by Samantha Fitch
November 2, 2021
Samantha Fitch is currently an instructor of English at Yavapai College in Prescott, Arizona. She graduated with a PhD in Literary Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, with a focus on Thing Theory and gender studies. She enjoys working on a wide variety of projects, including editing and her contributing work to Livingstone Online. She also volunteers her time to women’s and maternal health organizations.
Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu; Tin House Books; 272 pages; $16.95
Kyle Lucia Wu’s debut novel, Win Me Something, is the story of Willa Chen, a Chinese American woman living in New York. The reader quickly becomes privy to Willa’s life, from the most quotidian scenes to her intimate, innermost thoughts and emotions, primarily taking us through Willa’s days as a nanny in her twenties, occasionally sweeping us back in time to her childhood. Wu’s writing style offers raw emotion comingled with mundane existence. The novel is an intimate study of liminal spaces, a soul-searching journey to be heard, and to belong.
Wu unwraps Willa’s story by skillfully weaving in the theme of incongruence with Willa’s new position as a nanny for a wealthy family who lives in the upscale neighborhood of Tribeca. This opening is symbolic of the overarching theme of the work: of both disparity and a desire to fit in. The swanky apartment offers an obscure space where Willa belongs, yet does not; she is on the threshold between a life of luxurious affluence and one of financial hardship, an essential part of a family, yet not related to any of them. Like Willa being torn in these opposing directions, the reader is heaved back and forth through time, traveling with Willa throughout her life as she aches for someone to notice her. In different chapters of the novel as in different segments of her life, Willa often finds herself wanting to melt into the background to avoid the prejudices hurled at her. As she remarks, she is, “Very watched, which wasn’t the same as being seen.”
At the foundation of this peripherality lies the merging of two cultures. Wu expertly portrays the sense of displacement that comes from being half American, half Chinese—belonging to both cultures but not fully belonging to either one. Throughout the totality of the novel, Willa attempts to navigate her identity, while the layers of her life illustrate how her entire existence seems rent in two. Willa thinks, almost desperately, “I’m American, I’m like you.” But it is clear her conviction to blend in is fraught with obstacles, working within a milieu where people look at her and speak to her like she is “an exotic creature.” With a yearning to overcome this fissure in her background, Willa must also deal with the divorce of her parents. Her two homes are reminiscent of her two cultures; she isn’t comfortable in either one. Willa is trying to escape from the marginal space she holds, and a delicate nod to feminist forerunners, particularly those who highlighted the importance of attitudes towards the emotional health of women, is extant within the narrative. Wu’s Willa is named after Willa Cather, and like many of Cather’s protagonists, Willa is self-examining, introspective, soul-searching. Similarly, Charlotte Perkin’s Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is called to mind when Willa remembers her bedroom as a child: “My childhood bedroom had white wallpaper with tiny blue and green flowers on it. My mom had picked it out…I picked at the vertical seams with my fingers, tried to peel it down…I hated the flowers, everywhere I looked.” Wu illuminates Willa’s struggle to find her own happiness, to feel comfortable in her own skin.
Like the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” trying to find meaning in the walls surrounding her, Willa is trying to find meaning in her own life. And like the tone used in Cather and Gilman’s work, Wu’s tone is mainly stark and raw; Wu’s attention to the dichotomies involved in the quest for one’s belonging is unyielding, though some of the gravity is lifted with the occasional triumph, small moments when Willa feels a sense of belonging or joy, like when she wins at poker, or when her dad makes her eggs just the way she likes them. The writing offers few reprieves, but what it lacks in variation, it makes up for in depth. Wu’s writing is finest in its attention to the details of internal thoughts, including rich descriptions of reflections and memories that are both specific to Willa, yet so universal that they are relatable to nearly any reader. Willa articulates what she is searching for, saying: “I needed—a spot at a table, somewhere. I needed a throat that could ask for things. I needed a picture of me and both of my parents, taped on my wall like it wasn’t important enough to frame. I needed someone to teach me how to drive. I needed somewhere to go where I didn’t have to think about each sentence before I said it.”
The fractures, and sometimes the subsequent mending, of Willa’s life, and between people in general, can likewise stand as a precis for the novel. Wu leaves her readers with an ending that is both open and satisfying, suggestive of a resolution to Willa’s search for family and belonging, yet realistic in its omission of a tidy conclusion. Win Me Something is sure to resonate with readers in its consciousness of the struggles of finding one’s place. It’s a profound account of finding community and connection in peripheral spaces, and the often painful metamorphosis that accompanies maturation.
©2021 West Trade Review
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Liminal Spaces: Coming-of-Age and Belonging in Kyle Lucia Wu’s Win Me Something
FICTION REVIEW
Image by Leohoho on Unsplash
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