My Rating: 4 stars
Given the current unprecedented situation, the past few weeks have been one of the busiest and most difficult I've ever encountered — a sentiment I'm pretty sure many others also share at the moment. Reading has always been a solace for me and this time around is no exception. I've continued to read every day as I normally do, but the problem is that it's been very hard to concentrate, which has caused my reading to become more "restless" than usual. I've found myself starting a book, but after getting a ways through it, my mind wanders, so I put the book down and, thinking perhaps it's just not the right book for the moment, I start another one, only to have the same thing happen. As a result, I've got 4 or 5 books that I started and need to finish, though I'm resigned to the fact that it's going to take longer than anticipated and also require more concentration on my part.
One of the books I started during this time period is Alexandra Chang's fictional novel Days of Distraction, which is a coming-of-adulthood tale based in large part on the author's own life and personal experiences. The protagonist in the story is a twenty-something Chinese-American woman named Jing Jing (whom we later find out actually shares the same first name as the author) — she works as a writer for a tech publication in San Francisco, California, where she is, notably, one of only two women on the entire staff (the other woman is a photographer named Jasmine, who also happens to be Chinese-American and also Jing Jing's closest work friend). Jing Jing lives with her Irish American boyfriend J (he is referred to only by his one initial throughout the entire story), who is a research associate at a lab where he spends hours on end with mostly scientists and mice. Jing Jing is very close with her family — her mother and younger sister and brother who live near her, as well as her dad, who moved back to China after a not-so-amicable divorce from her mother. When J gets accepted to grad school in New York, Jing Jing decides to move across the country with him, leaving behind her family and her job in a bustling city to settle in the small, quiet, upstate town of Ithaca. Along the way, mostly to pass the time, Jing Jing begins acquainting herself with stories about her ancestral heritage as well as those of other Asian Americans in history, which leads her on a journey of self-reflection, especially as it pertains to her relationship with her boyfriend J.
Plot-wise, this is what I would call a quiet, slow-burn type of story where nothing much actually happens. The closest thing to "action" that ever occurs is the brief "road trip" that Jing Jing and J take across the country for their move. Aside from that, majority of the story consists of Jing Jing's observations about the mostly mundane everyday things going on around her, and later, it shifts to reflections about her identity within a society that, for the most part, doesn't realize she exists. The format of the story was one of the main things I had to get used to, as it was told in a way that required a little bit more attention than normal — narrated by Jing Jing in the first person, the narrative jumped around quite a bit, with short sections that at times felt anecdotal, interspersed throughout with excerpts from various articles or other things that Jing Jing happened to be reading at the time. In hindsight, given the format, this was probably not the best choice of book to read during this time period, but it paid off in the end because the story was one that resonated with me, and the characters too, I felt a connection to. While Jing Jing did come off as annoying at times (mostly in those situations where she would debate things back and forth extensively in her mind but then not take any action), she was a character I was able to relate to on many levels. With that said though, my favorite characters in the story were actually Jing Jing's mom and dad (especially her dad, whose hilarious quips about society and culture always made me chuckle) — what I loved most was how the parents were written in a way where they did not come across as traditional, stereotypical Asian (specifically Chinese) parents, yet they were still such an important source of cultural insight for Jing Jing (and the reader as well). In most of the contemporary stories I read where there's a young Asian protagonist at the center of the story, the parents are often portrayed in a very "traditional" manner, which isn't necessarily wrong of course, since there are plenty of Asian parents like that, but on the other side of the coin, there are also many Asian parents who, like Jing Jing's mom and dad, embody both cultural sentiments as well as modern sensitivities — it was definitely refreshing to see an Asian author tackle this aspect.
On the surface, this may seem like another "immigrant story" that centers around the protagonist's struggle with identity and belonging, but it actually goes so much deeper than that. In addition to identity and immigration, it is also a commentary of sorts on several hot button societal issues such as racism, politics, interracial relationships, family dynamics, economics, history, culture and tradition, etc. What made this work for me was the subtleness of the commentary, presented in a way where it was essentially a neutral relaying of facts — rather than "preach" about society's injustices and try to steer the reader toward a certain direction, the author — through the narrator's experiences as well as references from history — offers up examples in a non-judgmental manner and let's the reader decide for themselves.
This is one of those books where the reaction will be different depending on the audience. I definitely enjoyed this book and highly recommend it, though with the caveat that it may not resonate with others as much as it did with me. I look forward to seeing more from this author in the future!
Received ARC from Ecco (HarperCollins) via Edelweiss.
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