The Queens of New York by E.L. Shen (review)

For seventeen-year-old friends Jia Lee, Ariel Kim, and Everett Hoang, this summer will be their first not spent together. For two, Everett and Ariel, it’s a summer of adventure, with Everett treading the boards at a prestigious drama camp in Ohio and Ariel boosting her science genius at a precollege program in California. Jia, meanwhile, remains in New York, working in her family’s struggling restaurant and babysitting her ailing grandmother and precocious little sister, with only texts from her far-away friends and time spent with cute new boy Akil as bright spots. Reality hits hard for all three girls, though, as Everett finds herself type-cast in a musical full of racist Asian stereotypes, and Ariel struggles to maintain her perfect-Korean-daughter image while mourning the sudden death of her older sister. Even the most drama-filled summer can’t come between these friends, though, in what is a clear narrative descendent of Brashares’ The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, unfolding along similarly predictable, comfortably familiar lines. Yet Shen claims a space of her own on the shelf of friends-as-sisters teen fare, as she draws distinctions between each girl’s personal journey, their cultural identity (Jia is Chinese; Ariel, Korean; Everett, Vietnamese), and notably, their experience of racism. The first-person narrative shifts perspective by chapter among the three, allowing focus on individual struggles, while group chat text-messages and emails spotlight their mutually supportive connection and envy-worthy friendship. Indeed, it is the friendship here that is the real star, outshining not just parental pressures and systemic racism, but every other relationship, familial and romantic. Recommend this to readers seeking an updated “sisterhood” and a culturally sensitive celebration of friendship at its most enviable.