Fake Chinese Sounds | Review

Fake Chinese Sounds
Writer/artist: Jing Jing Tsong
Kokila; $23.99
Publisher’s rating: 9-12 years

Children’s book illustrator Jing Jing Tsong makes her graphic novel debut with Fake Chinese Sounds, the story of grade-schooler Měi Yīng and her struggles with a school bully who relentlessly teases her just for being Taiwanese-American and, in the process, becomes a sort of avatar for all the usually subtle ignorance and racism that she and her mother experience on a regular basis.

The summer before fifth grade, life seemed pretty good for Měi Yīng. She was the star of her soccer team, The Divas, proving such an energizing force on the field that she earned the nickname “Spark.” She had a best friend and teammate she always hung out with in Kirra. And, most eventfully,  her grandmother Năi Nai was visiting from Taiwan for the very first time in her life.

There was a major language barrier between grandmother and granddaughter—Năi Nai doesn’t speak English, and Měi Yīng is still struggling to learn Mandarin during her classes at Chinese school—but they found ways to connect even without Měi Yīng’s mother acting as translator, such as bonding over early morning tai chi and cooking traditional dishes.

But then the summer ended, Năi Nai went home, Měi Yīng started fifth grade and she met the new kid, Sid.

Sid immediately notices Měi Yīng, and he and his two friends begin a campaign of harassment, bombarding her with racist jokes, including making “fake Chinese sounds” at her, like “Ching Chong”, when she passes in the hall. (And now you know where the book gets its name.)

Kirra advises her to ignore them and dismisses them as “goofballs”. Even some grown-ups at school seem to half-notice but disregard some of the jokes. But Měi Yīng grows increasingly isolated and frustrated; this is so much worse than when she goes to the mall and the guy at the shoe store asks if she’s Japanese or the woman in the clothing store tells her and her mom how petite all “Oriental” ladies are.

Eventually, she has a falling out with Kirra over the boys and explodes, telling off the whole lunchroom (“You are ALL COWARDS”) and screaming at Sid (“YOU ARE BEING RACIST”).

This act of standing up for herself doesn’t solve all of her problems immediately, but she gradually realizes how her conflict with Kirra leads to her being out of step with the rest of her team on the soccer field, and that she needs to fix it. And she even begins to learn more about Sid, another child of immigrants, and why he acts the way he does.

Ironically, International Week at school, where Měi Yīng’s class all share something about their heritage, ends up healing some of the hurt she feels, maybe because she sees that everyone is as different as her, whether they look it or not, and maybe because she sees the similarities between her own life and Sid’s situation.

Fake Chinese Sounds is a visually striking work, with imagery as passionate and intense as its subject matter. Tsong’s style is markedly different from what one usually sees in graphic novels meant for middle-schoolers. Her character designs are all flat and highly abstracted, with big heads, highly expressive faces, and long limbs that can stretch and contort widely, especially in the “action” scenes involving soccer.

The lines are all bold ones, never more so than when conveying a bold action or emotion, and Tsong’s use of color is rather remarkable.

Each of the three sections is dominated by a color choice that works with the otherwise black and white artwork. The first third, devoted to Měi Yīng’s summer, uses yellow to denote word balloons that are in Mandarin or Taiwanese, but also incidental colors, like the lightning bolt on her t-shirt, a passing butterfly, or stink lines from Chinese food ingredients and tiger balm.

The next, when Měi Yīng meets Sid and starts being harassed, is all red, including the shouted or angry dialogue, which is lettered in a bigger, rougher, almost painterly style.

The third, when life begins to gain some stability again, is orange and green.

There are exceptions to the palette, of course, and some scenes are fully colored. One is a close-up shot of a sugary cereal box (“Makes you jumpy! Then grumpy!”); another involves scenes of cooking. Perhaps most significant, however, are the moments when everything seems perfect and happy, like a page in which a young Měi Yīng visits a butterfly pavilion with her mother, symbolic of a world where all different sorts of people live in harmony (“Look, Mama. All different kinds. Let’s live here!”), and, of course, the very last page of the book. (Spoiler alert: It has a happy ending.)

Between its powerful, idiosyncratic imagery and its potent story of summoning inner strength to move through an imperfect world of microaggressions (and macroaggressions), Fake Chinese Sounds is an important work for readers who share Měi Yīng’s heritage, or merely those who feel like outsiders sometimes. In other words, you know, everyone.

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