Book: Last Night at the Telegraph Club
Author: Malinda Lo
Pages: 366
Read on: Kindle
Read in: 3 hours
Plot Summary: Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.
America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father - despite his hard-won citizenship - Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.
Things I Liked:
1. The premise of this book sounded really interesting. A historical fiction novel with a focus on the Chinese American community at the height of the 'Red Scare' of the mid-1950s. A teenaged lesbian protagonist. There are very few books out there, if at all, that deal with this particular intersection of community, time period and identity. So, it was definitely something I wanted to read and a world I wanted to learn more about.
2. The writing is beautiful. It brings Lily's world- San Francisco's Chinatown, her school and the Telegraph Club- alive. It makes the reader palpably feel Lily's fear of exposure and her fear of her parents finding out about her sexuality. I really enjoyed the writing in this book!
3. The world of mid-1950s America- the growing, irrational 'Red Scare', the efforts made by Chinese Americans to appear more American and less Chinese, the anxiety-inducing environment of not knowing who could be a spy of the FBI and the government arbitrarily taking away Citizenship papers from Chinese Americans- is not something I've read about in a work of fiction and since, these stories are inspired by real experiences of this community, it felt more impactful than reading about this period more dispassionately in a history book or such.
4. In a world where it is still difficult to come out to Asian parents, Lily's struggle to come to terms with her sexuality, explore what it means by visiting the Telegraph Club (a lesbian bar) and her nascent relationship with Kathy make for an interesting narrative against the backdrop of the Red Scare. It makes everything fraught with risk and an underlying fear, which gives this book a sense of urgency making it unputdownable.
5. Lily's various relationships were layered and interesting. The author has done a great job in capturing the dynamics between Lily and her overbearing best friend- Shirley, between Lily and her demanding, conservative mother and the restrained yet sweet relationship between her and Kathy, driven by shared interests and dreams. Lily's coming to terms with her sexuality, her being able to stand up for herself in some small measure and how she handles a very challenging situation were all very realistic and, I am sure, many LGBTQ+ readers will be able to relate and empathise with her.
6. The book also moves back and forth between Lily's mom's story (early 1940s) and her dad's early years in the US. We get to see a different side of the Chinese American experience and how in spite of being in the Army and fighting for the US, her father was not considered sufficiently American. I found these chapters interesting as well.
Things I Didn't Like:
1. I'd have loved to know what became of Lily and Kathy (together or even individually) in the distant future. Did they live life on their own terms? Were they forced to stay in the closet and get married and have heteronormative lives? It is not a major gripe, but a few lines addressing what became of Lily eventually would've been good.
Rating: 4/5
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