Finally Seen

I've seen Front Desk and its sequels suggested to me for ages, but I never got around to ordering them until now. I opted to start with Finally Seen, which is the newest book by the same author, as it also deals with censorship in schools like Attack of the Black Rectangles. 

Lina Gao was left in China with her grandparents when she was young. Her parents and her two-year-old younger sister travelled to America. Finally, it's time for Lina to join them, five years later. Her grandmother needs more help than a 10-year-old can provide, her grandfather has passed, and Lina just plain wants to be with her family. After her aunt helps get her grandmother settled in a nursing home, Lina is off to a town outside LA. 

Lina definitely has a lot of struggles. She was led to believe her father was doing microbiology stuff, but that had fallen through years ago, and her mother lost her job in a fancy nail salon during the pandemic. The house where she thought they lived was simply a house they thought was pretty. They live in a small apartment with the girls having the bedroom and their parents sleeping on a mat in the living room. Her father works long hours on an organic farm for not nearly enough pay, though the owner is going to help the family get their green cards, so Dad is sticking it out. Lina's mom decided to start her own bath bomb business on etsy and it continually does pretty well. The main family drama is that they owe $3700 in back rent and are struggling to save for it. They can't apply for aid because they're afraid there will be repercussions when they apply for green cards. 

Lina was taught by her grandmother to sew part of her mouth shut with invisible thread. To try to be as invisible as possible to not be labelled as a bad person. Her English isn't great when she first arrives and she becomes terrified of speaking in class. Her awesome teacher gets her an ESL teacher, who is equally awesome, and she helps Lina a lot. Lina is an artist and she discovers graphic novels and how much they help her learn English. 

As Lina navigates getting to know her very American younger sister, helping her mom with the bath bombs, seeing her dad treated like crap by the farm owner, feeling guilty she left her grandmother behind, dealing with bullies at school, and trying to fit in in both her own family and in America, she decides to create a graphic novel of her own to tell her story. 

All the problems come to a head and are thankfully resolved around the same time a racist twat of a parent decides Lina's favorite graphic novel, the one she suggested for her whole class to read aloud, is temporarily banned while the school board looks into it. Lina overcomes her fear of speaking in front of others to stand up for the book and explain how important it is to her at the emergency school board meeting.

It works. No idea if the asshole parent learned anything, but at least her daughter did. 

I loved all the characters in the book and it was very well done. Loved the graphic novel name-dropping, although I am disappointed to learn that Flea Shop, the contested story, doesn't actually exist! Maybe Kelly Yang will create it for us. Attack of the Black Rectangles taught us that censoring words in books is insulting to kids' intelligence and maturity, and now Finally Seen teaches us the importance of having diverse books so more kids than ever can feel seen on the page.