A review by witmol
The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling by Wai Chim

emotional medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

This may well be the only Australian book that deals with the intersection of mental illness, being from the Asian diaspora and coming-of-age. In this YA novel, we follow high-schooler Anna as she tries to juggle being a student and a parent to her younger brother and sister while her dad buries himself in work and her mother takes to bed for weeks with an undiagnosed mental illness.

I'm so used to reading about high-achieving Asian girl characters that I was pleasantly surprised to learn Anna was merely mediocre at school and instead had a flair for helping her father's restaurant business. 

I won't say too much about the main plot, which follows Anna getting to become herself while different parts of her life are falling apart and coming together – the romance and how it interweaves with the main plot supports the book's themes well too – but I will say that there are a lot of little nods that make this book an insightful read for someone from a diaspora readership, or enlightening for someone outside of one.

My favourites:
  • The tension in the idea that you have to 'be better' than your migrant parents because they came to a new country for you; that it is not enough to be the same even if that's what you're good at and what you want to do.
  • The intraracial hierarchy where sometimes your biggest bullies are the people from your own racial heritage.
  • The conflict between cultural understandings of mental health.

I also liked that the mental health challenges faced in the book were not suddenly fixed with magical medicine but are shown as part of a process of everyday management.

And a big shoutout to my 'hood of Ashfield, which is certainly the home of the best dumplings in Sydney.
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