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Book Reviewed by:Danny Cheng has always known his parents have secrets. But when he discovers a taped-up box in his father's closet filled with old letters and a file on a powerful Silicon Valley family, he realizes there's much more to his family's past than he ever imagined.
Danny has been an artist for as long as he can remember and it seems his path is set, with a scholarship to RISD and his family's blessing to pursue the career he's always dreamed of. Still, contemplating a future without his best friend, Harry Wong, by his side makes Danny feel a panic he can barely put into words. Harry and Danny's lives are deeply intertwined and as they approach the one-year anniversary of a tragedy that shook their friend group to its core, Danny can't stop asking himself if Harry is truly in love with his girlfriend, Regina Chan.
When Danny digs deeper into his parents' past, he uncovers a secret that disturbs the foundations of his family history and the carefully constructed facade his parents have maintained begins to crumble. With everything he loves in danger of being stripped away, Danny must face the ghosts of the past in order to build a future that belongs to him.
The real strength of Picture Us In the Light is how deftly Gilbert demonstrates that to have a powerful narrative a book doesn't have to fit neat categories because, after all, whose life does? She gives us the complexity of life itself: bad things happen, friendships change, we learn things about our parents we could have never imagined, lives fall apart and come together again. And in between all the interwoven good and bad, love and loss, joy and despair, science and art, we realize ourselves and our place in it all. So, this is a book about family and sacrifices and secrets, but also about love, and hope, and the need to believe that someday, we find the people we need most again...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Michelle Anya Anjirbag).
Picture Us In the Light adds to readers' consciousness of the immigrant experience – and the experience of children of immigrants in the United States. But it is not the only novel that does this. Children's and young adult texts in particular are consciously addressing these issues from wider and wider lenses, providing unique experiences, increased representations of diversity, and speaking to wider demographics. In doing this, they are widening the conversation and perception of "immigration issues." This list curates young adult books that exemplify this. Check out some of these other suggestions:
A Land of Permanent Goodbyes by Atia Abawi
Abawi's gripping story of a Syrian teen trying to keep what's left of his ...
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Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Anna-Marie McLemore, author of Stonewall Honor Book When the Moon Was Ours and Wild Beauty
Heartbreaking and transcendent. Gilbert is a true artist of character, both obscuring and illuminating with each brilliant turn of phrase. In Danny, she gives us a narrator who, in so deeply and completely revealing his own inner life, shows us each other and ourselves.
