Queen of the Night

I've made it about two thirds of the way through Alexander Chee's Queen of the Night. Emily Temple described it as follows:

Chee’s opulent romp is narrated by a star of the Paris Opera—with, of course, a complicated past. The perfect novel to whisk you away for hours on end.

I picked Chee's novel as my first reading for Asian Heritage month, but I think it is important to remember that not all Asians are the same. Chee explored this in an essay in Guernica:

If there’s one experience common to being Korean American, it seems to me, it is that we all put each other through a test of authenticity, at least once. Do you speak Korean? Did you go to Korean school? Korean language camp? Can you curse in Korean? How spicy can you take your food? I remember asking a group of Korean acquaintances, at a bar night out in Koreatown, in New York, for the translation of a word. They said, Oh sure. Chok-ka. Which means, more or less, Take out your dick. It wasn’t the word I was looking for.

Luckily, I had learned to fact-check.

Koreans in Korea aren’t like this. In the many times I’ve visited, I’ve never been tested by them, and my shortcomings as a Korean American were often laughed off. If anything, I’m treated as simply American: they explain what we’re eating, even though I’ve been eating it as long as I’ve known them, since birth. This is Kimchi, it’s kind of spicy, they tell me. They want me to know what they know, and I watch as they eventually contradict each other.

My sense of Korea is a highly subjective one, related to me by my family, and as such, imperfect and partial. My visits to them, living with them, that was my Korean school. It included not being taught Korean. I was supposed to exhibit certain Korean ideals (be hardworking, good, sober, top of your class) but as an American (you speak English, you fit in, you have friends).

I also recommend this New Yorker article about him.