Lily grieves, she’s drawn into a journey of self-discovery—piecing together memories, stories, and silences over a series of hilarious and devastating attempts at connection. Taipei Story What if the diaspora fantasy of homecoming never comes true? What if learning a language can’t bring you any closer to the people you’re trying to reach? What if you search for your family’s history, but your family doesn’t want to share? What if you wait too long to ask the right questions? As Lily struggles for answers, her summer becomes a poignant search for understanding—of herself, her family, and the meaning of home.

Review: If you must read Taipei Story, read it from the perspective that it's a memoir and NOT an original fictional story.

I didn't know this going in and was shocked later to hear the same "plot points" repeated in R.F. Kuang's interview where she talks and her and her family's real life experiences. Knowing this actually explained so much, such as why R.F. Kuang overly-eager (yet somewhat narcissistic) way of speaking showed through so much more in this work compare to her others. 

If Kuang was more upfront about this (I double checked the synopsis, for notes in the front, but nothing indicated that this was heavily based off of her real life), I would consider rating this upwards toward 3 starts for it as a memoir. She is very accurate at writing about how she sees herself, and I wouldn't have to consider her character development and plot craftsmanship because she'd get more points for being open and honest about her actual experiences. 

But alas it's not, so I will judge it as a stand alone fiction. Mild spoilers ahead about themes, overarching issues, etc.

Part 1 (first half of the book): Slow, Taipei-based slice of life, no apparent plot

A lot of this book is just ramblings about Taipei and nerding out about the Chinese language and literature. There were so many unnecessarily and repetitive food mentions (we get it, you like tofu pudding) that it made me think Kuang went to Taipei, meticulously planned a trip, and came back with no one willing to listen to all her food adventures. Thus the poor saps who pick up this book are forced to read about it. 

With all the woman-splaining of Chinese language phases, I thought Kuang's target audience would be those who aren't familiar with Chinese culture at all. I expected the main character Lily, a Chinese American girl, to be the relatable protagonist who suddenly gets exposure niche Taiwanese literature and phrases. Instead, Lily is somehow already pretty well versed and takes the time to explain to reader everything she already knows about a particular author anytime one comes up (which I now suspect is Kuang gushing over authors she either likes or heavily researched and wants to show off). 

Lily's characterization was pretty weak until you realize that Kuang is self-inserting. Even from early as page 6, she says the following without any strong development of Lily's goals/aspirations:

"I had spent a lot of time thinking about what it meant to be a female author who wanted critical acclaim and also to look pretty" (p.6)

Not only is she incredible self involved, she is extremely nerdy; way nerdier than the average person with some benign hot takes:

"New textbooks always gave me a little masochistic thrill. I liked the weight of them. I liked previewing all the things I didn't know. It made me excited about the amount of work to be done" (p.21). 

She also has under-developed relationships with other characters that I wouldn't considered fleshed out by the end of the book. This includes her friendship with Ana (no clear resolution to conflicts in their relationships) and her familial relationship with her grandfather (how can she claim to be learning Chinese to better communicate with him if she previously wasn't putting in the effort to try to interact with him regularly?). Most the problems she encounters in her story are related to her poor communication, which is always frustrating to read about. 

Part 2 (second half of the book): Family trauma that has nothing to do with the main character

"My grief was not that special...Ask around and every first-, second-, even third-generation Asian American"

A big focus in the latter half of the book is about Lily's family history and highlighting horrors of genocide. Since Lily is so self-involved she decides that she is entitled to know about this trauma and that it somehow effects her (despite her having a pretty privileged life as a Ivy school American and no strong argument of generational trauma). 

"I couldn't get a grip on the idea that this happened to my own family - that this chapter of history, which never made it onto any of my high school or college syllabi, was involved with me in any way" (p. 196). 

Instead of taking some lessons from her family's past to either raise awareness on similar genocidal current events or something else that would be productive in a way that's bigger than herself, it seems like Lily is more aghast that she didn't get a chance to incorporate this in her identity and wants to check some "good daughter" box by belated asking her parents about their backstory. 

"I had always imagined my parents would be pleased at my attempts to reconnect - that they had been waiting all these years for any one of their children to tkae an interest in our culture and our past...I thought I'd be rewarded for caring" (p.210).

Of course, the moral of this arc is that the trauma her parents and grandparents went through don't have anything to do with her, and that she needs to accept that. However, this didn't come off as a major learning; readers likely already have this perspective from the start of hearing Lily's story, so it's confusing why Lily comes to this realization so late. 

Overall, Lily comes off as a self-centered, privileged girl who isn't worth reading about. Kuang is clearly introspecting about her own life, but her life lessons are not relatable to most audiences (maybe a very specific niche of Chinese Americans, who are also self-centered and bad at communicating). 

It's not even clear to me if Lily/Kuang actually grew in meaningful ways; she still yearns for an identity that isn't necessarily hers to have (being authentically Taiwanese/Chinese) and only focused on understanding herself rather than understanding others and being compassionate. 

I wouldn't recommend this book.

Book Blog #413: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt

 

Title: The Anxious Generation

Author: Jonathan Haidt

# of Pages: 295 (hardback)

Genre: Nonfiction, Psychology, Self-help

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Synopsis: After more than a decade of stability or improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the early 2010s. Rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide rose sharply, more than doubling on many measures. Why? In The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the facts about the epidemic of teen mental illness that hit many countries at the same time. He then investigates the nature of childhood, including why children need play and independent exploration to mature into competent, thriving adults. Haidt shows how the play-based childhood began to decline in the 1980s, and how it was finally wiped out by the arrival of the phone-based childhood in the early 2010s. He presents more than a dozen mechanisms by which this great rewiring of childhood has interfered with children’s social and neurological development, covering everything from sleep deprivation to attention fragmentation, addiction, loneliness, social contagion, social comparison, and perfectionism. He explains why social media damages girls more than boys and why boys have been withdrawing from the real world into the virtual world, with disastrous consequences for themselves, their families, and their societies. Most important, Haidt issues a clear call to action. He diagnoses the collective action problems that trap us, and then proposes four simple rules that might set us free. He describes steps that parents, teachers, schools, tech companies, and governments can take to end the epidemic of mental illness and restore a more humane childhood.

Review: It's extremely apparent from this book that Jonathan Haidt is a boomer.

Y'know how children joke about their grandparents being overly nostalgic over the past and being convinced that things were better "back in the day"? The Anxious Generation is basically that but in essay format. The TLDR is that social media and screen time is bad is excess and largely influenced by the culture of "everyone" being online. None of these points were particularly novel and follow common sense. 

While I was hooked by the books opener, Parts 1 and 2 were a bit drier. This is when I discovered that the books format was going to be more essay-format; many study citations and data driven assertions (which is good although some studies were older than I expected to be used in this relatively recently published book). The highlight of these sections were how Haidt emphasizes antifragility and its importance that children develop it (this is a takeaway that's value for even adults who are looking to continue to grow).

The chapters in Part 3 were when it became more interesting, especially in Chapter 6: Why Social Media Harms Girls More Than Boys. Haidt highlights sociogenic illness (social media promotes the propagation of an illness from influencers to their followers). This is a phenomenon that many have likely seen (rise of influencers with Tourettes or multi-personality disorder) which is met with online discourse over whether said influencers are faking their illnesses/disorders. I was shocked to see that this was a tangible, observed trend from medical professionals as well. This chapter also (more controversially) highlights that this also might apply to the lgbtq community.

Unfortunately Part 3 also contains the worst chapter. Chapter 8: Spiritual Elevation and Degradation excited me at first because Haidt begins it by saying he wants to write the chapter "less as a social scientist than as a fellow human being who has felt overwhelmed, personally and perpetually, since 2014" (p.199). This is how I wanted him to write the whole book; less like an essay and more as a heart to heart from someone with deeper knowledge on social media's impact who could make it more understandable in a practical way! However, this chapter instead covers an agnostic view on spirituality, covering some topics related to inner peace drawing from some high level lessons from actual religions. This chapter didn't resonate with me at all and could've been cut completely. 

I was also pretty disappointed with Chapter 7: What Is Happening to Boys?, which handwaves its way through only two negative areas: pornography and video games. The TLDR for both is that addiction to either negatively impacts boys, which is also common sense and so much weaker of a revelation than what Haidt asserts for girls. 

It was disappointing that Haidt only includes one line on what I would hypothesis is the bigger negative impact for boys; them getting sucked into the manosphere and influenced by harmful ideologies: “Without positive male role models in their lives, many boys turn online for guidance, where they are easily led down rabbit holes into online communities that may radicalize their thinking” (p.262). This line isn't even include in this chapter; it's include in the latter half of Part 4. This is a topic that came up in the Netflix mini-series Adolescence last year, so I was expecting Haidt to have at least acknowledged this hypothesis and included some research on whether there is some correlation between boy's social media use and incel culture. 

Overall I didn't consider this worth the read. Many non-fiction books feel like they could have been an email instead unless you are in academia; this book is no exception. It could have been more well rounded; Haidt would sound less like a boomer if he focused less on going "back" to play-based childhood and leaned more into a holistic evaluation of social media/technology to highlight how parents and children can be empowered by it (to better drive home his calls to action in the new hybrid of play and phone based childhoods).