Adrift at sea is an apt metaphor to describe what I felt after my first breakup as an adult. A sea of my own tears that separated me from friends and family. Leaving me feeling like the only person in the world. It’s this sentiment that writer Gina Chung captures so well over the course of her newly released novel’s 288 pages — which is as much about heartbreak and loneliness as it is a soulful commentary on what it means to be an Asian American adrift in our world.
“Sea Change” was meant to be a short story. But inspiration — or should I say, a special cephalopod — grabbed Chung with all eight of its tentacles from the moment she penned the first line of the novel: “This morning, Dolores is blue again.” Dolores, mind you, is an octopus. Her caretaker is a Korean American woman named Ro, the narrator and main character of the story.
Like Dolores stuck in her tank, Ro finds herself in her 30s and all alone. Her boyfriend Tae just left her for a mission to Mars, her friend and co-worker Yoonhee has been acting weird around her ever since Yoonhee got engaged, and she just can’t shake the hope that one day her father will return, although he’s been missing for over a decade. And now, Dolores, Ro’s only confidante, is being sold to some ultra-rich collector.
Treading Water as an Asian American
Writing in the midst of the pandemic, Chung drew on her own personal experience of breakups and isolation to color in Ro’s world.
“Breakups suck. There’s no easy way out of a breakup as someone who has also gone through a fair share of them. There’s no way out but through, as the saying goes,” Chung shares. “[Towards the end of 2020,] I was going through a breakup as well — along with all the other changes in the pandemic. During that time, everyone was sort of renavigating and renegotiating relationships, not just romantic ones, but one’s family and friendships.”
The realism in the book is most evident by Ro’s inaction. Through…
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