Last Night at the Telegraph Club.
Dutton Books, 2021.
German edition: Last night at the Telegraph Club.
Translated from the English by Beate Schäfer.
dtv 2023.
Hardworking and conscientious at school and at home, Lily Hu has always tried to meet her parents’ expectations of their daughter. But recently the seventeen-year-old has come to question her life and her (future) place in the world, outside her neighbourhood in Chinatown. Only after meeting Kath does Lily dare to rebel against the conservative values of that society. As the friendship with her White classmate gradually turns into love, she cautiously begins to explore her own sexuality. The kind of risks that the two girls take together in the San Francisco of the 1950s are convincingly traced by the author of this queer young adult novel. Lily experiences homophobic moments of aggression and open racism, endangering even the future of her entire family within the climate of anti-communism and conspiracy theories during the McCarthy era. In flashbacks focussing on the Hu family and with an informative afterword, Malinda Lo rounds out her sensitively told coming-out story to give a vivid picture of post-war America. (Age: 14+)