Kevin Chong

A Novel

Double Life of Benson Yu

Angelyn Francis

It took me some time to sort through the parallel worlds but it is overall a fun, brain-bending ride!

Minh Ngo

TW: Suicide ideation and implied child sexual abuse
Thank you to NetGalley, the publishers Simon & Schuster, Atria Books, and the author Kevin Chong for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. 

The blurb compares Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, and the comparison is apt as Yu and Chong are writing similar themes of Chinese-American representation, Asian masculinity, Chinatown, boyhood/childhood, and fatherhood. Chong's novel is also similar to the upcoming book Flux as well, and while Flux uses the time-traveling framework to frame these themes, Yu and Chong use a meta-narrative aspect. Chong's writing echoes past works such as Frank Chin's The Chickencoop Chinaman, The Year of the Dragon, and Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men. Chong's meta-narrative is especially effective in rewriting and confronting childhood trauma, and how recreating sites of trauma into art can be empowering. The use of Japanese martial arts karate and Samurais serves as a representation of Asian masculinity and for approximation to Western masculinity. Benson embraces karate and Samurai as a form of assimilation politics as well. he actively avoids kung-fu and desires not to be like his Dad but becomes a terrible parent by being an alcoholic. By the end, Benson rewrites Benny's politics and gives him closure with Constantine, a closure that he'll never get from his abuser in real life, Benny remains firmly positioned in Chinatown and closer to his Chinese heritage through his Aunt, Steph. Overall, Chong's work is a great addition to Asian diaspora literature.

A complex web of a book where a sliding doors type comic book story folds on itself. A boy who has no one but his grandmother, loses her and is worried he will end up in a worse situation if people find out. He is taken in by a man in his apartment complex who teaches him martial arts, a samurai. Or is that the story. A man writes a comic about a boy who loses his grandmother and is taken in by a samurai, to re-write his own story of child abuse by a man he learned martial arts from as a boy. The boy in the comic book has an absentee father. He writes comics. Who are they too each other?

Double Life of Benson Yu A Novel

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