Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Plot Summary: The story is set in San Francisco in the 1950s during the McCarthy Era and the beginning of the Cold War. Lily Hu is a high school student with an interest in the new American Space Program. She befriends Kathleen Miller, who she calls Kath. Lily finds a lesbian erotic magazine and reads a story about two women who realize they are in love. Lily realizes that she has feelings for Kath but doesn't want to admit it. They talk about the story and Kath says she has been to a lesbian club called The Telegraph Club. They sneak out at night and go to the club several times. While they live their lives and pretend to be friends, Lily and Kath start a secret relationship. However, their love and the trips to the Telegraph Club are under threat from societal, familial, and political forces that don't understand who they are as human beings.

Lily Hu is a Chinese American girl in high school. She has spent her whole life in the San Francisco area. She, like her fellow students, is affected by the political climate of the day. However, she is affected by the Red Scare even more because as the Communists of Mao Zedong consolidate power over China, the American government and white Americans become suspicious that Chinese Americans are secret agents for the Communists. Also, Lily is questioning her sexuality as she realizes she has feelings for another student. Her family are Chinese Christians who do not approve of Communism or homosexuality.

Author Background: Malinda Lo was born in Guanzhou, China and emigrated with her family to the United States when she was a young child. They lived near Boulder, Colorado. In college, Malinda Lo studies Economics and Chinese Studies at Wellesley College, then received masters degrees in East Asian Studies and Cultural Anthropology from Harvard University and Stanford University. She worked as a journalist covering the LGBTQ+ community before she started writing fiction. Her grandmother, Ruth Earnshaw Lo, was an American educator who spent much of her adult life in China (Lo, n.d.).

Critical Evaluation: I feel conflicted about the book. I liked it. As many of the Good Reads (n.d.) reviews noted, it had an engaging story, amazing characters, and valuable historical information. Lily and Kath's love story is beautiful. It made me smile. 

Last Night at the Telegraph Club was also a tough read. Writing wise it wasn't any more difficult than other books I've read, althugh it was a longer book. The stakes seemed so much higher for the characters. 1950s America, especially for a young lesbian Asian American, wasn't a walk in the park. The storyline was almost stressful. The threat of police, the FBI, and reactions from family members if or when they found out about Lily and Kath's relationship had me worried as I read. There was basically no way for a typically happy ending.

Plus, it was the most overtly sexual of any book I've read for the blog. Other books had romance, yes, but the scenes in the Telegraph Club were described in detail. Of course, this being a YA book there wasn't any actual sex, but the suggestive nature of some of the dialogue and scenes were more intense than other books.

Speed-Round Book Talk or Short Book Trailer: As the fight for Gay and Lesbian Rights continues in modern America, read an engaging story about a Chinese American girl finding out who she is near the beginning of the movement in the mid-1950s.

Potential Challenge Issues and Defense Preparation: Overt lesbian content. Even now, in the 2020s, LGBTQ content is a top reason why books are banned or challenged. Of those, the most commonly challenged books are gay or lesbian books written by people of color (Mazariegos & Sullivan, 2022). This book opens a conversation about what the LGBTQ+ community has gone through in the past and present in the struggle to gain the rights they diserve. 

Reason for Inclusion: Before I even opened the book, I was intrigued by what I read on the back cover. I knew I wanted to read the book. Many people, including me, don't know the struggles and even danger that gay, lesbian, and transgender people have experienced in the past and today. This book shows the early struggles of a group of teens in San Francisco in the 1950s.

References

CrashCourse. (2012, October 4). Communists, Nationalists, and China's revolutions: crash course world history #37. [YouTube]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUCEeC4f6ts. 

Good Reads. (n.d.). Last night at the telegraph club. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35224992-last-night-at-the-telegraph-club.

Lo, M. (n.d.). About Malinda Lo. https://www.malindalo.com/about#about-more-bios. 

Mazariegos, M. and Sullivan, M.C. (2022, April 4). Efforts to ban books jumped an 'unprecedented' four-fold in 2021, ALA report says. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2022/04/04/1090067026/efforts-to-ban-books-jumped-an-unprecedented-four-fold-in-2021-ala-report-says.

RuPaul's Drag Race. (2023, March 25). Loosey LaDuca & Luxx Noir London 's "for the girls" lipsync. ruPaul's drag race season 15. [YouTube]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5IbHsVZXUk.

RuPaul's Drag Race. (2023, April 9). The season 15 Queens discuss the threats against drag. [YouTube]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWr1I8MaXvw.

TED-Ed. (2017, March 14). What is McCarthyism? And how did it happen? [YouTube]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N35IugBYH04.