What Happened This Summer
by Paul Yee

What Happened This Summer on Recommended list

In What happened this summer, Yee has targeted a specific audience. All of his vignettes are about Chinese young people. His stories all deal with their struggles to balance the cultural ideals of our society with very traditional Chinese values. The teenagers in these stories are dealing with the issues of 'head tax' redress, homosexual siblings, church values, teenage marriage with the sole purpose of sponsoring a whole family for immigration, old family obligations, university versus art school, astronaut or long distance parents, pressure to do well academically, cheating, and returning to their own culture in Asia. Some of these problems are universal, but all of Yee's stories have a cultural twist. These stories comprise the ultimate problem book. Each of the chapters deals with one issue, though the same character may be present in many. In one story Yee shifts from a male to a female character mid story, which is quite confusing for the reader. These are short, sharp tales that are almost like reading email. Yee is trying to show us that young Chinese, new immigrants or Canadian born, have a difficult time. Recommended for Secondary Schools. --Reviewed by: Gloria Reinheimer, teacher-librarian, Bear Creek Elementary School, SD#36 (Surrey)
Bookmark: the BC Teacher-Librarian Association

In What happened this summer, Yee has targeted a specific audience. All of his vignettes are about Chinese young people. His stories all deal with their struggles to balance the cultural ideals of our society with very traditional Chinese values. The teenagers in these stories are dealing with the issues of 'head tax' redress, homosexual siblings, church values, teenage marriage with the sole purpose of sponsoring a whole family for immigration, old family obligations, university versus art school, astronaut or long distance parents, pressure to do well academically, cheating, and returning to their own culture in Asia. Some of these problems are universal, but all of Yee's stories have a cultural twist.

These stories comprise the ultimate problem book. Each of the chapters deals with one issue, though the same character may be present in many. In one story Yee shifts from a male to a female character mid story, which is quite confusing for the reader. These are short, sharp tales that are almost like reading email. Yee is trying to show us that young Chinese, new immigrants or Canadian born, have a difficult time.
Recommended for Secondary Schools.
Reviewed by: Gloria Reinheimer, teacher-librarian, Bear Creek Elementary School, SD#36 (Surrey).

"This collection [of stories] is gutsy, as Yee tackles subjects such as teen pregnancy, drugs, sex and religion.

"What Happened This Summer" is a collection of short stories by accomplished writer, Paul Yee. In this collection, Yee presents a series of stories which detail the lives of Chinese Canadian teenagers who mostly live in Ontario. The characters, who each have a unique voice, describe their struggles, which encompass romantic relationships, difficulties bridging the gap between their experiences in their homeland and their Canadian lifestyle, and the conflict between what their parents want and what the young people desire. The language is clean and concise, and some of the stories read like monologues. Some of the characters appear as minor characters in other stories, which gives the feeling that each story is part of a larger macrocosm. Yee is adept at blending in the Canadian and Asian details, which helps bring the stories to life. Details about Chinese Canadian history and politics also add another dimension to these tales. This collection is gutsy, as Yee tackles subjects such as teen pregnancy, drugs, sex and religion. For example in, "We're dating white guys", a teenaged girl writes in her diary about losing weight and dieting, while examining her feelings about her own developing relationship with a white boy, and comparing her romantic life to that of her cousin's. This is a brave collection that captures the experiences of Chinese Canadian teenagers and should resonate with many young Asian readers today.-By Alexis Kienlen, Ricepaper

Happy New Year by Deirdre Baker, Toronto Star

Paul Yee, recipient of numerous awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award for his novel Ghost Train, focuses on the modern-day lives and concerns of Chinese-Canadians in this, his latest novel for young adults. So what did happen this summer? A general response would be that each teen-age protagonist came of age, grew up - and we, the reader, are privy to that process, because each experience is related in the first person and so we read what is going on in their heads as well as the unfolding events.
Yee keeps the reader on their toes: there is no warning that the narrator is going to change from chapter to chapter and since we are not introduced formally, we even have to work out whether the "I" is male or female. I was half-expecting the narrators to return in cycles - instead, we catch odd glimpses of them as they happen to pass through someone else's story. Indeed, each story could stand alone as a short story, a vignette of the challenges and concerns faced by each character: parental expectations and pressure, school, homosexuality, racial stereotypes, sex, death - in other words the full gamut of the issues considered relevant by the majority of teenagers today. Yee's focus on the Chinese-Canadian experience adds an extra facet to these subjects.
So, again, what happened this summer? While each person's story could stand alone, Yee is actually setting up the strings of his narrative to be pulled together in the final chapter. This watershed time in all their lives reaches its peak at that point and it is as powerful as it is unexpected. However, life does go on and, as is so often the case, it will only be with hindsight that each narrator will come to realise the significance of that period in their lives: something beyond the book's telling that is up to readers to interpret for themselves.
A thought-provoking book that will appeal to young adults who are themselves on the brink of making life-affecting decisions about their own futures --By Marjorie Coughlan, July 2007, PaperTigers

Gr 9 Up These intriguing, loosely linked short stories explore the lives of Chinese-Canadian teenagers as they navigate two worlds, struggling to meet their immigrant parents' expectations and to also live their own lives. They must resist the usual adolescent temptations, or embrace them, with the extra complication of never completely fitting in. One boy works to improve his English while deciding whether to stay in Canada with his father or return to China with his mother. A girl wants to study photography, but her father pressures her to secure a more lucrative career. A boy tries to find a church that will accept his brother, who is gay. A girl sneaks off to have sex with a classmate, though she knows that her strict aunt will be furious if she finds out. Though all of the stories are solidly written, none stand out as the most accomplished, and a few are slightly melodramatic in flavor. Characters sometimes reappear in other parts of the book as their classmates talk or think about their situations, but each of the nine selections also stands alone. While the adults are frequently inflexible and pushy, the young people often come to see that they are also proud, loving, and confused by the rules of their new society. Teens with an interest in the immigrant experience will likely find these stories satisfying. Miranda Doyle, San Francisco Public Library, School Library Journal

In nine short stories, Chinese Canadian teen characters--boys, girls, Canadian-born, newly immigrated--provide an elegantly diversified sense of what coming of age can mean to those who are bicultural. Yee does a compelling job of speaking as a young girl concerned about her gay brother's acceptance in the church community; a brash young man who finds himself with a wife and infant son; another girl who, when dating a white boy, becomes disillusioned by his interest in Asian cultures; and other youth. The adults in these stories range from the fatuous to those who hold not only readers' sympathies but those of their own teenaged children. Most of the stories are set in Toronto, but the China from which their families have come includes both Hong Kong and the mainland. In one tale, two teens are amazed to find that the tunnels they've heard of being beneath downtown Toronto aren't nuclear war bunkers but familiar-looking shopping malls. In another, a mysterious girl seems to appear among groups of friends as a foretelling of fatal car accidents each clique then suffers. These stories are accessible and engaging across ethnic and cultural lines. Yee's teens are not only credible; they will stick with readers just as Salinger's Glass family has.- Francisca Goldsmith, Libn., Berkeley PL, Berkeley, CA
S--Recommend for senior high school students.
A--Recommend for advanced students and adults. This code will help librarians and teachers working in high schools where there are honors and advanced placement students. This also will help KLIATT's usefulness in public libraries.

This collection features an assortment of Chinese Canadian teens facing many common challenges while grapping with their own individual struggles. Most of these youth are immigrants to Canada and vary widely in terms of how successfully they have adapted to their new homes and life situations. One grudgingly leaves Hong Kong to come to Toronto, where he is soon married with a young son, an arrangement that enables his father to repay a long-standing debt. Another seeks a church community that will accept and support her gay brother. The young woman in Astronaut Dads Are a Pain tries to convince her father to go to art college while in Reading This Novel Made Me Have Sex, Julie chafes under her aunt's harsh rules. These stories highlight the difficulties that confront many contemporary Chinese Canadian teens who must balance the realities of their lives in western society with their parents' high expectations and often conflicting goals and ideals. Yee is well-known for his ability to capture the experience of Chinese immigrants in Canada. This excellent book is for teen readers who are interested in a realistic treatment of this topic. The snapshots that he provides of Chinese youth illustrate both the typical teen crises in their lives along with the added challenges of families adjusting to a new culture. The short-story format might not make it fly off the shelf, but the collection is nonetheless a good recommendation in a classroom or public library setting. - Lisa Doucet, VOYA

Toronto Star Reciew by Deirdre Baker

From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up These intriguing, loosely linked short stories explore the lives of Chinese-Canadian teenagers as they navigate two worlds, struggling to meet their immigrant parents' expectations and to also live their own lives. They must resist the usual adolescent temptations, or embrace them, with the extra complication of never completely fitting in. One boy works to improve his English while deciding whether to stay in Canada with his father or return to China with his mother. A girl wants to study photography, but her father pressures her to secure a more lucrative career. A boy tries to find a church that will accept his brother, who is gay. A girl sneaks off to have sex with a classmate, though she knows that her strict aunt will be furious if she finds out. Though all of the stories are solidly written, none stand out as the most accomplished, and a few are slightly melodramatic in flavor. Characters sometimes reappear in other parts of the book as their classmates talk or think about their situations, but each of the nine selections also stands alone. While the adults are frequently inflexible and pushy, the young people often come to see that they are also proud, loving, and confused by the rules of their new society. Teens with an interest in the immigrant experience will likely find these stories satisfying.Miranda Doyle, San Francisco Public Library Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

In a series of short stories, Yee looks at the variety of experiences of nine Chinese-Canadian teens. Each of them has mixed if not wholly negative feelings about their lives as immigrants; for the most part, they understand their parents' desire for them to have a better life and education and in particular to be free from Communism, but that desire for their children's freedom and success does not extend to their actual home lives. There, the parents rule with iron wills, and the teens chafe under expectations as relatively benign as wanting them to wear modest clothing and get good grades, to forcing them to marry against their wishes in order to repay a family debt. The stories are individually compelling, but they are similar in their melancholy tone, with the young people's victories over this sort of oppression being small to nonexistent; many simple end up resentful and stuck. Yee never signals that what initially appear to be chapters are really separate stories that are only loosely connected through passing references to characters from other stories--the narrators seem to know of one another, but the stories don't particularly overlap--leaving the reader expecting a continuous narration thrown for a loop. Nonetheless, the collection is poignant, and it points to a serious problem of isolation and discontent in Chinese-Canadian teen culture, sadly offering no remedy other than the act of storytelling itself. KC. The Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books

CM, Volume XIII Number 8, December 8, 2006

This collection of nine short stories addresses the experience of today's immigrant Chinese youth coming of age in Canada. A modern hip-hopper reluctantly agrees to an arranged marriage to honor a promise his grandfather made in "You Cannot Mess with Fate." In "Reading This Novel Made Me Have Sex," arguably the strongest offering, a girl compares her restricted life to that of the protagonist in Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, as she faces a pregnancy scare and defies her domineering aunt. Other tales also focus on young people torn between their parents' traditional expectations and the siren song of pop culture. The very specific Canadian setting, the monotony of the first-person voices, and the occasionally clunky insertion of Chinese historical and political fact are likely to limit readership for this. However, as a thoughtful examination of a little-known cultural clash, the collection may find a place in larger libraries, libraries serving large Asian populations, or where Yee's Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories (2002) has an audience. --Jennifer Hubert Copyright American Library Association.

In this collection of linked short stories, Paul Yee delivers a gritty, often bleak view of the lives of ethnic Chinese teens living in Canada, mainly in the suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver.

These teens, products of the diaspora of mainland China and Hong Kong after the handover of the British colony, attempt in a variety of ways to bridge two worlds. Not a few of them find the process of transplantation a painful, alienating and often humiliating experience.

Absentee parents who still live in China or Hong Kong and fly in for periodic visits ("astronaut dads"), ferocious expectations and difficulty learning English are part of the climate that envelops these kids.

The titles of these stories -- Astronaut Dads are a Pain, I Thought Life was Getting Better, Don't Trust Your Parents -- more than hint at their tenor. Yee's use of the "I," or first-person narrator, guarantees a compelling and edgy immediacy to each of them. In the story Never Go to School with a Hangover, Wen, a high school student, has a hangover, a bad one. "No more drinking on school nights, I warn myself. Not after last night. My head hurts. The eyes blur. The stomach lurches."

On this particular morning, Lisa Yip, a human rights activist, is visiting Wen's class, attempting to fan the students' outrage at the injustices, including the head tax, perpetrated against early Chinese immigrants. Wen is in a contrary mood; he refutes all her assumptions and consummates his attack by vomiting on her feet when she deposits a pile of petitions for redress on his desk.

Later that same day, tooling along on the 401 in his car, Wen thinks about what has gone on in the class. In an internal monologue, he notes that the teachers at his school "want us to feel like we belong. But then they keep bringing in Lisa Yips, who remind us that we're different." Furthermore, Wen thinks, it is not up to him and his friends to "fight the racism of the past." --Susan Perren, Globe and Mail November 4th 2006

For Chinese teens who have grown up with traditional family values and expectations, fitting into contemporary Canadian society can be difficult. In this collection of loosely connected short stories set in Toronto,Governor General's Award recipient Yee explores the many emotional struggles and challenges Chinese immigrant teens face.

Astronaut Dads Are a Pain centres on Julia, an aspiring photographer who lives with her mother in Canada. When her father, who lives in Taipei, makes one of his monthly visits, he belittles Julia for her interest,telling her he expects her to pursue a more traditional career. "My father lives one continent and one ocean away," she says, "yet runs my life as if he owns the world's most powerful remote control."

In I Thought Life Was Getting Better, Ha-lan discovers his brother is gay. Knowing that he will be abandoned by the family once his secret is out, Han-lan sets out in search of a church that will accept him for who he is. And in You Can't Mess With Fate, an 18-year-old boy finds he is suddenly a husband and father in a country where he doesn't speak the language, a position forced on him in order to pay his father's debt.

Despite the seriousness of the issues, Yee's upbeat style and amusing twists on the clashes of cultures make every story a pleasure to read. The only drawback is that they are told in first person, which causes some confusion. In this case, third person might have been a better choice. But it is a small criticism, considering the power of the writing and the appeal of the stories. With their inclusion of angst over topics many Canadian-born youth would never think twice about, the stories will speak to immigrants of all ethnic backgrounds. -- Montreal Gazette and Edmonton Journal

Exceptional stories grasp lives of Chinese-Canadian teens
PAUL Yee was born in Saskatchewan but moved to Vancouver at the tender age of two.

Since becoming involved in volunteer community work as a teenager, he has become an important voice in telling not only the history of the Chinese community in Canada but also in exploring the feelings of its people.

His novel Ghost Train won the Governor General's Literary Award in 1996. Yee's new book of short stories, "What Happened This Summer", is exceptional in its grasp of the lives and emotions of the young people whose parents have emigrated from Hong Kong, Beijing and Taiwan.

The stories illustrate poignantly how these teenagers are caught between the hopes and demands of their parents and the strictures of their culture and the freedom and aspirations that they feel entitled to in Canada.

The stories explore issues such as "astronaut dads," who live in Hong Kong or Taiwan and visit only briefly a couple of times a year; girls dating "white guys" and trying to keep it a secret from their parents; or children wanting to return to China against parents' wishes to "study English and make a better life in Canada."

*Yee*'s characters are achingly realistic, and the situations show his understanding of how difficult it is for many of these young people to bridge the gap between their background and present circumstances.

Hopefully, Yee's book will contribute to a greater understanding of their dilemma. --by Helen Norrie, Winnipeg Free Press Sunday, August 20, 2006