"We got our tickets already. We paid for them and everything."

"That don't mean shit."

The genesis of this book is non-fiction: In 1991, Latasha Harlins was shot and killed by a store owner named Soon Ja Du. This sparked all sorts of nationalist and racist tension and violence, naturally contrasted with the racist violence and abuse that the black community in Los Angeles have been subject to for decades. The year after, the Los Angeles Riots occurred.Cha's book jumps off from that event but expands it into a fictional work that reaches for the sublime. By subtly displaying how humans often interact in different groups—be it in the family, at work, with our loves, other groups of people, the police, the justice system—through means of everyday language that would make Mark Twain proud, Cha has made a book that is not only intricate but simple to follow.The reader is thrown into action and quickly learns who's who. Racial tension is brought to the surface in a way that makes me, a 42-year-old Swedish citizen, taste more than the visceral shocks to the system that Cha's simple and highly effective plot and dialogue generate.One of the most radiant methods that Cha uses throughout the book is to show how divides are not only created between constructs like "race" and "nationality", but also between family members (e.g. the mother-daughter relationship), in heterosexuality (e.g. how men and women can interact differently than men with only men, and women with only women), in police departments, in the justice system, and even between different eras. Naturally, all of these divides between humans are merely socially constructed, and Cha highlights that fact beautifully.

Miriam was so American she renounced her own mother—a capital crime, pretty much, in a Confucian culture.

The simplicity in the writing is this book's greatest grace and provides the best framing for the story, which is simple and would undoubtedly have foiled, were it not for the author's skills.

The club leader was behind Grace, so close his voice made her jump. “Is there a problem?” The hope on his face was disgusting. Grace willed her sister to keep her mouth shut. Miriam didn’t even hesitate.

“I didn’t come here to drink with the Simi Valley Hitler Youth.”
“We’re not Nazis.”

The way he said it made Grace think he had to make the denial often.

“I’ve never had to clarify that I’m not a Nazi,” said Miriam.

Cha has written a glass onion of a book that is easily read and floats to my mind to and fro, a week after I finished it.