I had been wanting to read Hello Kitty Must Die for a while, and when I found out it was free at the Amazon Kindle store, I enthusiastically acquired and read it. In some ways, it was precisely what I expected: a dark, biting, satirical revenge fantasy. In other ways, though, it was both more and less than I expected. More in its twisted amorality, which was a refreshing change from so many heavy-handed moralistic crime stories. And less in the way I felt it failed to challenge many of the stereotypes it attempted to satirize.

Fiona Yu is a twenty-eight year old, Yale-educated law associate at a prestigious corporate firm in San Francisco. While she makes a six figure salary, she still lives with her Chinese parents, who own a Laundromat and continually set up their single daughter with an increasingly unappealing array of unmarried Chinese men, hoping to marry her off as soon as possible.

Contrary to her parents’ wishes, Fiona does not wish to marry or have children, and while she doesn’t particularly love practicing law, she does enjoy the myriad designer shoes and handbags she can buy. Despite the fact that she has no intention of letting any of the men her parents set her up with get past first base with her, Fiona is horrified to find out that she seems to have been born without a hymen. So horrified, in fact, that she decides to consult a vaginal reconstruction surgeon, who will charge her a mere $2500 for a new hymen.

Except that when the doctor steps into the examining room, he turns out to be one of Fiona’s best friends from Catholic school, a boy who taught Fiona how to stand up for herself to bullies and who was himself sent away when he set one girl’s hair aflame after she told everyone Sean was gay because he didn’t want to kiss her. Sean wasn’t gay; he just didn’t like hypersexualized females or bullies and was not averse to taking care of them in a not-so-polite way.

In the intervening years, Sean has become more proactive in dealing with his nemeses, while Fiona has become more and more reactive and passive aggressive. She used to get a kick scrambling up orders in her parents’ Laundromat, for example, to make it seem that a husband has been cheating on his wife. Unhappy couples, she felt, who needed a push toward divorce. Meeting Sean again reminds fires Fiona’s anger at her parents and their (in her mind) old-fashioned superstitions and cultural values. She is sick of being a “Hello Kitty,” a term for Asian American women who are seen as harmless and, ideally, as voiceless:

I hate Hello Kitty.

I hate her for not having a mouth or fangs like a proper kitty. She can’t eat, bite off a nipple or finger, give head, tell anyone to go and fuck his mother or lick herself. She has no eyebrows, so she can’t look angry. She can’t even scratch your eyes out. Just clawless, fangless, voiceless, with that placid, blank expression topped by a pink ribbon.

Poor Hello Kitty. Having to go around itchy, unlicked, un-scratched. Tortured by her own filth.

Like my mother.

Fiona doesn’t want to be like her mother, who “[a]fter nearly thirty years of marriage . . . still asks . . . for money to buy Payless shoes.” And in some ways she is not like her mother, at all. She has pictures of serial killers as her computer screen saver; her best friend is a serial killer who uses her to pick out his victims; and, at some point, Fiona refuses to tolerate the humiliation heaped on her by men.

It is this element of Hello Kitty Must Die that makes it a revenge fantasy. Sean, with whom Fiona has always been “half in love with” and half in fear with,” is exacting his own revenge on bullies like his father and “sluts” like his mother – “doing God’s work,” as Fiona puts it. There are many figures in Fiona’s life she would like to exact revenge on, and some seem to get theirs, while others don’t. Fiona is understandably enraged by the historical privileges afforded men, especially white men, and she spends much of the book skewering people like her parents for their old country superstitions, her anorexic, bleached-skin cousin, for telling Fiona she was too fat and too dark, her bosses, for demoralizing and harassing their associates and secretaries, and anyone else who is either a direct or indirect source of Fiona’s imprisonment in the dimensionless Hello Kitty stereotype. This aspect of the book is fueled by a refreshingly dark, twisted, and amoral sense of humor.

But Fiona is still her parents’ daughter. As much as she tells her parents she won’t marry any of the men they find for her, she continues to go out with every single one. If some of the people around Fiona seem to die early and unexpectedly, no one seems to notice anything amiss. Because Fiona is a “good girl” – she works 80 to 90 hour weeks at her firm and does what her parents say with only nominal resistance. She lets the reader know that the word for “yes” in Cantonese, “hai,” also means “cunt,” when said in a higher tone, so we know that every time she said “hai” to her father, she is aware of her abdication and her traditional place in the family as a daughter, not a son (or even the mother of sons).

This aspect of the book complicated the humor and stereotype-skewering for me, undermining the success of the dark satire. For example, when Fiona uses the word “hai” to her father, it felt like the affirmation of a Hello Kitty, rather than an independent, feminist woman who was trying to throw off the chains of her patriarchal Chinese-American upbringing. This image of Fiona as lacking agency – or, perhaps more accurately, abdicating agency – is reinforced by her decision to live at home so she could buy more designer shoes on her six figure salary. She feels so harassed by her parents’ old country superstitions and attitudes, and yet she willfully puts herself in a position of dutifully obeying her father’s truly hideous suitor choices and tolerating her mother’s passive acquiescence to a way of life that offends Fiona.

From this perspective, it becomes more difficult to completely sympathize with Fiona, or to simply vicariously enjoy her revenge fantasy. Comparing Fiona to her parents does not result in Fiona’s characterization as a stereotype-busting voice; to the contrary, Fiona becomes stereotyped in ways that similarly reinforces the very stereotypes her narrative superficially, at least, seems to critique. And because the satire exists at a relatively shallow level, I did not find enough self-awareness or self-consciousness in the narrative voice to view Fiona’s character, and her self-defeating critique, as meta. The irony of having a white male character be Fiona’s inspiration is not made less problematic by the fact that he is a serial killer abetted by Fiona’s own cultural victimization.

I have to admit that I had high expectations for Hello Kitty Must Die. Let’s face it; the title alone is killer. And the biting voice of the narrator is wonderfully entertaining for at least half the novel. The problems really become apparent as the narrative moves toward its ultimate completion, and various questions around where the story is taking Fiona and where it will leave her begin to weigh down the dark satire. It would be one thing if the shallowness of the narrative ensured an uncomplicated reading experience; although maintaining the reader’s engagement at that level requires substantial narrative control. The problem is that the issues on which the novel’s satire is built – gender, culture, family, various forms of morality – are already problematic enough to make impossible a purely superficial reading. Or, more accurately, they make impossible a purely superficial reading that shows the book in its best light.

There were also quite a few noticeable errors in the book, from Karl Malden spelled with a “C” to “cholericly” for either “colicky” or “choleric” (not sure which was intended) to simple typos I don’t think should be so prevalent in a professionally published book.

According to the bio at the back of the book (which highlights several superficial parallels between her life and Fiona’s), Hello Kitty Must Die is Choi’s first novel, and for me the narrative demonstrated a lack of maturity that made sense when I understood the book to be a debut work. Still, I have to evaluate it on its own terms, and on that basis, the book was ultimately a C read for me.

~ Janet

Goodreads | Amazon | BN | nook | Sony | Kobo

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1. REVIEW: Here Kitty, Kitty by Shelly Laurenston
2. REVIEW: Beyond the Dark by Angela Knight, Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, Diane Whiteside
3. Friday Film Review: Kitty

Here are a couple to start the thread:

• Eileen Wilks, Tempting Danger featuring Lily Yu, of Chinese descent.   Main protagonist.   Urban fantasy romance.
• Meljean Brook, Demon Moon featuring Savi Murray, of Indian descent.   Main protagonist. Urban fantasy romance.
• Jade Lee, The Concubine, historical set in China featuring two Chinese protagonists. Historical.
• Anne McAllister, Antonides’ Forbidden Wife, featuring Ally, half Japanese.   Main protagonist.   Straight contemporary.

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Yeah, you read the genre right. This one is truly a mixed bag but the magic is that first time director Alice Wu pulls it off so well. It’s got a great cast, wonderful location shots, a good score and best of all a top notch script for all to work with.

Surgical resident Wilhelmina ‘Wil’ Pang (Michelle Krusiec) heads off to Queens for yet another Friday night dance at what she calls “Planet China” during which she knows her widowed Ma (Joan Chen) will try and set her up with yet another Chinese son of one of her friends. Wil’s not interested in any of them except as friends but someone else catches her eye this particular night. Beautiful ballerina Vivian Shing (Lynn Chen) and Wil exchange glances but don’t get to talk until a few days later.

Vivian goes directly after what she wants but Wil still needs a little time to loosen up and accept the chance of a relationship. She’s also dealing with her mother moving in with her when her mother’s out of wedlock pregnancy is revealed causing Wil’s grandfather to throw his shameful daughter out of his house. Can Wil balance her career, her mother, her mother dating and seeing Vivian without losing her mind?

Alice Wu wrote the script as well as directed the film and since she’s of Chinese American descent as well as a lesbian, I would assume she knows what she’s talking about. After I watched the movie, I turned on the director’s commentary and enjoyed hearing Wu’s take on how she directed the film as well as tidbits about the culture being portrayed on screen. She says she wanted to show parts of NYC not often seen on screen as well as the perfect candy vending machine. You’ll have to watch the film to see how it’s incorporated into a flirting scene. The colors, lighting and shot selections are a visual delight.

Since Wil is supposed to be a busy surgical resident, I was glad to see that Wu had her be busy and make comments about lack of sleep. While I would have enjoyed seeing shots of Vivian in her dance world, I would guess budget constraints ruled that out.

I think the film is one that’s pretty open and accessible for people of all sexual persuasions. There is one sex scene between Wil and Vivian which is more tender than hot. They also share some kisses and apres sex cuddling but don’t look for raunch.

However, the lesbian relationship is not the solo in the film’s spotlight. There is also the plot thread about Wil’s Ma and how this pertains to her relationship with her elderly Chinese parents, her friends – aka the “Chinese biddies” (as Wil calls them) – , as well as the dating scene for middle aged women in NYC.

Ma isn’t telling who the father of her child is so her friends cut her socially as they worry about whether or not their husbands might have strayed with Ma. Her socially prominent father both worries about who will look after his daughter and her baby after he’s gone as well as feels shame in front of his peers for her actions. Wil’s lifestyle is getting cramped since Ma is now camping out in her apartment cooking Chinese food, commenting on Wil’s friends and watching Chinese soap operas.

As the film progresses, I noticed how Wu treats all her characters with dignity, gentle humor and compassion. No one is singled out to be the villain, the prat or the hero. No one’s lifestyle choices are either glorified or vilified. The situations simply “are” and we’re allowed to watch them unfold without being preached at. Some characters don’t accept Wil and Vivian’s relationship while others help foster it. Some characters are envious of Ma once the truth about her baby’s father is revealed while others are shocked.

Krusiac and Lynn Chen are wonderful to watch together as they “two steps forward and one step back” their relationship. Joan Chen is beautiful as always but she also gets to show Ma’s vulnerabilities while being exposed to NYC outside of the sheltered world she’s known. The scene before her first date lets her display her uncertainty at reentering the dating world at her age as well as showing Wil’s realization of her mother in this role.

I also love the mix of English and Mandarin (don’t worry, there are subtitles) as this mirrors what I used to hear while a former roommate of mine spoke with her Spanish mother on the phone.

“Saving Face” is a film that can be viewed on many levels. As a comedy, as a romance, as a view of immigrant society, as a family drama and as a GLBT film. The ending is more HFN though it has a slight touch of Hollywood “wrap up all the loose ends.” I’m disappointed to see that Alice Wu has only this film to her directing credit but I hope to eventually see more from her. In the meantime, check this one out for something special.

~Jayne

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Jalopnik provides a video of the Ford commercial catering to the just married Asian American and received expert commentary on the appeal to Asians from noted naked blogger and Asian American spokesperson, Jason Chen, of Gizmodo. (Those that don’t frequent Gizmodo may not realize that Mr. Chen enjoys sticking his electronics down his pants).

Ray Wert: Jason, focus here. I mean, he’s Asian-American (or maybe just Asian) and you’re Asian-American. You guys should know each other, right?

Jason Chen, AA Expert: I’ve been a little busy with blogging so I’ve missed the last few of our Asian American club meetings

Ray Wert: Yeah, I mean all you Asian-American people — you’re all the same, right?

Jason Chen, AA Expert: Oh yeah, totally

Jason Chen, AA Expert: In fact, that was me in the ad. I didn’t want to say anything

and

Ray Wert: Well, thank you for your time Jason. I’m sure the Asian-American people were glad to have you acting as their homogenous representative today.

Jason Chen, AA Expert: Not a problem. They always are. And if they have a problem with it they can take it up at the next meeting.

The comments, oh the comments, are the best:

By Davy G:

As an American of Irish descent, I am irrtated that our only representation in advertising tends to be leprechauns or people showering. Can’t a poor Mick have a hope of getting married one day? Ladies, I’ve got a pot of gold and a bar of soap. Anyone? Anyone?

Al Navarro:

Papercut-My actual wedding scenario was me getting married to a woman who is so white, when we vacationed the Philippines and visited my relatives in the provinces people thought she was a ghost. True story.

See, relevancy re: the aforementioned white guy/black ghost on the cover of the book?

and the response by PapercutNinja:

Davey all your people smell like waterfalls and whiskey. Good luck on landing a woman that’s into that.

Al- Do ghosts in the Phillipines have weird powers? In Chinese mythology ghosts can only hop. It’ll be hilarious if i ever bring my girlfriend back to the home country.

I can only wonder why more hopping ghosts haven’t found their way into paranormal romances. What are the authors waiting for?

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The thing I find in YA books is alot of painful honesty that makes us grin (or grimance) in remembrance of those “good old days.” Patty Ho explores the challenges of trying to fit in with her Asian and Caucasian heritages. She is too tall for an Asian girl and too Asain for the white boys. She has a difficult time socializing with her mother’s Tawainese friends and their children nor does she feel part of her predominately white high school population. She feels disconnected from her mother whose whole goal is to see Patty get into a major college like Abe. Abe, Patty’s older brother , has been accepted into Harvard increasing the already high expectations of her anxious mother. When a “Belly Button” fortune teller forsees a white man in Patty’s future, her mother ships her off to math camp.

The misfit archetype is common in young adult, chick lit and romance. It’s used again effectively here. At math camp, Patty begins to accept herself and realizes that she is more than just Asian or just Caucasian and that her heritage is something to be celebrated rather than decried. I wish I had learned that lesson before the age of 30. Patty realizes how liberating it is to be free of the expectations she imposed upon herself by the classifications of her race. Acceptance of herself leads to greater acceptance and understanding of her mother. Learning a big family secret doesn’t hurt either.

What I didn’t like about the books were the cutesy Asian metaphors that appeared on nearly every page. It appeared that you were trying too hard to remind us that Patty was Asian when it was patently obvious. Perhaps it was your way to convey humor and the first few times, it was funny and the rest of the times, it was more gimmicky.

The YA books that I like go beyond whether so and so can get someone to accompany her to the Spring Dance, although that is an important goal for any teenage girl. As the title suggests, however, Patty learns that the truth about her life isn’t found in dating the Asian guy or the White guy, but rather in finding her place amongst the competing ethnicities that she felt were battling against her. This was a solid B work for me.

Best regards,

Jane

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