By now, you may be finishing up Rachel Khong’s beautiful novel of memory and family, Goodbye, Vitamin. When I first read it in 2017, I was struck by formal risks taken—the use of brief passages set out in journals, the fascinating gracefulness of how time passes within the book, the deft exploration of the evergreen themes that arise when a child turns into the caregiver of a parent. There’s a coziness in this book, a real attentiveness to the ordinary stuff of life, like going out for dinner or taking a walk. And yet, the novel’s plentiful white space, all that’s not described or said, evokes the ordinary things falling away around us as we continue to move forward in time.
We don’t record every single thing that happens in our lives, and there’s a chance anything—random details, yes, but even salient aspects of our most profound experiences—will disappear, if not now, later, given the nature of the brain, the mind, and cognition. The disappearances conjure the nature of Alzheimer’s as experienced by the father of Goodbye, Vitamin’s protagonists. What Khong does so brilliantly is capture the humor and sadness of marked memory loss. Shared memories are so often what bind us to friends and families, but also what bind us to the selves we know. Their disappearance anticipates the fraying of beloved connections.
As we head into the holiday season, the time period in which late scenes of Goodbye, Vitamin occur, let me recommend Khong’s second novel, Real Americans, as your next read. This one, too, includes a lovely emphasis on generations of a family and time, but rather than experimenting with what it’s like to live in time as memories are lost, this sweeping novel contains scenes that are worked out fully, as they might be in old-fashioned novels, as if nothing is truly ephemeral or will be forgotten. Real Americans pulls us into a mystery and a spark of the future (2030) that might look speculative but is almost here. Khong, the former executive editor of the since-shuttered food magazine Lucky Peach, calls forth the beauty in the everyday, in a moment of rubbing orange peel against the glass while making a Manhattan, in eating “osso buco, immense with its bone, on a circle of polenta,” in folding and steaming bak chang. At one point, one of her characters observes, “Chinese is a language that exists in the present tense. In this way, it is unlike English, a language in which it is easy to say: I had a past, I will have a future. When I adopted English as my own I lived so much in the hope of what was to come. Now my future shrinks with each passing second.” You might perceive anew certain aspects of Goodbye, Vitamin after reading Real Americans and feel your vision further enlarged. The latter solves mysteries about the characters’ pasts and origins but in so doing calls greater attention to the former’s experiments with verb tense and temporal awareness.
While Khong grew up in Southern California and now lives in Los Angeles, her work so far is an unmistakable part of a body of brilliant contemporary Asian American and Pacific Islander fiction that’s come out of San Francisco, where Khong lived and founded the coworking space and community the Ruby while working on parts of the books over the past several years. And so we are absolutely thrilled to welcome another writer whose work fits within that important artistic movement, special guest Mimi Lok, to the California Book Club to discuss Goodbye, Vitamin with Khong and host John Freeman. Lok is the author of the emotionally sophisticated, finely crafted short story collection Last of Her Name, which I also recommend you add to your holiday reading. The book won the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection and a California Book Award silver medal for First Fiction. Lok is a narrative strategy coach and consultant who works with social justice–centered organizations and leaders seeking to build narrative power for their communities. She is also the cofounder of the oral history nonprofit Voice of Witness, an organization that amplifies the voices of those experiencing injustice around the world. Lok is a friend of Khong’s and observed Khong in process while she was working on Goodbye, Vitamin in San Francisco.
Last of Her Name, which features Chinese characters in China as well as in diaspora, blends the comic with the sad, in a mode that’s parallel to that of Goodbye, Vitamin. Here, too, are many family scenes that revolve around understanding the past, many gatherings around food. What gives Lok’s collection its power and grace is her deep understanding of how important connection and community are—it’s a perspective forged in part, perhaps, by Lok’s work with storytelling in the realms of human rights and social justice. The collection begins with a story about a mother and daughter. Karen, a 12-year-old Chinese British girl in 1983, is attacked by an older boy in England. The mother, who goes by Jun-Jun or June, depending on the context, finds out that the boy is stalking Karen and offers an intriguing response. The narrative weaves back in time from 1983 to look at pivotal moments of the mother’s life in 1941 Hong Kong and then in 1973 England, moments that influence how she reacts to the attack on her daughter.
Another standout story is “The Wrong Dave.” In it, an architect receives an email from a “drunk, interesting girl,” Yi, whom he’s met only once; she didn’t respond to his efforts over three years to keep in touch. He realizes that she probably intended her message to go to a different Dave. But unexpectedly, an hour later, she writes to him (or the other Dave) again, about her grandmother’s suicide, which he feels implicates him and requires him to respond. He writes her back, without revealing that he may not be the Dave to whom she intends to write. The two strike up an intimate correspondence, even as Dave is about to marry a different woman. His conflicted feelings produce a striking tension that keeps readers turning pages. “Bad Influence” brings us into the relationship between a responsible sister (Dave’s fiancée) who must come to terms with the waywardness of her brother.
The collection concludes with a tremendous novella, “The Woman in the Closet,” about Granny Ng, an older woman, homeless because she doesn’t want to go to the eldercare facility where her son and his wife would like to put her. She breaks into a young man’s home and begins secretly living in his closet for a year. She comes out when he goes to work and cleans and cooks—he assumes his housekeeper is the one taking these actions.
As we head into the holiday season, be sure to pick up Real Americans and Last of Her Name, either for yourself or for a loved one. And don’t miss Khong, Lok, and your host, John Freeman—all three of them humane and compassionate writers, attentive to the foundational human desire for connection, for goodness. Thursday’s virtual conversation is bound to be illuminating—don’t miss it.•
Join us on December 12 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Khong will sit down with CBC host John Freeman and Lok to discuss Goodbye, Vitamin. Please note that this event is on the second Thursday of the month. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
PAST TENSE
Read Ann Gelder’s essay on Goodbye, Vitamin. It draws an intriguing parallel to a moment in Henry David Thoreau’s writing. —Alta
VARIATION ON VODKA TONIC
Mix Lindsay Merbaum’s rejuvenating “booktail” for Khong’s debut novel. —Alta
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Alta books editor David L. Ulin revisits Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions. —Alta
TWO CALIFORNIA WRITERS
Alta research director Lydia Horne interviews Lili Anolik about her much anticipated Didion and Babitz. Anolik explains their dynamic, saying, “There is a kind of friendship that is not exactly friendship. And that person might be the closest person to you on the planet.” —Alta
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