Boring Asian Female - Hardcover

Xu, Canwen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593954580 ISBN 13: 9780593954584

Verlag: Berkley Books, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

“Thank you for your interest in our school, but we regret to inform you that…” you’re not special. You’re too average. You’re too boring.

Well, in that case, she’ll have to show them just how interesting she can be.

Elizabeth Zhang is well aware of her place in the world. She’s in the tenth percentile for likability, the seventieth percentile for attractiveness, and the ninety-ninth percentile for academics. While she’s never been the most beautiful or the most liked, she knows she has the intelligence and ambition to achieve her greatest dream: Harvard Law School. But when Harvard rejects Elizabeth for not standing out enough—which she knows means she's just another boring Asian female—her carefully constructed life falls apart. What shocks her even more is that Laura Kim, a classmate at Columbia, got in. Elizabeth can’t figure out how this could have happened. Why was Laura accepted? What makes her so interesting?

At first, she follows her because she’s just curious. What Laura orders for lunch. Where Laura shops. What Laura’s hobbies are. All of these things must contribute to her overall package, what makes her an acceptable person to Harvard. But still, Elizabeth just can’t see it. The only thing she sees is that Laura has taken her spot.

A spot that she knows she deserves after working so hard. A spot that she’ll simply have to take back.

Layered and subversive, this novel brings to light how, in the face of societal expectations and self-inflicted pressures, a person can unlock the darkest parts of themselves and show how far they’re willing to go to achieve their vision of success.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Canwen Xu is a debut author whose writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Kansas City Star, Chalkbeat, Areo Magazine, and more. She is a graduate of Columbia University.

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ONE

He wouldn't stop staring at her legs.

While the rest of the fifty or so potential donors at least pretended to be enamored by Eunjin's violin solo, Arnold Schoenbackler stared straight at Eunjin's exposed thighs.

She had asked me beforehand if the black dress was too short; I told her no. It wasn't the 1930s, for heaven's sake. No one in Manhattan cared about modesty. To eschew traditionalism was to belong right in this crowd of wealthy New Yorkers, among whom sexism and slut-shaming were major faux pas.

But I admit I overlooked this one critical piece: the unwelcome stares of creepy old men. Specifically, Arnold Schoenbackler, the epitome of a creepy old man.

The event that night was hosted at one of his galleries sprawled across the Northeast. It was an alumni fundraising event for Columbia University, of which Arnold was a trustee. The gallery comprised a single floor, with high ceilings in a converted industrial space and entrance doors heavy enough to seem locked even when they weren't. The attendees' clothing, in shades of crimson or chartreuse or electric green, stood in stark contrast to the works hanging on the wall, which were splotches of black ink on yellowed paper. Schoenbackler described the exhibition as "a harmonious symphony of temporal epochs and spiritual contemplation through an alchemical fusion of calligraphic antiquity and the visceral fervor of Abstract Expressionism." I would describe it as a modern take on Chinese calligraphy. The artist was Chinese, but he wasn't there, so I was the only ethnically Chinese person in the room.

Eunjin played her violin in the center while the attendees watched. Many of them grasped plastic cups of wine and squinted to announce to the others that they were concentrating extra hard on the solo. Some even crossed one arm over the other and tilted their heads to the side. I liked to call this "the thinking pose."

From the moment I walked in I had felt like I was missing something that everyone else had; I just couldn't put my finger on what. Every time I spoke to someone I felt they could sense that I lacked this mysterious quality. Their eyes darted away, or they became more animated while talking to someone else. Still, I wondered if I was just overthinking it.

Schoenbackler's assistant had invited Eunjin to perform after emailing the music department at Columbia for a recommendation. The chair knew that her work-study job barely covered her living expenses and referred her for paid gigs whenever possible. As Eunjin's best friend, I tagged along for moral support. It boosted my ego a bit to know that the person I connected with the most happened to be a former child prodigy. If you looked her up on the internet (as I did after the first time we met), you'd find a string of articles describing her as "the ten-year-old virtuoso playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra" and "the daughter of Korean immigrants whose performance sparkled at Carnegie Hall." Technically, only her mom is Korean. Her dad is white.


My name is Elizabeth. I don’t quite know how to describe myself, other than the fact that I’m pretty good at most things I do. I graduated valedictorian from my high school in South Dakota, I have a 3.9 GPA, and I’m decently pretty. I’m pretty enough that it helps me in life, but I’m not pretty enough that it hurts me in life. I’m not so pretty that women find me intimidating, but I’m pretty enough that men want to be friends with me. I think I’m in the 70th percentile of Asian women my age, which is less pretty than a white-passing woman in the 70th percentile of my age. No, I’m not racist. I’m just finely attuned to how our society is racist.

Before I moved to New York for college, I spent all of my life in Brookings, South Dakota. Population 23,000. Whenever I think about my life in South Dakota, I mostly think about how much I wanted to escape South Dakota. You never heard about South Dakota, let alone Brookings, in TV shows, movies, and the national news. Nothing that happened there mattered. The logical conclusion was that if I continued to live there, my life wouldn't matter either.

To make matters worse, I was a nobody in my own high school. This meant I didn't even matter in the place that didn't matter. I was the only person of color in my grade at school, so everybody knew my name, but few wanted anything to do with me. They asked me the exact type of racially charged questions you would expect. Not all of the things that they said were bad. A friend from middle school told me that because I was so smart, they now assumed that all Asians were smart. Still, that didn't make me feel great.

My plan to escape South Dakota and get back at the people who had underappreciated me all my life was to be a somebody in a place that mattered. It was relatively easy to figure out what that place was.

In middle school and high school, everyone, especially the girls, watched The East Siders, a show about wealthy teenagers who all went to the same prep school on the Upper East Side. The show was pretty bad, but that was beside the point. The characters were everything I aspired to be. They weren't just cool because they liked to party; they were cool because they liked to party and cared about school and success.

The show taught us Great Plains teenagers something important about the world: that the least cool Upper East Side private school kid was still eons cooler than the queen bees of a South Dakota public school. Even the popular kids at Brookings High, the ones who looked down upon me all my life, knew that. The week after season three premiered, our prom queen, Georgiana Van Aartsen (she goes by Gigi), started wearing plaid skirts and knee-high socks every day to school. South Dakota was nothing, and New York City was everything. The characters in The East Siders were people who mattered in a place that also mattered.

In season five of the show, the characters all decide to attend Columbia University. In retrospect, I realize that the producers picked the school because it would allow all of the characters to stay in New York, but at the time it felt like my decision was made for me. I, Elizabeth Zhang, would also attend Columbia University. It wasn't feasible for me to go to high school on the Upper East Side, but college on the Upper West Side was something I could accomplish. After all, I wasn't particularly hot, I definitely wasn't popular, but I was pretty smart. And more importantly, I was ambitious.

Senior year of high school, I applied early to Columbia and got in. When the news spread among the eighty or so seniors in our graduating class that I had gotten into an Ivy League, even Georgiana Van Aartsen was impressed. I think it was the only time she ever acknowledged my existence outside of a group project or the conversational portion of Advanced Placement Spanish class. "I heard you're moving to New York," she said. "That's cool." I too thought it was cool. I could already picture the glamour-nights out at clubs with fake IDs, parties in brownstones under swanky chandeliers, and, of course, private fundraising events at art galleries.

I researched everything I could about Columbia University. The classes, the clubs, the alumni. In my head, attending Columbia would be my ticket to the life I always dreamed of, the one that would prove once and for all that I was better than all the people with whom I went to high school.

But then, I stumbled upon some less-than-ideal information. The salaries for Columbia graduates were okay, but not stellar. Sure, I'd have a prestigious degree on my résumé, but it didn't guarantee me a lucrative career. Money was an important aspect of the lifestyle in The East Siders. Without it, I would be back where I started: a nobody. After all,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berkley Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593954580
• ISBN 13: 9780593954584
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar