Book Review: The Great Wall of Lucy Wu

by Sally L.

As children’s and tween librarian, I get to know a lot of children books with Chinese Americans as the main characters. Reading those books about ABC’s (American Born Chinese) helps me understand how our kids struggle between the values and culture established in their upbringing in America and those of their Chinese parents (i.e. us).

“The Great Wall of Lucy Wu” by Wendy Wan-Long Shang has a reading level for tweens. It’s a book that you want to finish in one sitting without putting it down. The author is an excellent story teller. The last sentence of each chapter is like a cliffhanger that captivates you to keep reading. Lucy Wu is an Americanized Chinese girl who loves basketball. She rejects the traditional Chinese culture. This includes disliking Chinese cuisine and lacking the understanding of the importance of proper seating arrangement of when dining with her relatives in a Chinese restaurant, from a traditional Chinese perspective. She has two main conflicts in the story line: having had to give up her privacy for 6 months by sharing her bedroom with “Yi Po” from China and giving up basketball practice in order to attend Chinese school on Saturdays to meet her parents’ wish. The journey that Lucy Wu takes to reconcile these conflicts and, eventually, appreciate both Chinese and American cultures is very funny and moving. You may even shed a few tears when you read about Lucy’s mixed feelings upon the departure of “Yi Po”.

For the 2018 Chinese New Year Celebration in my hometown library that I work at, I have compiled a list of Chinese American children books that I highly recommend for leisure reading. Take a look and happy reading!