Boring Asian Female

Boring Asian Female by Canwen Xu

This reminded me of Best Offer Wins. In both cases, an Asian American lead is driven to succeed in the way she understands the American Dream, but goes off the rails. 

In this book, Elizabeth Zhang is in her last year at Columbia, getting ready to go to law school. She grew up in South Dakota with hard-working immigrant parents. She was the only Asian at her high school and never quite fit in. She went to Columbia because that was were the snobby elite in a TV show went. She had her mind set on attending Harvard Law school to achieve the life of wealth and prosperity that other classmates seemed to have. Then she learns she didn't get into Harvard Law, or any law school other than Georgetown. She also hears that another Asian female, got into Columbia. When Elizabeth talks with the pre-law advisor, the. feedback is that she has a good application, but that she is a "boring" Asian female. Then she seadil goes off the deep end.

She is convinced that Laura stole the spot at Harvard Law. She starts stalking Laura. She impersonates a high schooler to learn more about Laura. She even asks to be called Laura when making love. Then things get worse. She hatches a plan to get Laura's admission rescinded. She publishes an anonymous far-right blog in a way that would be identified as Laura. However, people eventually trace it to the male student whose login she used to publish it. He ends up dropping out of school, only to later become a right wing commentator. Elizabeth finds out she is pregnant. After getting money from the guy for an abortion, she decides instead to have the kid, so she can be less boring. She later sneaks into Laura's dorm, but Laura comes home (with limited mental functionality due to substance use.) After Laura finally realizes everything Elizabeth has done, Elizabeth sprayed her with pepper spray and got away. Laura dies from the spray. (she had a heart condition). Elizabeth showed no remorse, and was fine when another girl was charged with the manslaughter death. Elizabeth has a miscarriage. She later impersonates Laura in the Harvard law admit group. She has a big breakdown when the group calls her out as not being a real future student. After recovering, she gets a call from Harvard, letting her know there was an error with her score reporting and that she was now being offered a spot. 

Previously, Harvard said the decision was final and there was no way to validate the data. If only they hadn't Elizabeth would not have gone wacko. However, she showed clearly that she would do anything to have her desired success. Is this really the type of person you would want? The steps seemed logical, but the results were horrid. Is this an indictment of an over-driven Asian culture? The narrative was compelling and the characters. were interesting,  though I really wanted to see her charged rather than end up with her dream.