Making a Scene

I love this book sm, Constance Wu's story is so beautiful and raw— she accepts the experiences that have shaped her, whether they were initially difficult or positive— and looks after them with a certain fondness. Might be one of my favorite books now I dunno

I enjoyed this book way more than I thought I would. Essay collections are usually just okay to me, sometimes good, and the audiobooks are easy to listen to while doing other things. I am not very familiar with Wu, only knowing of her from the controversy she talks about in this book - tweeting she was upset her show wasn't cancelled. I've never seen her act in anything.

But I found this collection pretty insightful and compelling, and in many places moving. Even when she is discussing something that on the face of it, I don't have too much interest in hearing about, she manages to write about it in a really interesting way. An example would be the first time she fell in love. I thought this was just a really good essay about how sometimes people slowly change and no longer want the same things, and the way she writes about it shows a lot of maturity and insight into herself and other people. She's also just funny a lot of the time.

There are two essays that really resonated with me. The first is a horrific story when her teacher didn't believe she was smart enough to have written something and she went to all of her other teachers, in front of Wu, and asked if they thought Wu was smart enough to have done it, and they replied no. Absolutely devastating for a child, and it reminds me of all the teachers who dismissed me as a kid because I grew up on a carnival.

The second is the one about rabbits. Her rabbit has the same disease as my rabbit does, and her talking about the whole situation and also the fact that her rabbit is getting old and she will soon miss the little things really got me. Also she defends loving rabbits well, which is something that's annoying in our society.

“people often ask me, ‘why do you love bunnies so much?' and I always want to ask back, “Why do we love anything?”. Listing reasons almost cheapens the love, in my opinion. I don't have an explanation for love. It's also an insulting question. Nobody asks, “why do you love your dog?”. Why is it that love for certain animals is understood, but others require explanation? Everything and everyone is loveable to someone, even if it doesn't make sense from the outside. Love isn't something achieved through merit, its something that happens with time. “

I've never watched Fresh Off the Boat but Crazy Rich Asians is one of my favorite movies in the past few years. And I do remember all the social media firestorm over Constance's comments during the final season renewal of FoTB, so it was obvious that I was read this book. But I was glad to get the audiobook because I always love celebrity narrated memoirs and this one in particular is made for the audio format.

I can't review a memoir based on the life of the author, so I'll restrict my comments to the writing as far as possible. This book is more like a collection of essays about various topics related to her life that Constance wants to discuss, so there's not a lot of chronological continuity and there were many moments where I was confused about which time in her life she was talking about. The essays can also range from very emotional or significant to just cutesy and random, so my interest in the book kept fluctuating.

But what definitely kept my interest was the narration. Constance is a theatre major who has been doing plays since her school days and all that shows in the way she tells her story. She is emotional, she is crying, she is dramatic, and most of all she is very open and honest about herself. And I loved listening to her. I was particularly moved by the essays about her mental health struggles, the whole Twitter debacle and then her subsequent suicide attempt and how she has recovered from that, her relationships with her sister and parents and they have evolved over time, and her various relationship dynamics.

I'm not sure how the experience of reading this book might be but I can promise you that the audiobook is very entertaining and emotional. I liked getting to know the woman behind the celebrity persona and it was nice to see an Asian American woman living her life on her own terms, being successful, and fearless. Can't wait to see more of her future work.

I listened to the audiobook which was read by the author and definitely added to the experience as she was able to inflect the right tone to match the text.