XiXi Tian’s debut young adult novel, This Place Is Still Beautiful, features the stories of Margaret and Annalie Flanagan. The two sisters face the complicated elements of identity, family dynamics, ugly truths about racism, and growing up as mixed race teens in Illinois. Tian’s approach challenges the reader’s perspective as she shares insight and invites us to look from various lenses.
Annalie’s father left when she was only three, so she has no memory of him. Her Chinese mother is determined to protect her girls from the pain she herself endured in a biracial marriage that ultimately fails when cultural differences intrude. Still, Margaret loves Rajiv Agarwal, a young man with cultural ties to India aspiring to be a lawyer, and Annalie harbors feelings for a white, blond-haired jock from her childhood dreams: Thom Froggett. When some vandals spray the word Chink on the Flanagan’s garage, Annalie calls her sister Margaret, who races home from an internship in New York City to “handle the hate crime.” Soon, her sleuthing stirs up past resentment and anger.
Seventeen-year-old Annalie, who struggles to know what she wants and to say exactly what she’s thinking, wishes to be more like her friend Violet. Violet plans to become an environmental scientist and to marry her boyfriend, Abaeze Adebayo. The bubbly yet self-conscious Annalie, on the other hand, loves baking but feels pressured to pursue one of the professions her mother believes has prestige: lawyer, banker, or accountant. When Thom finally asks her out, Annalie struggles to share her deepest, darkest thoughts with him, fearing she’ll scare him away. What does it mean that she is able to share these secrets with Daniel Bakersfield, her boss’ nephew?
As the two girls endure various identity-shaping experiences, readers learn along with them that part of growing up is realizing that not everything your family does is normal or acceptable. Additionally, we accept that secret-keeping can poison our lives and that dodging difficult conversations usually ends badly.
Other truths that readers encounter include how language is often inadequate to capture feelings or to share comfort. “How many different ways can you say [a situation] is awful? What does it mean to hear the word sorry so many times from people who aren’t apologizing for themselves?” (90).
Finally, we accept that sometimes we choose our identities, while other times an identity is thrust upon us based on our appearances or people’s assumptions. In addition, we recognize how deeply place helps to shape an identity.
Tian’s novel is an artfully and sensitively written exploration of race and identity—how otherness, marginalization, and assimilation all present choices and challenges and “how easy it is to turn away from other people of color when it matters” (339).
- Donna