#11: Malinda Lo, Last Night at the Telegraph Club

[kareila]

Spent weeks working through this one, not because it was long or I didn't enjoy it, but because I wanted to take my time with it, as the story itself unfolds over the span of several weeks. Lily is a seventeen year old girl living in San Francisco's Chinatown in the mid-1950s. In addition to dealing with racism fueled by fear of China's new communist state, and sexism based on her love of math and rockets, she's beginning to realize that she's sexually attracted to other girls. As Lily blossoms, we also get occasional flashbacks from the viewpoints of Lily's mother, father, and aunt Judy. Judy has a job as a computer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where Lily also wants to work after she graduates from college, and their relationship really resonated with me.