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High school senior Maya works at her parents’ restaurant, takes a ton of AP classes, and tutors “students who are…not so much like” her, as Principal Davis puts it. Unfortunately for Maya, the student she had been tutoring just got an A on his latest math test and his parents refuse to pay for any more tutoring. So Principal Davis assigns Maya to another student. Camden King. Ew.

Camden King is rich, hot, popular, lazy, and generally content to coast along on these traits alone. During his second “tutoring” session with Maya, he offers her $100 to do his math homework. Good girl that she is, Maya refuses. But when her parents leave her in charge of their restaurant, setting off a chain of events that leads to a $10,000 fine from the Health Department, Maya freaks out.

Maya knows that cheating is wrong, but she fears the alternative is worst. Afraid her family can’t afford the fine and believing that since it’s her fault, she should be responsible for paying it off, Maya thinks doing Camden’s homework is the only choice she has if she wants to pay off the fine without her parents finding out about it. When Camden tells a couple of his friends that he’s paying someone to do his homework and they want in, Maya recruits a couple of her friends to help do all the homework, and the whole thing turns into a cheating ring.

It’s only February, but Cherry Cheva’s She’s So Money gets my vote for funniest book of the year. Who knew a book about 1) a smart good girl and 2) cheating could be so hilarious? (Although—and I think this should be totally obvious, but I’m going to say it anyway—if you don’t think cheating should ever a laughing matter, you should probably skip this book.) While the book is seriously funny, it never devolves into slapstick or being funny just for the sake of being funny. The humor gives us insight to the characters, and it’s the kind of sarcastic and, okay, rather sitcomish funny repartee you always wished you were capable of coming up with in your own life.

“Nice butt,” Camden said from behind me. I quickly sat up. “Too bad your personality doesn’t match it,” he added.

“And too bad your brains don’t match your dad’s bank account,” I shot back. “If they did, we wouldn’t be here.”

Camden stared at me for a moment, opening his mouth and then closing it again before breaking into a grin. “Wow,” he finally said as he got out a mechanical pencil and started clicking it noisily. “You’re an interesting one. Most girls are so stunned by this whole business”—he waved the pencil at himself—”that they can’t even attempt to be bitchy.”

“Well, I’m not and I can,” I said.

“I don’t know if I like you or hate you.”

“Hate me. It’ll make us even,” I said. “Now shut up and open your math book.”

And do you know how hard it was to pick just one part to quote? (Okay, two, with the line from Principal Davis.) Again, this is one funny book. But… She’s So Money is also one of those books that I really enjoyed as I read it but did not quite hold up upon further reflection. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the book a lot and, obviously, think it’s an absolute riot, but I somehow didn’t love it *after* finishing it the way I loved reading it. If that makes sense. Still, I am definitely looking forward to more books by Cherry Cheva, and I’m sure teens will, too, once they’ve read She’s So Money.

Read an interview with Cherry Cheva at the HarperTeen site. Also reviewed by Reader Rabbit and The Story Siren.

A guest post by Sherri L. Smith

Take a minute to answer this question: If you had one last meal, what would it be? This is one of my favorite dinner party questions. The answer can tell you a lot about someone. Sure, people will ramble, name a dozen items, some of them gourmet dishes from a favorite restaurant, some of them once in a lifetime treats from a vacation overseas, but in the end, if they are like most people, they will end up naming something from their childhood. Something their mother used to make. You can understand, of course, the desire for comfort food if it is indeed your last meal. But, I think it is more than that. It’s an assertion of self, of our origins.

My latest book, Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, is founded on the two great loves of my life—my husband, and food. In the book, 14-year-old Ana Shen struggles to bring two sides of her family—African American and Chinese American—together to make the perfect meal to celebrate her eighth-grade graduation. Like Ana’s mother, I am black, like her father, my husband is Chinese. The idea of Ana was born from my own daydreams of our future children. As a biracial couple, we faced a few hurdles from other people, but we each knew who we were, who we wanted to be. How different would it be for our children, with a foot in each world? How would they assert who they were? These were uncomfortable questions. So, I looked for comfort, and found it in food.

Food is a mother language. Like Latin, it shares its roots with a hundred different cultures. The ingredients are the same—it’s how we express them that is different. Beans and rice is a very southern American dish, if the beans are red and the rice is long grain. Change the beans to black beans, season it with lime and garlic instead of onions and parsley, and it’s a Cuban dish. Fry those same beans twice, remove the lime and add tomato paste, and you have a Mexican dish. Use mung beans and you could have a Caribbean or Chinese meal. Grind the red beans into a paste, and ground the rice into flour for mochi, and you have the makings of a sweet Japanese or Chinese dessert.

This alchemy of food reduces the degrees of separation in a culture, and shows the migratory paths of our ancestors. Chinese workers who built the Pacific railroad tracks from California to Mexico settled in Mexico and changed the way a region cooks. African slaves brought through the Caribbean to the port of New Orleans for sale added their flavors of pepper and okra to the Spanish fish stews and French bouillabaisses to create gumbo and Creole cooking. If Hot, Sour, Salty Sweet was born out of a desire to glimpse the future of what a child of mine might be like, then food was a natural backdrop on which to let it play out. Ultimately, it’s not just the meal they prepare, but the legacy of the food itself that brings Ana and her family together. Each dish in the book tells us a little about the character who made it, who they are today, who they used to be. It is literally what her family brings to the table to share with Ana.

So, if you had one last meal, what would it be? Write down your answer, and then trace back to the beginning of that meal’s family tree. When did you first eat it? Who cooked it for you? Who taught them how to make it? Even if you think the story is short and simple, you will find that it isn’t, and that who “you” are is much bigger than you ever knew. And that is the lesson every child should learn.

Other stops on Sherri L. Smith’s blog tour:
February 11, 2008 @ Finding Wonderland
February 18, 2008 @ Bildungsroman
February 26, 2008 @ Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast
February 28, 2008 @ The Brown Bookshelf

About Sherri: Sherri L. Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois and spent most of her childhood reading books. She currently lives in Los Angeles, where she has worked in movies, animation, comic books and construction. Sherri’s first book, Lucy the Giant, was an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults in 2003. Translated into Dutch as Lucy XXL (Gottmer, 2005), her novel was awarded an Honorable Mention at the 2005 De Gouden Zoen, or Golden Kiss, Awards for Children’s Literature in the Netherlands. Sherri’s second novel, Sparrow, was chosen as a National Council for the Social Studies/Children’s Book Council Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People. Hot Sour Salty Sweet (Random House, 2008) is her third novel. She is currently at work on Flygirl, an historical YA novel set during World War II.

Hi. My name is Paula Yoo. I am a 15-year-old white suburban punk rocker video game-playing boy trapped in the body of a 30something female Korean American.

That was my politically incorrect joke for many years. I grew up in the ’80s, obsessed with the late ’70s punk and early ’80s New Wave scenes of London, New York, and LA. Today, I own an Xbox 360 instead of an Atari.

But… I was also a teenager ashamed of her Asian heritage.  I was born in America and spoke perfect English.  My parents were born in Korea and spoke with a slight accent.  They loved kimchee.  I loved Big Macs.  Part of this embarrassment and shame stemmed from being one of very few people of color in a small conservative town in Connecticut.  I remember being made of fun – and judged unfairly – because of the color of my skin.

Fortunately, I later attended a more diverse college setting where I learned to embrace my Korean heritage. A lot of my Asian American friends have shared similar ethnic self-hatred and coming-of-cultural-age experiences.

So I lived happily ever after, right?

Not really. What I hadn’t realized was all those years of unfortunate racial self-hatred would still have an effect on my writing.

See, ever since I devoured E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web in the 1st grade, I have always wanted to be a writer. When I finally wrote my own stories, all my characters were white. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that – the greatest privilege about being a writer is that you can write about anything and anyone! My characters ranged from a medically depressed and unhappily married young mother living in New Orleans to a stoner college freshman in love with his roommate’s girlfriend.

These short stories received much praise from my creative writing professors. But they also told me something was missing… where was my voice? There still has to be some truth in fiction – but in my fiction, the truth was nowhere to be found.

Maybe I needed to live life first in order to become a better fiction writer? So I studied the human race through the lens of an objective journalist for the next nine years. I then received a prestigious fellowship to study creative writing at an MFA program. Upon graduation, ironically, I became a TV drama screenwriter instead of a novelist because I had a gift for writing dialogue… and being a TV junkie didn’t hurt! I wrote everything from NBC’s Emmy-award winning political drama “THE WEST WING” to FOX’s cult sci-fi series “TRU CALLING.” I was adept at imitating other people’s voices – I could easily capture and mimic the show creator’s writing style and voice, which is a necessary skill required for TV writers.

But I still didn’t have my own voice!

In April 2004, several writers and I were laid off from a soon-to-be-cancelled TV series thanks to low ratings. I had two choices - wallow in unemployed self-pity or take advantage of the rare free time and write.

So on May 1, 2004, I sat down in front of my laptop and wrote: “You’ve heard the joke, right? Why is a viola better than a violin? It burns longer.” I wrote until 4 a.m. about a violin audition I had in high school. (I studied the violin growing up and am still an active professional freelance musician today.)

I couldn’t stop. I wrote EVERY SINGLE DAY for 16 hours straight. I’d stumble into bed around dawn and wake up around 11 a.m. and just plop myself down in front of my laptop and start typing.

This continued for five weeks. During the first week of June, sometime around dawn, I wrote the final sentence at the bottom of page 300 of my completed novel and burst into tears.

I realized this was the first time I had ever written anything featuring a Korean American female character. GOOD ENOUGH’s main character, Patti Yoon, was ME. Okay, so she’s not 100 percent me – I’m nowhere nearly as smart as Patti and she can play circles around me on her violin! And who knew Patti’s Korean immigrant parents would play such a huge role in the novel? I had always scoffed at the “Joy Luck Club” phenomenon of Asian American authors writing these weepy tragic novels about how they suffered racism in intolerant small all-white towns and how their parents suffered even worse tragedies in fill-in-blank-Asian-country-here.

All joking aside, of course I respect these novels! We need these experiences, unique perspectives, and multicultural voices to keep our literature alive and vital. But I never thought I would write an “Asian American” novel. I thought my Great American novel would be about a migrant family of farm workers escaping the dustbowl of Oklahoma to pick grapes in California… oh wait. Sorry. Steinbeck already wrote that!

Clearly GOOD ENOUGH was inspired by my life growing up as a geeky violin-playing outcast who didn’t go to Prom. But instead of focusing on teen angst, I had found myself laughing at my own memories and realizing how funny high school really was. So that’s what I ended up writing. I never approached the book with a multicultural mission. I never intended this to be a novel preaching about the stereotypes of the Asian American model minority myth or about the cultural difficulty in communicating with immigrant parents.

But at the same time, my novel is not solely about cultural issues. In the end, it’s just a story about a girl named Patti. She could be any ethnicity/race. The book’s universal theme is… what makes us happy? Who can’t relate to that?

As for my happily-ever-after ending? I finished the revisions and submitted my novel to my literary agent. Three weeks later, he sold it to HARPERCOLLINS. And today, February 5, 2008, my YA novel GOOD ENOUGH debuts in bookstores across the country.

And sure, sometimes I still feel like a 15-year-old white suburban punk rocker video game-playing boy. One day I will write a novel about that mischievous boy and the troublesome scrapes he finds himself in!

But you know what? I had to write GOOD ENOUGH first. By discovering the truth hidden inside myself and unlocking my own authentic voice, I became a better writer. Now I can truly explore the lives of other characters with confidence and compassion. They say, “Write what you know.” I say, “Figure out what you know first before you start writing.” And then you can write about anyone… and anything. Trust me – once you find your own voice, there’s a whole world out there, just waiting for you to discover it!

About Paula: Okay, I admit it. Like Patti Yoon, I play the violin. Yes, I was concertmaster of my Connecticut All-State High School Orchestra. And I snuck out occasionally to see a couple of cool bands (sorry, Mom & Dad). But this novel is a work of fiction. Although I too was forced to undergo a really bad home perm, it burned my left ear, not my right. And there was a cute guy in my homeroom who played rock guitar and asked me to work on a few songs with him, but his name was not Ben Wheeler. When I’m not writing novels that allegedly have nothing to do with my personal life, I also write TV scripts. I was born in Virginia and grew up in Connecticut. I’ve also lived in Seoul, Korea; New York; Seattle; and Detroit. I now live in Los Angeles with my husband, who plays guitar—and yes, we jam occasionally, just like Patti and Ben.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

A few weeks ago, Paula left a comment on my post comparing the description of her brand new (out today!) book Good Enough with She’s So Money by Cherry Cheva. I found her comments interesting and thought-provoking, especially when she said, “this is the first piece of fiction I have ever written where the character was Korean American.” I asked if she’d like to write a guest post for us, and she agreed. Thanks, Paula, for taking the time to share this with us.

After reading Justina Chen Headley’s Girl Overboard, I was finally able to articulate exactly what my problem with most YA books involving Asian-American protagonists is. Too often, it seems like the protagonist’s race/ethnicity/culture matters only when it’s a problem.

The majority of books about Asian-Americans that I’ve read (or tried to read) seemed to me primarily about the protagonist’s identity as an Asian-American instead of being about a person trying to figure out they really are, with their ethnicity as part of their identity. I mean, they were books about people who were discriminated against, ashamed of their ethnicity and culture, or dealing with immigrant parents. They were books about characters who were Asian-American first, not books about a rich girl or a smart girl or girl in love, a girl who’s not struggling with her ethnicity but more universal concerns. Which is probably why I seem to be in the minority of bloggers who didn’t love Headley’s debut novel, Nothing but the Truth (and a Few White Lies). Headley’s second novel has just been published, and while I didn’t love Girl Overboard either, I did really like it. And I’m sure this is largely because Syrah Cheng’s problems don’t stem from the fact that she’s Chinese-American, but because her father is a billionaire.

This does not mean culture is ignored, because it definitely isn’t. The fact that Syrah’s family is Chinese is an important part of the story and Headley doesn’t skimp on cultural details. But I can easily imagine a book about a rich white girl dealing with the same problems—powerful and neglectful parents, hateful half-siblings, a male best friend she might have more than friendly feelings for but is in danger losing anyway despite not doing anything about those feelings, and a dream of making a name for herself as more than just Rich Guy’s daughter. And to me, the essence of Girl Overboard has nothing to do with Syrah’s ethnicity. While their Chinese heritage is an intrinsic part of Syrah and her family, it’s not a problem she has to overcome. Girl Overboard is a story about a girl finding herself and an inner strength she never knew was there, and discovering that she’s not as alone as she thought. The problems with her parents aren’t your stereotypical Asian parent problems, but your more stereotypical rich parent problems. It just so happens that those parents happen to be Chinese.

So there I was, pleased that I was finally able to put my finger on what bothered me so much about other books when I read a book with a hapa protagonist about whom you could argue race was the cause of her problems. Or at least the cause of tension. And I ended up enjoying that book, too.

In Sherri L. Smith’s Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, Ana Shen’s grandparents don’t get along too well. Her Chinese-American father’s parents and African-American mother’s parents will eat together. Just don’t ask them to cook together. But when Ana’s best friend spontaneously invites Ana’s crush, (the Japanese-American!) Jamie Tabata, to dinner at Ana’s house, disaster looms. Both her grandmothers are accomplished cooks, so of course both must prepare dishes for dinner. After all, it’s not every day that you celebrate your graduation from eighth grade. Ana loves both her grandmothers, but the competition between them, especially on her Nai Nai’s (Chinese grandmother) side, makes things difficult for the entire family.

Besides the gentle humor, and the fact that food is a major part of the book, I think what made Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet work for me is that the tension is not so much within Ana, but 1) between her grandmothers, and 2) between Jamie Tabata’s father and, well, basically Ana’s entire family. There was a moment where Smith had me worried about the direction of the story, but it quickly passed and I was very relieved that my fears weren’t realized.

Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet takes place over the course of one afternoon, so the scope of the story is not as large as that of Girl Overboard. I think this is the main reason I liked Girl Overboard more than Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, but as different as the two books are, I still enjoyed and would recommend them both.

I suppose what I said at the beginning, that Asian-American protagonists’ race/ethnicity/culture seeming to matter only when it’s a problem, is still true, at least among books I’ve tried to read in the past. But I’m glad that I found a book where this is not the case, as well as a book I enjoyed, arguably despite this. I’ve got three more books I’m looking forward to reading with Asian-American protagonists (all about girls. Where are the books with Asian-American guys as protagonists?), so I really hope this trend of me being able to actually finish and enjoy these books continues.

If you’re looking for an actual review of Girl Overboard, head on over to Jen Robinson’s Book Page, Dear Author, or Bookshelves of Doom. Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet has been reviewed by Little Willow.

In the next two months, at least five YA books featuring Asian-American or part Asian-American protagonists will be published. Shocking, isn’t it? I mean, that’s almost like a whole year’s worth of what typically gets published. Two of these books will be published by HarperTeen two weeks apart. At least, I think HarperTeen is publishing two books about Asian-Americans.

 vs.

Here’s Good Enough by Paula Yoo (February 5, 2008), the one that is for sure about an Asian-American:

How to make your Korean parents happy:

1. Get a perfect score on the SATs.
2. Get into HarvardYalePrinceton.
3. Don’t talk to boys.*

Patti’s parents expect nothing less than the best from their Korean-American daughter. Everything she does affects her chances of getting into an Ivy League school. So winning assistant concertmaster in her All-State violin competition and earning less than 2300 on her SATs is simply not good enough.

But Patti’s discovering that there’s more to life than the Ivy League. To start with, there’s Cute Trumpet Guy. He’s funny, he’s talented, and he looks exactly like the lead singer of Patti’s favorite band. Then, of course, there’s her love of the violin. Not to mention cool rock concerts. And anyway, what if Patti doesn’t want to go to HarvardYalePrinceton after all?

Paula Yoo scores big in her hilarious debut novel about an overachiever who longs to fit in and strives to stand out. The pressure is on!

*Boys will distract you from your studies.

And She’s So Money by Cherry Cheva (January 22, 2008):

Question: What do you get when you take . . .

1 overachieving girl + 1 insanely cute guy + 1 massive fine + 1 scheme involving a little dishonesty and a whole lot of cash?

I’ve always been the good girl—working seriously long hours at my family’s restaurant and getting straight As. And Camden King was always just that hot, popular guy I’d pass in the halls, whose ego was probably much bigger than his brain. I didn’t think there’d ever be a reason for us to actually, like, interact.

Then again, I never thought I’d mess up so badly that my family might lose our entire restaurant if I didn’t come up with a ton of money, and fast. So that’s where Camden comes in—he and his evil/genius plan to do kids’ homework for cash.

I know cheating’s wrong, but it’s better than being dead, right? Which is what I’d be if my parents knew about what happened. I never expected things to spin so far out of control. Or that I’d be such a sucker for Camden’s lopsided grin. Or that falling apart could be the best thing that ever happened to me.

Answer: The time of my life.

Okay, so there is no mention of race or ethnicity in the She’s So Money book description, but one of the Library of Congress subject headings assigned to the book is Thai Americans––Fiction, so I’m assuming that it is about an Asian-American after all.

Anyway, if there’s one thing guaranteed to make me not want to read a book (besides seeing the words vampire and/or werewolf on a romance novel), it’s a YA book that seems to be primarily about an Asian-American struggling with the high academic expectations of strict parents. So no offense to Paula Yoo, who I’m sure is a very lovely person, but my initial reaction to the Good Enough description and the Booklist review of it in the November 15 issue was, I may buy it for my library, but there is no way I’m reading this. Because, really, don’t we already have enough books like this? But then I read Little Willow’s review, and I think she just convinced me to give it a try. Especially because, spam. That does intrigue me.

She’s So Money, on the other hand, I’ve been totally looking forward to since I first read the book description, before I even knew that it just might be about an Asian-American. I’d like to think it’s because it just sounds a lot more fun and that, even though the protagonist is smart, her parents are mentioned only in the context of them owning a restaurant. You know, nothing about them wanting their daughter to attend HarvardYalePrinceton or become a DoctorLawyerEngineer. But I do wonder, if Good Enough didn’t mention the fact that Patti is Korean, would I be more inclined to read it? Because while I do want to read more books with Asian-American characters, combine Korean (or Chinese or Japanese or any other kind of Asian) with parental expectations of the academic or professional sort and I immediately lose interest. I personally would much rather read about a character who just happens to be Asian-American, or who may be a stereotypical smart overachiever after all, but whose problems have less to do with parental expectations than, well, anything else. Something else. And She’s So Money simply seems more like that type of book.

So there you go. Two ways to get me to read a book about an Asian-American. 1) Downplay the whole race/ethnicity issue, or 2) Make sure spam is an important enough part of the book that two different reviewers mention it. Or, you know, if a book actually meets all five points I mention here.