Book No. 74 of 2020
Believe it or not, this YA novel was one of the hardest books for me to get through this year, and I’ve been reading some REALLY dark stuff. Parachutes follows two ambitious Asian students at an elite Californian prep school who grapple with navigating sexual assault and harassment and the implications that speaking up have on their futures. Yang depicts not only the trauma of the transgressions themselves, but also the deeply infuriating aftermath: the predators depicting themselves as victims and whining that they got “me-too’ed,” administrators choosing to punish students for speaking up, the shaming by other students, the survivors weighing the cost of their futures against the faint possibility of justice, etc.
In addition to very deftly depicting some very real and close-to-home issues, Yang also manages to illustrate a shocking amount of nuance re: the non-monolithic Asian and Asian American experiences in America. We see the tensions between ABCs and wealthy international Chinese students (who have understandably opposing views on performing their heritage), and the fact that both groups are tarred with the same type of racism. There’s also the tension between the more privileged students and a Southeast Asian daughter of a single mother who does not have the financial privilege that the East Asian students have. There’s a non-crazy-rich Chinese international student whose poverty puts her in (legitimately stressful) danger that the wealthy international students can’t even fathom. There is no model minority mythmaking, and even the side characters are given more complexity than you’d expect, given that they are initially introduced as recognizable archetypes. The marketing for this book that I’ve seen, selling it as “Crazy Rich Asians meets Gossip Girl” is really doing this book a disservice imho.
The strength of the writing is in the aforementioned issues that it covers, which imo is worth the price of admission; because the plot moves at such a clipped pace, the main protagonists are not given a ton of depth or unique characteristics, and there’s a lot of depicting-through-summarizing.
This is not a book where you fall in love with the characters or experience that “I felt infinite” power, but I think it’s a very necessary book for how directly and accurately it depicts something that, sadly, way too many young women have to deal with. (It also depicts predatory grooming in a way that I think would be really helpful for young teens to read; as a young teen I didn’t recognize grooming when I saw it, even though the signs are horrifically obvious to me now.)
Also, I have to say that I am so impressed with the YA fiction available these days; I felt so unseen by YA as a teen and wish these books existed a decade ago.
Similar Reads
Abigail Hing Wen’s Loveboat, Taipei for more nuanced Asian-American-centered YA, although Loveboat is waaaaay lighter in tone.
Will I ever not recommend Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings? No, I will not.
The brick wall of administrative unhelpfulness and complicity reminded me of Susan Fowler’s account of academia in Whistleblower.
I think this book would pair well with Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, which I will also never not recommend, for its exploration of the aftermath of trauma and the journey of seeking justice and speaking up.