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A review by kimiloughlin
Finding My Voice by Marie Myung-Ok Lee
3.0
What is most impressive about this book is that it being reissued after 28 years with a new foreward*. I feel like the Young Adult genre has really grown in the last 28 years and so a lot of this book may seem dated but at the time that it came out, it must have been revolutionary! Ellen Sung is a senior at a virtually all white high school in Arkin, Minnesota. Ellen deals with racist classmates, disappointed and demanding Korean immigrant parents, and a tough college decision. Throughout it all, she matures and finds her voice, eventually standing up to her classmates and forming a really supportive group of friends.
Without the foreward, it would hard to place this book in time. Because it came out in 1992 and was set at a similar time, it reads contemporarily which is slightly confusing when reading in 2020. The home phones, plaid get-ups, and paper college applications gave a clue but the timeless themes of a teenager maturing and small town racism (fortunately and unfortunately) made it universal. I found some of Lee's character development pretty simplistic with a lot of her focus on the main character, Ellen. I particularly wanted to see a bit more focus on Ellen's parents. The pacing of the book also felt a little sluggish despite it's short nature.
For the audiobook, the narrator Jaine Ye spoke sooooo slowly that I had to increase the speed to 1.2x (and I'm not someone who usually does that) and it still felt slow to me which I think affected my overall opinion on the book's pacing. Because of her slow cadence, speeding it up actually made her voice sound crackly as if it couldn't go any faster which was annoying as well.
Overall, the story was simple but cute but the audiobook edition wasn't my favorite. The cover is also very pretty!
*Unfortunately, in the advanced reader copy of the audiobook I was given to listen to, the foreward was not recorded yet (or not recorded at all??) and so was not included. I look forward to reading (or listening) to it at a later date.
Thank you to Recorded Books and Netgalley for the opportunity to listen.
Without the foreward, it would hard to place this book in time. Because it came out in 1992 and was set at a similar time, it reads contemporarily which is slightly confusing when reading in 2020. The home phones, plaid get-ups, and paper college applications gave a clue but the timeless themes of a teenager maturing and small town racism (fortunately and unfortunately) made it universal. I found some of Lee's character development pretty simplistic with a lot of her focus on the main character, Ellen. I particularly wanted to see a bit more focus on Ellen's parents. The pacing of the book also felt a little sluggish despite it's short nature.
For the audiobook, the narrator Jaine Ye spoke sooooo slowly that I had to increase the speed to 1.2x (and I'm not someone who usually does that) and it still felt slow to me which I think affected my overall opinion on the book's pacing. Because of her slow cadence, speeding it up actually made her voice sound crackly as if it couldn't go any faster which was annoying as well.
Overall, the story was simple but cute but the audiobook edition wasn't my favorite. The cover is also very pretty!
*Unfortunately, in the advanced reader copy of the audiobook I was given to listen to, the foreward was not recorded yet (or not recorded at all??) and so was not included. I look forward to reading (or listening) to it at a later date.
Thank you to Recorded Books and Netgalley for the opportunity to listen.