Reviews tagging 'Adult/minor relationship'
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
25 reviews
ghostlyprince's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
Graphic: Outing, Racial slurs, Racism, Lesbophobia, Alcohol, and Homophobia
Moderate: Deportation, Toxic friendship, and Abandonment
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Police brutality, and Hate crime
some_random_person_hi's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Graphic: Homophobia, Lesbophobia, and Alcohol
Moderate: Toxic friendship, Gaslighting, Grief, Cultural appropriation, Deportation, and Racism
Minor: Police brutality, War, Misogyny, Forced institutionalization, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, and Confinement
Underage drinking & underage smoking. (Not explicitly condemned in text.)smithreads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Outing, Racism, Alcohol, Sexual content, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Sexual harassment, and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Physical abuse, Racial slurs, and Deportation
Minor: Drug use, Adult/minor relationship, Hate crime, War, Violence, Forced institutionalization, and Gaslighting
rinku's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Spoiler
everything happening is just terrible and my heart ached so much for Lily; it’s so sad how homophobic everyone is and that not even her aunt accepts herSpoiler
quite open and still sad in my opinion because Lily and Kath still have to hide their relationship. Considering the time period, I expected no happy ending from the beginning but still, it’s so sadGraphic: Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Misogyny, Outing, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol
Moderate: Deportation, Sexual harassment, Child abuse, Miscarriage, and Police brutality
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Colonisation, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, and Transphobia
nulliusmomenti's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Moderate: Homophobia, Racism, and Lesbophobia
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Racial slurs, War, and Deportation
kappafrog's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Alcohol, Misogyny, Outing, Lesbophobia, War, Xenophobia, Sexism, Homophobia, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Racial slurs, and Racism
Moderate: Gaslighting, Deportation, Blood, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Bullying, Miscarriage, Domestic abuse, Hate crime, and Toxic friendship
Minor: Forced institutionalization, Addiction, Drug use, Drug abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Medical content, and Mental illness
terrestrial_river's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
Graphic: Homophobia and Lesbophobia
Moderate: Police brutality, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Racial slurs, and Sexual content
Minor: Adult/minor relationship
spark_879's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Homophobia, Racism, Alcohol, Lesbophobia, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Outing, Police brutality, Sexual content, Toxic friendship, Misogyny, and Sexism
Minor: Racial slurs, Miscarriage, Adult/minor relationship, Sexual harassment, and War
jojo_'s review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Racism, Sexual content, Child abuse, Xenophobia, and Toxic friendship
Moderate: Alcohol
Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Misogyny, Police brutality, Sexual harassment, and Deportation
bookwormbi's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
How to say this?
When I was a kid, I loved fairytale retellings, and I read as many of them as I could find. This is how I stumbled across Malinda Lo's 2009 novel Ash, which was the first book I ever read featuring a queer woman protagonist. I cannot overstate the importance of that. I know Malinda Lo is someone with the power to change kids' lives, because she changed mine. I don't know where I would be without Ash.
This is why Last Night at the Telegraph Club is such a tremendous disappointment for me.
The entire time I was reading this book, I shuddered at the thought of teenage me--or any queer teenager, really--reading something like this. Like yay, lesbians, and even better, lesbians of color (at least one, at any rate), but the way so many of the white adult lesbians in the Telegraph Club casually call Lily slurs, and she's not even upset by it? I'm sorry that's weird. And I get that it was the 1950s and I appreciate that Lo didn't shy away from depicting the racism. My issue is the fact that she didn't appear to depict the racism with any sort of purpose. When Lily's Chinese friends and family members are homophobic, she either stands up to them, or has an internal monologue where she refutes what they're saying. No such thing for the white lesbians in the Telegraph Club. All she can talk about is how cool they are, how much she wants to be with them and be like them. Listen, as a qtpoc myself, I know what it's like to try to escape your homophobic family of color by surrounding yourself with white queers, but it's a false choice. The white queers don't give a shit about you. In this book, the white queers don't even PRETEND to give a shit about her--
Spoiler
Tommy Andrews, an adult, sexually harasses Lily, a child, and nearly sexually assaults her, only stopping because she believes Lily and her love interest Kath are in love with each otherSpeaking of the big kiss scene, let's talk about Kath, and the romance plot in general. At first, I liked Kath. I thought she was sweet. The thing is, there really isn't much *to* Kath: she's quiet, she likes math and athletics, she's a lesbian, and she's half Italian. She doesn't really develop more than that. I would say most of the characters in this book are cardboard cutouts who are whatever they need to be for the plot, but Kath most of all. She just made zero impact, positive or negative. So without Kath actually doing things for me to pay attention to, I simply have to focus on what she does *not* do--that is, defend Lily against any of the racism she experiences at the Telegraph Club, make an effort to understand Lily's culture, or engage with Lily on any of their differences. While I'm always wary of white love interests, I understand that they can work. But in order for me to be invested in them, I need them to be aware of their privilege and using it for good. Lily spends the entire ending of the book putting her life on the line for Kath, and meanwhile Kath was doing NOTHING to protect Lily from the many many white adult women calling her slurs. I just can't fathom how I'm supposed to be invested in the love story of two underdeveloped characters, one of whom is a person of color and one of whom is a racist by proxy.
There are things I liked about this book. Shirley was such a great, complex character, and I wish we'd gotten to see more of her throughout the text. She was the only character who I thought had a consistent arc, and she stole every scene she was in. My favorite part of the whole book is when her and Lily leave Chinatown, and she talks to Lily about how she feels like she'll always stay there, while Lily will get the chance to leave. Granted, the ending completely robbed this character of any depth and nuance she may have had, but for a while there, she was one of the most interesting characters I've seen in a while.
But overall, this book lacked vision. I read the author's note to get a deeper understanding of Lo's historical sources, but also the way she interpreted and utilized those historical sources, and what I found was troubling. She mentions several times that she was not able to find a lot of information about Chinese lesbians in San Francisco in the 1950s, which is fair, but i do feel like part of the job of a historical fiction writer is to be able to use your imagination to synthesize your sources, and, if necessary, fill in the gaps that the research doesn't fill in for you. For example, she mentions that one of the women she spoke to said that she was often the only Chinese woman at the lesbian bar--ok, historical fact. She also mentions that she found some record of Chinese lesbians at clubs in Chinatown, like Forbidden City--ok, another historical fact. From those two things, one could imagine a version of this story in which Lily, put off by the racism she experiences at the Telegraph Club, begins sneaking into the Forbidden City to try to hang out with lesbians there. Lo also mentions finding records of Black and Filipina lesbians--so perhaps Lily finds interethnic/interracial solidarity with other lesbians of color. I just don't see how the only way to depict a Chinese lesbian was to give her a white love interest, plop her in a group of mostly white people, all of whom say racist things to her, and call it a day. When Malinda Lo asks herself the question, "What would it be like to be a teenage Chinese lesbian in 1954?" does she imagine that that girl would have fought against the homophobia in her family, but accepted the racism in the lesbian community? It feels inconsistent, and quite frankly, it's harmful. I can only imagine a queer teenager of color reading this and taking from it that they shouldn't be angry about racism in lesbian spaces, because that's just how things are. Or worse yet, a white queer teenager reading this and feeling empowered to hurt their queer friends or partners of color, because that's just how things are.
If you are one such teenager, I encourage you to read other things and learn differently. The Aristotle and Dante books, You Should See Me in a Crown, Meet Cute Diary, Like Other Girls, Hani and Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating, The Henna Wars, hell, even something like Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. All of these books address race and other forms of bigotry in a far more coherent way than LNATC. And if you're a queer teen of color reading this, please know that you do not have to put up with white queer racists to find your community. Your qtpoc/queer white ally family is out there, waiting for you. I promise <3
Graphic: Homophobia and Racism
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship