I appreciate how this novel pushed the Vietnamese American literature genre by subverting our expectations on what we expect from Asian American narratives and Asian authors. The identity markers for individual characters were oftentimes brought up, but for Kelly it felt highly unnecessary and overly crude to describe her fatness in blunt manners at times, as if her fatness was one of her failures in life. It is also just generally really bizarre and rude to constantly call your friend fat as if you can’t see past her fatness (not that being fat is an inherently bad thing, here you can also apply the same logic to someone who’s very thin). The writing was overall good and some passages were indeed stunning. I understand that the simplistic writing at times is a narrative choice, but when it’s combined with obvious lessons and messages, the writing can feel overly didactic. This might be me being difficult/annoying or facetious but I think this novel reminded me a lot of a bootleg Toni Morrison novel lmao.