Lillian Li’s latest novel Bad Asians has an interesting premise that attempts to explore Asian American identity through the lens of contemporary social media and internet culture. The story revolves around the experiences of four friends growing up in a hyper competitive Chinese American community in Maryland who see their lives turned upside down after an amateur documentary that their friend makes ends up going viral. We follow these four friends – Diana Zhang, Justin Yu, Errol Chen, and Vivian Wang – through a roughly 9-year timespan as they grow apart from each other and pursue their own life paths as well as careers while simultaneously having to deal with the aftermath of the unwanted notoriety that they gained from the documentary’s unexpected popularity. As the four friends navigate the impact of the documentary on their lives, they discover truths about their families and themselves that ultimately lead to unexpected insights about their relationship with each other.
Overall, I would say that this was an “okay” read for me. While there were some aspects of the story that resonated with me – for example, having Asian parents whose exacting expectations put a relentless amount of pressure on us (their children) to not only succeed, but to do so the “right” way – I unfortunately couldn’t relate to the aspects of social media / internet / influencer culture that basically formed the crux of the story. Perhaps this is a generational thing, as I grew up during a time when the internet was less prevalent and social media didn’t dominate every area of our lives as it does now, so it was hard for me to relate to what the characters were going through. It also doesn’t help that I’m a huge introvert and a bit antisocial, so it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the appeal of curating a social media presence and putting certain parts of my life out there for everyone to see (personally, this sounds horrifying to me, lol). I think this is why I found it difficult to really get into the story – as I was reading, I spent most of my time feeling shocked (and sometimes appalled) at some of the characters’ behaviors and actions and the lengths that people are willing to go for internet notoriety. Speaking of which, I also didn’t like any of the characters and while I did feel sorry for some of them, I couldn’t bring myself to root for any of them, so this of course made it more difficult to become invested in the story.
Aside from this though, I also had issues with the writing, which I feel didn’t flow well in some places and made parts of the story confusing. Specifically, there seemed to be quite a bit of jumping back and forth between things that happened in the past versus in the present – sometimes within the same paragraph -- and the transitions between them weren’t always clear. This caused the story to be a bit hard to follow at times, which made this a more tedious read than it needed to be. With that said, the version I read was an ARC so it could just be this one hadn’t gone through all the edits yet – there’s still a chance some of this will get fixed prior to publication.
While I can’t say that I “enjoyed” this one per se, I didn’t dislike it either. I think it’s more a matter of me not being the right reader for this book -- someone who is perhaps more well-versed in the world of social media and/or influencer culture may appreciate it better.
Received ARC from Henry Holt and Co. via NetGalley.
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