Jacintha Topaz

Review also posted here: https://sunrisehuesreview.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/bi-girls-do-it-solo-bisexual-...

This is an entertaining, light novella. Great for summer reading.

It’s the story of a nerdy Korean American girl named Sy who enters her freshman year of college and learns to explore her sexuality.

Most of the story takes place in Sy’s dorm room, and dialogues happen mostly between her and her roommate Geneva.

The narrative reads like the girl’s monologue with herself, or the girl’s private journal. The author goes into rather intimate details, and vividly portrays the transition from childhood to adulthood — the “coming of age” of girls who become young women. Her bewitching narrative captures the intimate details of the inner world of a young woman tiptoeing into the adult world.

The novella is restricted to a single situation, which produces an element of suspense and leads to an unexpected turning point in the end. The structure of novella, however, doesn’t seem to build to a revelation or recognition of a character or situation, and there is no redevelopment of a character or situation to achieve an effect of greater intensity. It stays on the level of a simple short story — a quick summer read.

Despite the lack of plot, the novella illuminates the importance of sex-positive education, especially for girls.

The nerdy Sy is immediately likable and relatable in many ways:

“Hey, just because I’m Asian doesn’t mean you get to stereotype me as a bookworm.”

[…]

"I already knew I wasn’t quite asexual. I had a handful of good friends, both gay and straight, male and female, from high school. I had affection for them. The trouble was, I didn’t have a strong pull in either direction because they were my friends."

[…]

"Now that I was in college and out of the abstinence-only sex ed classes, I had free reign to figure out the rest. What it meant to me to be a human being born with a sex, what it meant to be a sexual being…. I wanted to know all about myself, all about self-love and how to share that love with someone special someday in the future."


And I share Sy’s love for and trust in books:

"…I worshiped books as if they were the Holy Grail. If it wasn’t in a book, it didn’t exist. And no, I didn’t trust the internet. For every topic, you’d find all spectra of opinions and various facts twisted to fit those opinions. Any random Joe (or Jill) could post anything. A book, though — a traditionally published book — had to go through multiple eyes and hands and channels before it ever saw the public eye. So, yes, I trusted books more than anything else in the world."

[…]

"For me, the book was a safe way to explore and indulge. In secret. Just how I liked it."

[…]

"Books are cool friends, there when you need them, the perfect witness and the perfect accomplice."

[…]

"By now, my pillowcase had become my book’s permanent secret hiding place. Thank goodness I had the top bunk."

My favorite part is perhaps the conversation between Sy and Gen towards the end:

“One, for you to go to some sex-positive workshop without me tells me that you’re curious.”

“Two, for you to hide behind asexuality tells me that you’re scared of accepting yourself as a sexual being.”

I can’t wait to read the next story and find out what’s going to happen to Sy and Gen during the summer sessions and sophomore year.… (lisätietoja)