Fake Chinese Sounds
by Jing Jing Tsong; illus. by the author
Intermediate    Kokila/Penguin    208 pp.
4/24    9780525553427    $23.99
Paper ed.  9780525553434    $13.99
e-book ed.  9780525554127    $8.99

In this graphic novel, fifth grader Mei Ying and her Taiwanese immigrant mother deal with daily microaggressions. Mom says people don’t mean to be offensive, but Mei hates that her mom seems so unbothered by people’s ignorance. When new student Sid starts bombarding Mei with racist taunts, she again wonders why no one else seems upset, while others say Mei is oversensitive. During an especially bad confrontation, Mei finds her voice. She calls Sid out for being racist and yells at him to “STOP MAKING FUN OF ME”; shocked into silence, he does. Tsong’s cover art aptly captures Mei’s experience: fingers plugging her ears, Mei is dwarfed by the title words (in large speech bubbles) and surrounded by illustrations of fake Chinese characters resembling angry, jeering faces. Each of the story’s three parts features panels and full pages of expressive black-and-white drawings highlighted with a different color: yellow for the warmth of a summer visit from Nai Nai, who teaches her granddaughter about tai chi and inner strength; red for Mei’s anger at being bullied and left alone to deal with Sid; and orange in the final section, for the optimism with which Mei decides to loudly convey her pride in being Taiwanese American. Sid’s written apology may also be optimistically imagined; still, Tsong’s (If I Were a Tree, rev. 7/21) debut novel is a well-crafted portrayal of a girl asking crucial questions about racism.

From the July/August 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.