About This Book
The thing about secrets is they force you to choose—especially the ones that hurt so much you keep them from your best friend. Ava Ling Magee hopes college will free her from the past: high school, parents, everything. Freedom from her Asian mother's control, her Caucasian father's neglect, and the world's confusion, however, requires more than a dorm room. Sure, she makes new friends, separates herself from the parental units, and parties. Yet, Ava's secrets linger, binding her to the past and cleaving her in two. She must choose between the darkness she knows and unknown perils. Sometimes, when life hurts the most, we discover our freedom lay within all along. "Ava Ling Magee, the central figure in Joy Huang Stoffers's debut novel, is a work in progress. She struggles to come to terms with a domineering mother and an absent father, with self-doubt, with being a friend and having friends, with shocks that emerge from the past. Stoffers weaves an engaging tale about searching for identity and growing toward self-knowledge and independence." —Paul Spickard, Author of Race in Mind, and Professor of History and Ethnic Studies, UC Santa Barbara "Provocative" —Kirkus Reviews "How exciting to see Joy Huang Stoffers join the ranks of writers like Sarah Jamila Stevenson and Matt de la Pena who write about the challenges of being a mixed-race teen. Anyone who has lived betwixt and between cultures and racial identities will find their stories reflected here in this honest and enriching tale." —Heidi W. Durrow, author of the New York Times bestseller The Girl Who Fell From the Sky "Whasian deftly tackles the difficult task of naming an identity that continues to be invisible; we mixed race Asian Americans have found a powerful voice in Joy Huang Stoffers, who, as she tells her story, reveals so many of ours." —Wei Ming Dariotis, co-editor of War Baby| Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art and Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, SFSU
