“The Last Time I Came to Burn Paper”
Photo by Yolanda Suen / Unsplash There are much easier ways to write a debut novel, but Aube Rey Lescure has decided to have none of ease. River East, River West is an intergenerational epic, the story of a single family whose lives span a period of sweeping cultural change in China. The book tells the story of fourteen-year-old Alva and her new stepfather, Lu Fang. Alva was born and raised in Shanghai, China. Her mother is American; her father, whom she never met, is Chinese. And Lu Fang’s entry into her family’s life — his transformation from landlord into stepfather — upends her starry-eyed dreams of life in America. Alternating between their points of view, and exploring lives in China a mere ten years — and worlds — apart, Rey Lescure’s book is a kind of bildungsroman of country and culture. It’s equally a haunting, a novel whose characters carry the specters of promise, often unfulfilled — of youth, of status, of wealth, and of a certain rosy view of American cultural power and opportunity.
— Jina Moore Ngarambe for Guernica
u Fang caressed
