Artist and critic Wong debuts with a profound and nuanced bildungsroman of a young Asian American man and his evolution as a political activist during a visit to his hometown of Los Angeles. Reed, 21, a student and organizer, is home to see his ailing Korean grandmother. There, he informs his parents, whom he views as conformists, that he's dropping out of college and dedicating himself instead to grassroots organizing after an unarmed Black man is shot and killed by an Asian police officer. Though he dismisses his parents' pleas for him to finish his degree, Reed is adamant about learning everything he can about his Korean mother's involvement in a Black-Korean coalition in the 1980s, so that he may use it to impress his other activist friends and fuel their current work. But the stories recounted by his mother and the discussions they engender--all carefully laid out in electric, and occasionally heartrending, dialogue between mother and son--start to affect Reed's clear-cut views, revealing to him the many difficulties of organizing across cultures, and hinting at the importance of empathy and humanity in the effort to fully understand one's community. From the first page, Wong sets the tone with Reed's youthful irreverence, which unfailingly gets at the truth of the matter: "Mom had finally broken her lifelong boycott against the Japanese colonizers because, she explained, the mileage was unbeatable, and anyway, we had to let go of that ancestral shit sooner or later." This daring and generous work is sure to spark difficult but necessary conversations. Agent: Julia Masnik, Watkins/Loomis. (Oct.)

When a Black man is killed by a Chinese American NYPD officer, Chinese Korean American Reed is ready to storm out of his Columbia classes and dedicate himself to Black Lives Matter. But he reconsiders the best way forward after discussing what makes for effective politics and a meaningful life in an unjust world with his father and mother--once a labor organizer and leader of a Korean-Black activist coalition, respectively. A debut inspired by the 2014 Akai Gurley/Peter Liang case in Brooklyn, NY.

A young Asian American aspiring radical returns home to Los Angeles for a few history lessons. Reed, the hero of Wong's debut, is the child of activists. His Chinese father is a labor organizer, while his Korean mother worked to unify LA's Black and Korean communities in the 1980s. Returning home from a semester at Columbia, he wants to do his bit as well: Inspired by a case involving a Chinese NYPD officer, Reed is preparing to quit school and become a full-time activist. His experiences in LA, from a Brentwood yoga studio to a Koreatown dance club to a South Central chicken-and-waffles joint and a climactic downtown street protest, serve as a challenge to his easy Twitter-born outrage and idealism; determined to learn more about his mother's Black-Korean coalition and apply its lessons to his own work, he mostly runs into dead ends. Wong does a nice job of framing Reed's experience around some compelling characters: Reed's witty and brash mother; his sage dad; and his best friend, CJ, who's eager to pour some cold water on Reed's idealism. (A fine set piece in the Koreatown dance club leavens the story while underscoring the persistent racism in the community.) But Reed, for his part, is something of an empty vessel, buffeted by the rhetoric of his leftist organizer friends at Columbia and his progressive but more earthbound parents. ("All I'm saying, my son, is to not take your precious theories so seriously," Reed's mom tells him, one of a number of similarly patronizing lectures.) Indeed, between Reed's blankness and the brief, brisk story, the novel feels like an updated, more socially aware Less Than Zero. The tale of Reed's reckoning is compelling, and Wong thoughtfully questions various activist practices without rejecting them. But a stronger novel might better weave in the characters along with the back-and-forths on social justice. A promising coming-of-(political)-age debut. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In the short opening paragraph introducing a young man watching his mother approach the LAX curb in her new Prius, debut novelist Wong manages to pack in generation gaps, climate change, brutal colonialism, and "let[ting] go of that ancestral sh*t sooner or later." Columbia student Reed has returned home because his grandmother is dying. He's recently become a "serious activist," protesting yet another Black man's wrongful killing, this time by a Chinese American NYPD officer. His urgent declarations aren't impressing his Berkeley-trained, political-careered Chinese American dad (unions) and Korean American mom (nonprofits), who "talked about [his] activism with the same condescension other parents talked about their kids' singer-songwriter career." Over the next few days, in between maternal sessions in self-care, Reed's foulmouthed mother reveals her history as cofounder of L.A.'s Black-Korean Coalition, her childhood immigration, and her dying mother's lifelong suffering. Arriving with polarizing platitudes, Reed returns to school with invaluable lessons on the dangers of simplistic idealism, conventional history, better allyship, and unconditional love. With empathy plus sighing, cringing, and laughing, Wong provides quite the education for us all.