“Disappointment tastes like chalk lotus bean.”
The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling is a YA coming-of-age novel set in suburban Sydney. It follows Anna Chiu, a Cantonese-Australian teenager as she navigates family dynamics, mental health, cultural clashes, romance and planning one’s future.
Anna is the dutiful eldest daughter. She balances study, while she takes care of her siblings when her mother is unwell, and works in her dad’s Chinese restaurant on weekends and during school holidays. She finds some distraction in the new delivery boy at her Dad’s restaurant. When her mum’s condition begins to worsen it throws everything in Anna’s life up in the air.
This book explores Chinese migration to Australia through Anna and her family, and the cultural clash it can bring. This aspect of the book really interested me as a Australian with an Italian migrant background – though they are two different cultures, I saw a lot of similarities between my experience and Anna’s. Anna’s world is viewed through the lens of her family’s migrant culture and balanced with trying to follow Chinese cultural values while being a teenager in Australia. At points, I was reminded a lot of Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, only in a different decade, setting and story.
“Love is like that sometimes, all-encompassing, nonsensical and beyond our control”
Mental health takes a central focus in this book. We explore the mental health journey to treatment through Anna’s mother as well as through Rory. They are different mental illnesses, but they each serve a unique perspective that we discover through Anna. This is one of the strongest aspects of the book, as it also serves as a cultural intersection on mental illness and Chinese-Australian culture. The stigma associated with mental illness is presented to the reader in various angles in Anna’s perception as she herself learns to navigate what it means to truly support someone who is being treated for a mental illness, or needs support to manage mental health.
This book does have an element of romance and first love. It wasn’t the central focus for me, but it was cute and it built up well as the story progressed. This book focuses more however, on different kinds of love. The love that exists between families, between partners, siblings and first love. Sometimes loving others can be clumsy, hard and not without making mistakes. But love, can also be genuine, authentic and helps us to win against all odds.
“It is my future. And I’m looking forward to it.”
Anna takes a journey throughout the book, starting as living for her parents and the expectations of others, but becoming sure of herself and the direction of her life by the end. Even if perceived as unconventional. I really loved this message and thought it would speak to many people trying to make sense of their own futures. Sometimes the future we plan for ourself isn’t necessarily the one others think we want. Anna choices here help her stand up as a central heroine in this novel.
The Surprising Power of a Good Dumpling definitely has all the hallmarks of a strong YA standalone novel. There are many things that make this a good book and I can’t recommend it enough.
