A review by saralynnburnett
I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita, Leland Wong, Sina Grace

4.0

This is not easy reading but it was 100% worth the effort. There were so many voices in this unique novel, it gave it prismatic effect, each beam is its own and each trails off sometimes forever and sometimes to rejoin the others later. It's so fractured, even in form: playwriting, graphic novel, etc all within various novellas that alone are one thing but together paint an entire canvass. So what is it about? Revolution, art, history, culture, immigration, San Francisco, the Yellow Power movement, Marx, Mao, Lenin, education, class, 1960s-70s, and so on and so forth. There's some verbal imagery that will stay with me forever (and an actual drawing of a woman as a banana that I won't be forgetting anytime soon). Sprawling, yes. WTF moments, yes. But worth it.

Tip: read the afterward first as it gives history on I-Hotel in San Francisco and some of the goals and processes Yamashita had producing this novel.