Bibliograph

Which side are you on, a novel, Ryan Lee Wong

Type

Label

Which side are you on, a novel, Ryan Lee Wong

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

novels

Main title

Which side are you on

Responsibility statement

Ryan Lee Wong

Sub title

a novel

Summary

How can we live with integrity and pleasure in this world of police brutality and racism? An Asian American activist is challenged by his mother to face this question in this powerful and funny debut novel of generational change, a mother's secret, and an activist's coming-of-age. Twenty-one-year-old Reed is fed up. Angry about the killing of a Black man by an Asian American NYPD officer, he wants to drop out of college and devote himself to the Black Lives Matter movement. But would that truly bring him closer to the moral life he seeks? In a series of intimate, charged conversations, his mother - once the leader of a Korean-Black coalition - demands that he rethink his outrage, and along with it, what it means to be an organizer, a student, an ally, an American, and a son. As Reed zips around his hometown of Los Angeles with his mother, searching and questioning, he faces a revelation that will change everything. Inspired by his own family's roots in activism, Ryan Lee Wong offers a celebration of seeking a life that is both virtuous and fun, an ode to mothering and being mothered

Target audience

adult

Creator