Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

Written By: Malinda Lo
Published By: Dutton Books for Young Readers in 2021
ISBN: 978-0525555254

Plot Summary: Lily is a Chinese American girl who decides to participate in the 1950 Miss Chinatown Pageant even though it is kind of racist. Lily starts her senior year of high school and has the big dream of going to space even though no Asian American Woman has done it before. Lily goes to a drugstore late at night where she finds a novel that depicts a love story between two women which she hasn't been exposed to before. Lily notices that her friend Kath (Kathleen Miller) has shown an interest in her as she also wants to go into a male dominated profession of being a pilot. Kath introudces Lily to the Telegraph Club which is a place for lesbians.  The club gets raided and Kath ends up in jail while Lily is able to get away. Lily ends up running away from her home as she is not accepted but Lily's Aunt Judy finds her and tries to make life go back to normal. Around a year later, Lily and Kath find each other and profess their love while they are going their separate ways as Kath is fixing planes and Lily is going to college at UCLA. 

Critical Analysis: This book is an adventure that shows glimpses of the love story that will grow throughout the beginning of the book. Lily takes her time to find out her true self and once she is able to accept who she is, she starts to explore more of what that means for her in her life. Lily becomes honest with herself and others and it allows her to grow as a person. There is also a lot of interactions with the characters who talk about what it means to be a "good" Chinese American citizen and how they need to stay under the radar and not make waves for their own safety. Lily goes through the deeply hard struggle of trying to balance her belonging to her family while also becoming the person that she is meant to be. 
Review: Kirkus Book Reviews

Finally, the intersectional, lesbian, historical teen novel so many readers have been waiting for.
Lily Hu has spent all her life in San Francisco’s Chinatown, keeping mostly to her Chinese American community both in and out of school. As she makes her way through her teen years in the 1950s, she starts growing apart from her childhood friends as her passion for rockets and space exploration grows—along with her curiosity about a few blocks in the city that her parents have warned her to avoid. A budding relationship develops with her first White friend, Kathleen, and together they sneak out to the Telegraph Club lesbian bar, where they begin to explore their sexuality as well as their relationship to each other. Lo’s lovely, realistic, and queer-positive tale is a slow burn, following Lily’s own gradual realization of her sexuality while she learns how to code-switch between being ostensibly heterosexual Chinatown Lily and lesbian Telegraph Bar Lily. In this meticulously researched title, Lo skillfully layers rich details, such as how Lily has to deal with microaggressions from gay and straight women alike and how all of Chinatown has to be careful of the insidious threat of McCarthyism. Actual events, such as Madame Chiang Kai-shek’s 1943 visit to San Francisco, form a backdrop to this story of a journey toward finding one’s authentic self.

Beautifully written historical fiction about giddy, queer first love. (author’s note) (Historical romance. 14-18)

Connections: Students can research the history of intersectionality and how it still is a major talking point and issue in our society today. Finding out how people of different races and genders have navigated the path and help set the road for people today can help open student's minds to the world around them and how things aren't always what they seem. 
 

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