A review by lightfoxing
Chemistry by Weike Wang

5.0

Devoured in a day, in a sitting, Wang's Chemistry is an aching, tender, precious unravelling of the way in which our parents mark us, of how we can love them despite even the deepest, most painful marks, and how these marks impact relationships with ourselves and others even as we try to find a way to separate ourselves from them. The unnamed narrator is resentful, hurting, hurting for her parents, herself, her long-term boyfriend, her best friend, the best friend's baby, her dog. Wang neatly treads the question of identity and language and loss as her narrator considers her upbringing as the (only) daughter (and child) of Chinese immigrants, her mother clinging too tightly to a home and language that excludes the daughter (who notes that humans feel exclusion not as a broken heart but as a broken bone, all physical), while the father has accomplished so much to extricate himself from poverty that the daughter feels all she has left is the moon itself, but while she is proficient at science, there is no spark there for her. Despite the short length of the book, Wang's spare but elegant prose makes her narrator's discovery of what it might mean to be happy, to do things for herself while still honoring her parents, unfold in a slow and ponderous way, ultimately heartbreaking and hopeful and most importantly, relatable. Looking forward to more from her.