The Chinese Groove

October 1, 2022

Burdened by the scorn heaped on his family and the ongoing grief of his widowed father, 18-year-old Shelley flees China's Yunnan Province and arrives hopefully in the United States, only to find his relatives there splintered and struggling and entirely uninterested in him. The only way to make his own dream come true is to work at bringing them together. From Iowa Short Fiction Award winner Ma, twice named a San Francisco Public Library Laureate.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 10, 2022
Ma (The Year She Left Us) returns with the vibrant story of a Chinese immigrant living in present-day San Francisco. Zheng Xue Li, known as Shelley, is 18 when his father sends him to study in the U.S.—as part of his deceased mother’s dream for him—and live with his rich uncle, Ted, whose family owns a store. Shelley hopes a new life in Ted’s household will provide the stability for him to pursue his dreams of becoming a poet and the status to help him win back his English ex-girlfriend, Lisbet, but his expectations are sunk upon arrival. Turns out Ted’s neither rich nor his uncle (he’s a second cousin), and Shelley can only stay for two weeks. Soon Shelley’s left to juggle school, a restaurant job, and life in a crowded rooming house—with a little help from the “Chinese groove,” or the unspoken connection among fellow Chinese immigrants. Though the episodic plot gets a bit unwieldy with its many side characters and hurdles—a cousin coming to collect a debt, an ever elusive Lisbet—Ma does a good job conveying the bonds of Shelley’s community and family. This immersive story is worth a look. Agent: Stacy Testa, Writers House.

Starred review from November 15, 2022
This rollicking contemporary picaresque about a young Chinese man's adventures in 2015 America offers a fresh take on the Chinese immigrant experience while confronting universal issues surrounding family, grief, and how to define success. Eighteen-year-old narrator Zheng Xue Li, nicknamed Shelley for the poet, is happy with his modest life in Yunnan Province. His English teacher, Miss Chipping-Highworth from Sussex, considers him her star pupil, and he has recently begun a romance with her niece, who's studying in China to avoid family problems. But years ago, Shelley's widowed, long-suffering father promised his dying wife he'd save their son from their impoverished life as members of a despised branch of the Zheng family; so he has borrowed money to pay Shelley's way to San Francisco. Shelley arrives with a student visa and three goals: Family, Love, Fortune. His eventful quest follows the path of Western literary heroes like Tom Jones and Huck Finn but also echoes the poor fisherman's adventures in Shelley's favorite Chinese tale, shared in full with the reader. Author Ma allows Shelley a comic, mildly satiric tone as he observes American culture with the sharp insights of an outsider who assumes everyone dissembles. Of course, nothing goes as Shelley planned. He quickly discovers the wealthy relatives he expected to pave his way are neither wealthy nor traditionally Chinese. U.S.-born cousin Ted Cheng (Americanized from Zheng), a journalist, and his Jewish wife, Aviva, introduce Shelley to a community that eschews boundaries of race, religion, and sexuality. Of deeper import, they have suffered a shocking tragedy that keeps them from fully embracing Shelley and that undercuts the novel's surface lightheartedness. While ever optimistic Shelley is more sophisticated than Americans realize, his evolving relationships with Aviva, Ted, and Ted's estranged father, Henry, force him to reassess his three stated goals as well as his unresolved relationship with his own father. Ma knows how to twist a plot in unexpected, deeply satisfying directions by writing with compassion, humor, and insight.

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Starred review from December 1, 2022
In January 2015, 18-year-old Shelley (sporting the name bequeathed by a beloved English teacher) leaves home in "the most beautiful realm in all of China." His father can no longer ignore the unprovoked abuse Shelley endures from their extended family and finally fulfills his promise to Shelley's late mother to send their only son "away from this unhappy life and into a brighter world." Relying on the titular Chinese groove that links even strangers as long as backgrounds overlap, Shelley lands in San Francisco to start anew with a "conveniently rich" uncle. That "uncle" turns out to be second-cousin-once-removed Ted, who picks him up in a "crapmobile," stops by Costco, and arrives at a modest "saltbox" to a party (not for Shelley) in progress. Ted's not-Chinese Jewish wife, Aviva, has already set a two-week limit for Shelley occupying the sagging downstairs sofa. Shelley prevails through English classes, boarding-house woes, homelessness, illegal green-bean prepping, elder-, child-, and dog-care, app development, and more. While reconnecting broken bonds, Shelley succeeds in accomplishing the "Three Achievables . . . Family, Love, Fortune," albeit eventually and not particularly resembling his initial expectations. Balancing humor and poignancy with seemingly effortless ease, Ma (The Year She Left Us, 2014) is a magnificent storyteller.

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