I related to this future version of America that wasn’t tidy but layered, improvised, and complicated.
Clara Shin cares little about school- or anything, for that matter. If someone claimed she did care about something, it would be that her pranks brought laughter and terrorized Rose Carver, or maybe it would be her upcoming summer trip to Mexico to see her social media-influencer mom.
Then, when a prank goes too far at junior prom, Clara finds herself with a summer job in her dad’s food truck, the KoBra, a Korean-Brazilian fusion experience. To make matters worse, Rose is her new coworker. The situation might not be all bad, though; Rose might not to be the worst person on the planet, and the guy who has a crush on her, named Hamlet of all names, might be a step in the right direction. However, caring about Rose, Hamlet, and the KoBra might require a major shift in her perspective on life.
In Maurene Goo’s young adult novel The Way You Make Me Feel, Clara has reasons for her snarky, I-don’t-care attitude. Raised by her father in LA, Clara has responded to her mother’s absence by shielding herself from pain; If all relationships and activities stay in the shallow end, nothing will dig deep enough to hurt her again. As a result, by her junior year she spends all her free time in a 7-11 with a group of friends who only do anything ironically, treating life flippantly together and pulling pranks for the sake of a bit of amusement.
Goo doesn’t create multi-faceted characters with incredibly dynamic internal dialogues, but she does create a real, diverse cast who have real problems teenagers sometimes face. Clara can’t stand that Rose tries so hard, but it’s possible she feels an intense pressure to do so as a ballerina, straight-A student, class president, and especially as the daughter of a successful black prosecutor. Hamlet may be all smiles and sincerity, but he does live with family friends while his parents run their companies in China.
The Way You Make Me Feel also depicts the LA beyond the Hollywood sign and popular stretch of Sunset Boulevard. I found myself eating up, or at least wanting to, the array of cultural tastes embedded in the city’s identity, exploring neighborhoods of every socioeconomic status and their inhabitants, encountering where immigration has lead to an imperfect, messy, and beautiful mix of any corner of the world in one place. Clara knows the city from the eyes of one who grew up there, and it feels like a gift to see from her point of view for a few hours.
Last semester a professor of mine went to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference, where visitors can go from booth to booth and pick up as many free books as they can carry. She brought back enough for each member of our class to get two, and The Way You Make Me Feel ended up in my hands.
My biggest regret of 2018 is not attending that conference. I may have been in school, and it may have taken place around eight hours away from my location at the time, but I’ll be hard-pressed to not attend in the future, regardless of such factors. I obviously feel motivated by books, but from reports back about the conference itself, the whole experience seems incredible. If any teacher of English has somehow not heard of the NCTE conference: You’re welcome. And NCTE: I’ll see you next year.
Certain points in The Way You Make Me Feel did not feel entirely believable to me, but I won’t specify which ones, because it doesn’t matter. I found myself unable to put it down, packing it for classes with a full understanding I wouldn’t have time to read anyway. It’s precious, from the pink cover to the teenage romance to the complicated love between daughter and parent, and I would be wrong to say it isn’t original and bright. I don’t know if I learned anything or changed in any way, but I do know I was delighted the whole time.
I don’t think all books have to be more than that, though. I realized this weekend that now, every time I pick up a book on a shelf at the store, rather than read its inside cover, I check the internet for its overall reviews. If a book has below four stars, I generally put it back.
By following this rule I didn’t know was developing, I would never have picked up The Way You Make Me Feel, and I wouldn’t have received those few hours of delight. As a child I would walk into a bookstore and in ten minutes have a stack piled high my mom would make me weedle down. Without mass reviews, and without any sort of critical eye, I would read vastly based off the merit of the jacket.
Not every book has to be a best-seller, a heart-tugging revelation of human suffering or potential, fresh-off-the inner recesses of the soul. Some books inform, some books reveal, and some books merely entertain without being a great, and that kind of book can be the one we need most. I’ll make an effort to read more books without scanning their reviews first, and I encourage others to do the same.
Excepting this blog.
Your local hypocrite,
H.G. Shelves 