Taipei Story

Lily Chen is a freshman at Yale and the middle of three sisters. She has always carried the weight of expectation, the pressure to succeed academically, and now the pressure to learn the language she inherited from her parents but never actually learned. So she enrolls in a rigorous summer program studying Chinese in Taipei.

It all begins with hope. Then come the grueling classes, the maddening roommate, the trip to the hot springs with a guy she barely knows that sets her classmates gossiping. And then her grandfather dies.

I had never read Kuang before, and I absolutely loved this book. It took me right back to my twenties, to feeling trapped by expectations, the ones from boys and parents and teachers. Taylor Swift catches that exact feeling in “Mirrorball.” It is exhausting. It is also the experience of every young woman I know.

Kuang is a magician and a genius, and I am a forever fan now.

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