Not Your Average Jo - Hardcover

Shim, Grace K.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593462769 ISBN 13: 9780593462768

Verlag: Kokila, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

From the author of THE NOH FAMILY, a second standalone YA novel that follows a Korean American teen as she navigates the treacherous world of nepo babies and cultural appropriation that is the Los Angeles music scene. Perfect for fans of Mary H. K. Choi, Maurene Goo, and Emiko Jean.

Riley Jo is a teenager who knows what she wants. Born and raised in Bentonville, Arkansas, this Korean American girl has her sights set on being a musician. So when her parents are surprisingly cool about her attending the prestigious Los Angeles–based arts-focused boarding school her senior year of high school, she jumps at the chance. This is her moment to make her indie rock dreams a reality! 

Things at Carlmont Academy start out strong: She joins a band, and they set out to make plans to perform at the annual spring concert—with a chance to land a record contract. Another student, Xander, decides his school project will be a documentary about the band leading up to their first show. But not everything goes how Riley Jo imagined. She is soon sidelined when her other bandmates feel she is "too Asian" to be their lead singer, and they choose her classmate Bodhi Collins for the role instead.

Bodhi is rock music royalty, with a dad who is a famous music exec. And he's got the "all-American rock star look." Her classmates suggest she try making K-pop,  but her heart is in indie rock. Riley Jo decides to take matters into her own hands and writes an original song to showcase her talent. But Bodhi takes the credit . . . and given his connections, the band lets him.

Xander captures all of this in his film, which he leaks in order to show the truth behind the band. Riley Jo decides to sign up for the spring concert and perform on her own . . . but will she finally be able to take center stage?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Grace K. Shim lives with her husband and three children in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of the young adult novels The Noh Family and Not Your Average Jo. You can find Grace on Twitter @gracemisplaced1 and on Instagram @gkshimwrites.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

ONE
When you’re an Asian American in an area where there aren’t many Asian Americans, there’s a cultural expectation people have of you that is clear from day one. You become the resident expert on all things Asian, whether you like it or not—­whether you’re qualified or not.
Can you tell me what this says? (Points to random Chinese word.) Bro, not every Asian is Chinese.
Oh, you’re Korean? I love K-­pop/K-­drama/K-­beauty. Um, you’re welcome?
Riley Jo? Are you sure “Jo” is a Korean last name? Because I’ve never heard of it before. Well, then, it must be a mistake. I’ll tell my parents, and the Korean Ministry of Last Names, that you, random white lady from Arkansas, are right and they are wrong.
Where are you fr—­ Nope!
Bentonville, Arkansas, is the only home I’ve ever known. And yet “at home” is not quite how I feel here. The way I have to convince people I’m from this city/state/country is like a form of verbal MMA I don’t have the stamina for. I gave up trying to explain myself after the first few—­I don’t know—­hundred times, when I began to sound like a broken record.
I mean, if you think about it, it’s kind of like a pickle. (Just hear me out.) Pickles are made by submerging a cucumber in a container filled with saltwater brine or vinegar. The process doesn’t happen in an instant. It takes time for the briny water to infuse the cucumber, changing its texture, flavor, and even appearance. And then, when it’s finally ready for consumption and it’s sliced up for hamburgers or speared for sandwiches, does anyone consider it a cucumber anymore? Of course not. Because it’s had a completely different environment—­a completely different life—­that changed the cucumber into something else entirely.
Anyway, my point is, no matter how many times I tell people I’m a pickle, all they see is a cucumber.
For the record, the pickle doesn’t count as a vegetable serving because it’s too salty—­also relatable.
To be fair, no one I’ve encountered in Bentonville, Arkansas, is mean-­spirited or belittling. It’s not like anyone here is telling me to “go back to my country” or calling me any variation of the C-­word (chink, ching-­chong, and, more recently, China virus). It’s the kind of microaggressions derived from a type of lazy curiosity that should be their issue to deal with. And yet somehow the problem inevitably becomes mine.
If I don’t meet people’s cultural expectations of who they think I am, they start backing away like I’m someone to be wary of. Because if they can’t place me, then I—­all five feet, two inches of me—­must be evil. I’m seriously lol-­ing at that because aside from my mildly lethal form of snark expressed in the most subtle way (a contradiction if there ever was one), I am a classic eldest child, and as such, I am biologically incapable of doing anything that goes against the grain. As far as I know, I’m the farthest thing from evil. I’m the polysynthetic fluff inside a Squishmallow. I’m a friggin’ PEEPS Marshmallow.
If people here don’t understand me by now, they never will. So, instead, I choose passive-­aggressivism. I’ll show you, random cashier-­dude at the deli who assumed English wasn’t my first language. I’ll speak the most unaccented English in my very outdoor voice inside this teeny tiny convenience store just to prove my point. If people think I’m supposed to like K-­pop, I’ll go out of my way to show them there are other genres of music I like/play/listen to. If they think I’m supposed to be friends with the other Asian kids at school, I’ll steer so clear of them it’s like I don’t even know they exist.
But that’s where my plan sort of backfired. Without interest in football or pep rallies, I didn’t have many options for friends. Because that’s Bentonville High School in a nutshell: one big sports arena with way too many chants about winning/dominating/defeating.
I started playing the guitar to avoid having to join a sports team. But it didn’t take much to realize I had a natural knack for it. One chord, and I was sold. I discovered I could play back tunes I’d heard only once or twice. Somehow, chord progressions made more sense to me than conversations with my classmates.
My instructor (aka the internet) showed me a list of songs every guitarist should know—­the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Under the Bridge,” one of the most performed songs ever; Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” one of the best beginner songs for guitarists; Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” another great starter piece to learn easy riffs and basic song structure; and so on. In a matter of months, I could play anything from James Taylor to Taylor Swift.
Then, by the middle of my freshman year, just when I was finding my rhythm with my music, something happened that changed everyone’s lives: The Pandemic.
I tried the virtual hangout thing for a hot second, played a few rounds of Among Us or, as my sister, Elise, likes to call it, Amongous like Humongous. Probably the most entertaining thing about the game to be honest. Because sussing people out felt even more uncomfortable online than it did in person. I felt like the imposter every time without even being the imposter. Anytime I’d get down on myself, mourning what few acquaintances I’d had (RIP social life), I’d turn on the TV and be reminded that people all around the world were losing their actual lives, which shut me up pretty quickly. I should consider myself lucky. And besides my health, I still had my guitar. With it, I never felt lonely. In fact, while we were on lockdown, when music was all I had, I was the most myself I’d been in my life. Which is something I don’t admit out loud, since I don’t want to be insensitive to others who suffered mentally/physically/emotionally during the pandemic. 
By the time people started reemerging from their homes to go back to work/school/stores, music had become my everything—­­my friend, my safe space, my family even. It’s now the only way I know how to express myself, the only place I don’t have to explain myself. And as long as I have it, to quote Metallica, “nothing else matters.”
The plan was to get out of Bentonville right after graduation. I had my eye on a few small liberal arts colleges—­Wesleyan, St. Olaf, Luther. Not only do they have established and reputable music programs, but they are out of state. It was during my college search that I discovered Carlmont Academy, a boarding high school for the arts. I was looking for a way out of Bentonville after high school. The possibility of leaving even sooner had never entered my mind. It was the perfect plan.
“Boarding school?” Mom wrinkled her nose. “Why would you leave for high school when you already go to a perfectly good one here?”
Okay, maybe not the perfect plan, depending on who you asked.
My mom is a second-­generation Korean American who grew up in Little Rock and is a professor of pharmacology at Bentonville U. Her whole life, she never lived outside of Arkansas. And, as far as I could tell, it’s what she expected of me.
“Besides,” she went on, “you have so much to look forward to here.” Without saying it, I knew exactly what she was referring to. Children of faculty members at...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Kokila
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593462769
• ISBN 13: 9780593462768
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland