Jessica Sample<\/p>\n
In Kelly Yang\u2019s latest novel, \u201cThe Take,\u201d two women swap blood as part of an experimental antiaging therapy that\u2019s suddenly fashionable in California\u2019s high-income districts. A vibrant skewering of our youth-obsessed culture, it\u2019s quite the detour for a children\u2019s book author known for boldly blazing new trails.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really wanted to tell a specific story about aging,\u201d the 41-year-old told the Chronicle about her new book, out Tuesday, April 14. \u201cI had a somewhat unconventional experience with aging, and that made me hyper-attuned to how people judge\u00a0\u2014 especially women\u00a0\u2014 when it comes to their age.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Take\u00a0
By Kelly Yang\u00a0\u00a0
(Berkley; 368 pages; $30)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kelly Yang in conversation with Mychal Threets: 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 15. $21.99 general admission; $45.09 general admission and book; $11.49 student\/low income. Kepler\u2019s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park. www.keplers.org<\/a><\/p>\n Bay Area Book Festival presents Kelly Yang: Staying True to Our Futuristic Minds. 11:45 a.m. May 30. Free. Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., Berkeley \u2022 Dreams Can Be Deceiving: Asian American Identities. 4 p.m. May 31. Free. The Freight, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley.\u00a0www.baybookfest.org<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cSomewhat unconventional\u201d might be an understatement. Like the 10-year-old Chinese immigrant heroine in her \u201cFront Desk\u201d series of middle grade novels, Yang was in elementary school when she began running the desk at the Southern California motel where her parents worked. (Collectively, the books have sold 2 million copies.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n At 13, having aced an early entrance exam, Yang enrolled as a freshman at California State University Los Angeles\u00a0in 1998. Two years later, she transferred to UC Berkeley, where she made lasting impressions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bruce Cain, a Berkeley political science professor at the time, taught Yang and then hired her \u201cas one of my research assistants over the summer because she was one of the best students, even at the age of 15,\u201d he told the Chronicle. She graduated in 2002 at just 17.<\/p>\n San Francisco Chronicle Logo<\/p>\n Make us a Preferred Source to get more of our news when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Next came Harvard Law School, where, as she revealed in a 2020 essay, Yang was sexually assaulted by a classmate and pressured by administrators to recant her complaint. Yang graduated at 20 but was \u201creally disillusioned with the law. I definitely didn\u2019t want to sell my soul to corporate law firms.\u201d<\/p>\n For most of the next two decades, she worked as a journalist and educator in Asia. Today, now living back in Los Angeles, she loves to write for young readers. But \u201cthe only way to really tell a story about aging is to have adult characters who\u2019ve aged.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cThe Take\u201d by Kelly Yang.<\/p>\n Berkley<\/p>\n Enter the protagonists of \u201cThe Take.\u201d<\/p>\n Maggie Wang, 23, feels the pressure of being \u201cthe perfect Chinese daughter\u201d to overworked immigrant parents. Student debt and uninspiring jobs prevent her from pursuing her dream of becoming a writer.<\/p>\n Ingrid Parker, a wealthy, white 53-year-old Hollywood producer, wants to stay atop her youth-focused profession. A largely untested blood therapy purports to make her look much more youthful, but she needs a partner\u00a0\u2014 a woman decades younger.<\/p>\n Maggie responds to Ingrid\u2019s deliberately vague ad and agrees to share her blood with Ingrid for $3 million. The procedure requires just \u201ctwo needles,\u201d Ingrid\u2019s doctor tells Maggie, \u201cOne taking blood out of you, and one going into you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n But things aren\u2019t so simple. The procedure, Maggie learns, might cause her to age more quickly, intensifying her feeling that time\u2019s not on her side.\u00a0<\/p>\n Side by side on transfusion days, the women discuss ideas for books and movies. But their give-and-take is shadowed by a power imbalance that threatens to turn toxic as they grow more enmeshed in one another\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n Longing is a powerful theme that runs throughout Yang\u2019s work, noted her literary peer Kate DiCamillo, the Minneapolis-based author of \u201cBecause of Winn-Dixie\u201d and other bestselling children\u2019s books.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is where so much of the magic is for her\u00a0\u2014 that ability to remember exactly what it\u2019s like to be a kid and to want desperately,\u201d said DiCamillo, who co-hosts the podcast \u201cStoryKind\u201d with Yang. \u201cThat translates into the adult novel. So much of what she does is about becoming, about how do we become ourselves?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Like Maggie, circumstances have frequently forced Yang to be age-conscious.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n In college, Yang was initially able to downplay her youth because she\u2019s been 5-foot-7\u00bd since sixth grade. When classmates inevitably learned her age, \u201cit became a point of\u00a0hyperfixation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was proud, but I was also worried,\u201d she admitted. \u201cWhat happens when the most fascinating thing about me\u00a0\u2014 the fact that I\u2019m young\u00a0\u2014 is no longer a fact?\u201d<\/p>\n In the novel, Maggie arrives at similarly stressful junctures, realizing that the treatment is indeed accelerating her biological clock. It\u2019s a plot point that pivots on a frustration familiar to Yang, an \u201cexistential crisis of being super young and told you have all the time in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Years ago, when she encountered such well-intended condescension, she felt \u201calmost this homicidal rage.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou do have time, but it\u2019s infuriating because you have no money, you have no leads, you have no connections, you have no experience,\u201d she went on. \u201cI remember feeling so impatient.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Author Kelly Yang shifts from young readers to adults with her novel \u201cThe Take,\u201d in which she tackles youth-obsessed culture and power imbalance in America.<\/p>\n Courtesy of Richard Knapp<\/p>\n But since publishing her first book in 2018, Yang\u2019s success as an author has been accompanied by new challenges. With her children\u2019s novels featuring sympathetic portrayals of immigrants, people of color and LGBTQ+ characters, they\u2019ve been targeted by conservatives seeking to ban books that don\u2019t align with their worldview.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Yang has addressed the matter several times on her widely read social media pages. In one post from 2020<\/a>, she shared a letter she sent to a Pennsylvania school district that claimed her work was \u201cteaching racism.\u201d In 2021, parents in a New York school district\u00a0complained \u201cFront Desk\u201d<\/a> espouses critical race theory. She also rallied the \u201ckidlit\u201d community to stand up for its rights.\u00a0<\/p>\n To DiCamillo, Yang\u2019s advocacy was \u201cdeeply moving.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what we need to do,\u201d DiCamillo said, noting that book-banning efforts \u201cthrive in silence if you don\u2019t say something. She did it in a very dignified way, but she did not take it sitting down.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Yang is similarly unbowed after her \u201climited and horrific experience working for Hollywood.\u201d Her debut \u201cFront Desk,\u201d was optioned to be adapted for film but never got produced. The time she spent trying to write a screenplay informs scenes in \u201cThe Take,\u201d which features cutthroat industry bigwigs mistreating young, powerless writers.<\/p>\n But Yang\u2019s shift to adult fiction isn\u2019t permanent. While she said she plans to write more for adults, she is already working on a new series for young readers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI get daily emails from kids saying how much they love my books,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Her young fans will be pleased to learn that she\u2019s not aging out of kidlit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kevin Canfield is a freelance writer.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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