I don’t want to speak for anyone but myself, but I don’t have much interest in coming out stories in my queer YA. Coming out stories are important and powerful, but in some ways they’ve been obscuring other aspects of the lives of queer people. Lately, I’ve been more into stories where the sexuality of the main character is central to the book, but not at all central to the book’s conflict. I’ve seen this most in fantasy, in books like Crier’s War by Nina Varela or Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. The author has license to make up a world where who the main character loves is not an issue.
What I’ve been realizing, though, is that queer fiction set in our world is almost always going to have some component of coming out or identity exploration to it, because queer lives in our world almost always do as well. With that in mind, I’ve been looking for books that handle this well. To me, that means telling a story more about the character’s exploration of their own identity, rather than how it relates to people around them like their family or friends (although this will always be a part of it). In this light, Last Night at the Telegraph Club, by Malinda Lo, might be my new standard to judge coming out books by.
A quick blurb: In 1950s Chinatown, Chinese-American teenager Lily Hu is captivated by a newspaper ad for male impersonator Tommy Andrews, who performs at the Telegraph Club, but would likely never do anything about it- until she discovers her classmate, Kath, has been to the Telegraph Club before. Would Lily like to go there with Kath, sometime, maybe? Over her senior year of high school, Lily discovers who she is, who she loves, and what her life might look like, against a backdrop of Communist anxiety amid post-war prosperity.
I loved a whole lot about this book, but I want to focus on a few things in particular I thought were really good: Lily’s journey of self-discovery, a realistic coming-out story, and great historical details that made me want to learn more.
Book Twitter has joked about the amount of ‘noticing’ that happens in this book, but it’s important: Lily’s self-discovery is about noticing things, and noticing what she notices. Sorry for that confusing sentence, I’ll clarify: from the beginning of the book, Lily is noticing things that her friends might not. Her noticing the picture of Tommy Andrews is the catalyst of the plot, and we can see through her 3rd person narration that she’s noticing the clothes women wear, or the way Kath’s hands feel in hers. She also mostly doesn’t notice boys: the author seems to have taken care to very rarely describe boys visually or in much detail, because that’s not what Lily is noticing. From the very beginning, it’s clear to the reader that Lily isn’t straight, even if she doesn’t know it yet. The real discovery happens as Lily becomes aware of what she’s noticing: a romance novel with two women she can’t stop reading snippets of, or the slightly masculine way that Kath is dressing.
Of course, as Lily discovers herself and her identity, it will affect her relationships, and the 1950s weren’t a good time to be queer. I was worried that the coming out story of the book was going to be one of two things: fake, where Lily finds full acceptance from her family despite the era and circumstances, or too brutal, where Lily gets caught and suffers. Instead, something in between happens, in a way that honestly really surprised me. I can’t say too much without spoilers, but the way things unfold caught me off-guard in how complex everyone’s reaction was. Characters weren’t split into ‘supportive’ and ‘not-supportive’ factions– there was at least a little bit of both in everyone. That felt realistic and truthful in a way that some coming out stories have not felt, to me personally at least.
Finally, the historical parts of this book are amazingly vivid and well-researched. I knew some about the Communist takeover of China, but I’d never thought much about how it would be perceived from America, or how it might affect Chinese-Americans. The minutiae of San Francisco, as seen by a Chinese-American teenager going to illegal lesbian bars, make it come alive as a real place and time. I don’t read much historical fiction but this book has made me look for a couple more like it to read this year. Lo also has a few pages at the back of the book that summarize some of her research. I usually skip these, to be quite honest, but I read them this time because the book had made me want to know more!
My one reservation in recommending this book is that, while amazing and moving, it’s not a particularly light read. Beyond some mild sexual content and a difficult ending, Lily and Kath are lying about their age to get into a bar, and as a result have some questionable interactions with adults who should know better. Nothing bad happens to either of them on this front, but it was a little bit uncomfortable for me to read, even as an adult. I’ve been trying to read more light stuff lately, with the real world as heavy as it is, but if you have the emotional budget for a book that will make you cry a bit I’d highly recommend Last Night at the Telegraph Club.
The TL;DR
What: Last Night at the Telegraph Club, by Malinda Lo
Who should read it: Older teens who like historical fiction and/or queer fiction
Why they should read it: Great characters, ‘gritty’ realism without being edgy, excellent queer #OwnVoices
(everyone should read Malinda Lo, if not this book read Ash)
Posted by Newman-Johnson Charlie at 12:58 pm