Last Night at the Telegraph Club

“Lily was thirteen, and she couldn’t remember if she’d seen a group of Chinese girls like this before: in bathing suits and high heels, their hair and makeup perfectly done. They looked so American.”

The novel immediately introduces the theme Being a “Good” Chinese American citizen and explores what this means for Chinese Americans, who experience rampant racism. Lily continues to wrestle with this throughout the novel, eventually discovering that she’s unwilling to compromise her identity to fit in despite not fully behaving like a “good” Chinese girl.

“Lily retreated to the stairs, then turned back to see Shirley still standing at the edge, gazing out over the lawn. The back of her head was crowned in sunlight, casting her face in shadow. The profile of her nose and mouth was still sweet and girlish. But there was a modest swell to her breast, and she had cinched in the waist of her dress to emphasize the slight curve of her hips. Lily wondered if this was what a Chinese girl should look like.”

In direct contrast to Lily, Shirley is the stereotypical “good” Chinese American girl—except for dating Calvin in secret. She’s the popular one at school, the leader of their friend group, and the clearest front-runner for Miss Chinatown (though she doesn’t win the title). Like Lily’s parents, Shirley tries to keep Lily on the path that she’s expected to follow. Lily remains in Shirley’s shadow until she feels confident enough to assert herself—and her difference from Shirley.

“Now she laid the women pilots on the bed next to Katharine Hepburn and Tommy Andrews and looked at them all in succession. She couldn’t put into words why she had gathered these photos together, but she could feel it in her bones: a hot and restless urge to look—and, by looking, to know.”

The image of Tommy Andrews, a butch lesbian, is a recurring motif throughout the novel. In this scene, Lily lays Tommy’s photo beside other images of women in the 1950s, all of whom are real and exist. Lily is interested in how the pilots came to be who they are, as she aspires to a career in science herself, and she can’t put into words what it means to her that Tommy exists—to see someone who might be attractive to her.