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American Panda by Gloria Chao
A freshman at MIT, seventeen-year-old Mei Lu tries to live up to her Taiwanese parents' expectations, but no amount of tradition, obligation, or guilt prevent her from hiding several truths — that she is a germaphobe who cannot become a doctor, she prefers dancing to biology, she decides to reconnect with her estranged older brother, and she is dating a Japanese boy.
Review from School Library Connection Star:
Mei Lu is a 17-year-old freshman at MIT with the world at her fingertips and a weight on her shoulders. Her parents expect her to become a doctor, marry a Taiwanese boy with promise, and start pumping out babies as soon as possible. Mei knows that she could never be a doctor (she hates biology and has a serious phobia of germs) and she has become rather enamored with Darren Takahashi, a forbidden option due to his Japanese heritage. But could Mei ever go against her parents' wishes? Now that her brother has been disowned, she is their only hope to fulfill the aspirations that have been ingrained in them through generations of cultural expectations. Unfortunately, it seems that being a good daughter and being happy are mutually exclusive states of existence. Gloria Chao has poured her own experiences growing up into this exceptional new novel. She expertly captures the complex and overwhelming feelings of existing in the gap between modern American life and traditional Taiwanese philosophies in a way that will validate teens currently living in that world and will provide understanding for those who have never experienced similar pressure. Chao does an excellent job of encapsulating the nuances, down to tiny details, of the issue that round out the full and complicated picture.
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