This Place Is Still Beautiful
by XiXi Tian
High School     Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins    368 pp.         g
6/22     978-0-06-308602-9     $18.99
e-book ed.  978-0-06-308604-3    $12.99

In this moving debut novel (set before the COVID-19 pandemic), a racist act of vandalism almost splits two biracial (Chinese American and Irish American) sisters apart as they take different approaches to handling the aftermath. The Flanagan girls are polar opposites: Annalie, seventeen, is quiet, sweet, and self-conscious while college student Margaret, nineteen, is bold and outspoken. When someone paints a slur on the garage of their small-town Illinois home, Annalie and their mother, an immigrant, want to stay silent, while Margaret digs for clues and notifies the press. Further conflict arises when Annalie realizes that her new boyfriend, Thom, may be connected to the incident. Tian crafts a realistic, nuanced coming-of-age tale that deals with questions of identity and self-doubt, internalized racism, sibling rivalry, young love, and microaggressions. The book is a good companion read for other contemporary teen novels that deal with anti-Asian hate, including Ho’s The Silence That Binds Us (rev. 7/22).

From the September/October 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.