A grandmother tells her granddaughter about her twisty, often surprising, journey to who she is now in this sweeping love story by Izzy Chen is dreading her family’s annual Chinese New Year celebration, where they all come together at a Michelin-starred restaurant to flaunt their status and successes in hopes to one up each other. So when her seventy-three-year-old glamorous and formidable grandmother walks in with a stunning woman on her arm and kisses her in front of everyone, it shakes Izzy to her core. She’d always considered herself the black sheep of the family for harboring similar feelings to the ones her Nainai just displayed. Seeing herself in her teenage granddaughter''s struggles with identity and acceptance, Magnolia Chen tells Izzy her own story, of how as a teen she was sent by her Indo-Chinese parents from Jakarta to Los Angeles for her education and fell in love with someone completely forbidden to her by both culture and gender norms--Ellery, an American college student who became Magnolia''s best friend and the love of her life. Stretching across decades and continents, Magnolia''s star-crossed love story reveals how life can take unexpected turns but ultimately lead you to exactly who you''re meant to be.

Autorentext

Jesse Q. Sutanto grew up shuttling back and forth between Indonesia, Singapore, and Oxford, and considers all three places her home. She has a masters from Oxford University. When she is not writing, she is gaming with her husband or making a mess in the kitchen with her two daughters.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

IZZY

Here's the thing about the Chen clan. There are a lot of things we don't seem to know how to do. We don't know how to keep secrets. We don't know how to handle conflict without resorting to passive aggression or emotional blackmail. And we don't know how to tackle situations without first blowing them out of proportion.

But one thing we do know is how to make an entrance. And the annual Chen family Chinese New Year celebration is the perfect time for spectacular entrances. Everyone is trying to one-up their rivals, and in my family, everybody has a rival.

Everybody, that is, except me.

Now don't get me wrong, it's not because I'm above all the strife and struggle that come with having to prove you're at the top of the family hierarchy. It's actually the opposite. I'm the misfit. The black sheep. And everybody knows it. There is no glory to be made by proving yourself better than me. To have a rivalry with me is akin to having a rivalry with a stink bug, or the lint on your clothes-what's the point?

I know my place. At the bottom. In the farthest corner. And this particular family gathering is no different. As always, while every member of my incredibly huge and loud family makes their entrance in the hugest and loudest possible way, I skitter in unnoticed-my head bowed low and my shoulders rounded-and head directly for the darkest section of the restaurant.

We don't do things by half measures, so for tonight's celebrations, we've booked an entire Michelin-starred restaurant-the first Chinese restaurant in Jakarta to receive a star-just for our family. The staff, dressed in qipaos, glide around with trays of Chinese New Year-themed cocktails and hors d'oeuvres, but I ignore even them, steadfastly burying my nose in my book. Not that I'm absorbing a single word; I've read the same paragraph three times in the last five minutes, and I still couldn't tell you what it's about. Every few minutes or so, there's a chorus of oohs and aahs, and I know that yet another cousin or aunt or uncle has arrived, looking even more fabulous than usual. I don't think my family knows how to look anything aside from fabulous, though that gene has unfortunately not expressed itself in my DNA. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

"Izzy," someone hisses.

The sound of my mother's voice makes my jaw clench instinctively. I keep my eyes set on the pages in front of me.

"Izzy, you're being rude," Mama says.

What else is new? I want to say to her. But the thing about being a spineless coward in a family of boisterous extroverts is you rarely say what you really want to. While my family has perfected the art of passive aggression (or in some cases aggressive aggression), my speed is more passive . . . passivity?

So I round my shoulders even more and let my head droop even lower. Maybe if I make myself as small as humanly possible, my mother might forget that I exist. Be distracted by something shiny. Like my cousin Florie, who looks like a human disco ball. I'm not saying that to be catty, by the way. She is literally wearing a disco ball, and you know what? She looks fucking fantastic. I utter a short prayer for Florie to strut over here so she can dazzle Mama. Or irritate Mama into whispering about her. I would be okay with either option.

"You're sixteen, not five. Can you please be normal and wish your elders Happy New Year?" Mama says.

This time, I do manage a comeback. "You shouldn't say stuff like 'be normal,'" I mumble. I'm doing Mama a favor. Our family company is expressly built on not saying stuff like "be normal." Nainai, my grandmother, hates it whenever Mama says things like that. Apparently, they used to be close when Mama was little, but over the years they drifted apart, and nowadays they butt heads more often than not.

Mama's mouth squeezes into a thin line. "You know what I mean, Izzy. Look at your brother."

I look. Troy is wearing a suit the color of "crushed burgundy," whatever that means. I'd said, "I don't think you can crush burgundy. It's not crushable. Do you mean crushed rose petals, maybe?" And he'd sighed and said, "Lil' Sis, you'll get it one day." Then he'd given me a very pointed once-over and added, "Maybe."

Right now, he's chatting with his usual easy charm to Uncle Thomas and a couple in their forties who I don't recognize. Probably Uncle Thomas's friends that he invited to show off our lavish celebration. The Chen clan's Chinese New Year dinners are known in our circles for being the celebration to earn an invite to. Everyone has brought friends and friends of friends. There are over a hundred guests here tonight, each of them dressed to the nines, and if this isn't hell, I don't know what is. It doesn't help that this year is the year of the green wood pig. I was born sixteen years ago, which makes me a white metal monkey. Incompatible in every way with this year. It's going to be a very unlucky year for me, I just know it.

"Why can't you be more like Troy?" Mama sighs.

"You really shouldn't say that," I say. Mumble mumble. I bet she can't even hear me above the din. She really should know better. We pride ourselves on being the premier family-oriented mental health facility in the country, and all the stuff Mama is saying to me is very much not sanctioned by the company's philosophy. Not that she gives a crap. Or maybe she's just desperate, because she and Papa have tried all the methods our certified therapists swear by, and none of them have worked on me. I am method-proof. So she's had to revert to good old Asian parenting. Guilt trips. Humiliation. Comparison. According to Mama, these are tried-and-true methods every Chinese parent is familiar with.

I hope I'm not coming across as a bratty teen. I mean, I'm sixteen, and that is a hideous age to be, but I'm not awful. Or at least, I don't want to be. I don't mean to be a rebel; I think to be a rebel, you need to believe in a cause. But I don't believe in any causes. Is that a terrible thing to admit? I know I'm supposed to be filled with a righteous flame. I should be hungry to make a difference in the world. My classmates are always passionate about something. Climate change, human rights, women's rights. I think they're all important, but I just can't summon up the passion for anything, aside from wanting to be left…