Though I Get Home

by YZ Chin

In these stories, characters navigate fate via deft sleights of hand: a grandfather gambles on the monsoon rains, a consort finds herself a new assignment, and a religious man struggles to keep his demons at bay. Central to the book is Isabella Sin, a small-town girl—and frustrated writer—transformed into a prisoner of conscience in Malaysia’s most notorious detention camp.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Asia, Asian Literature, Literary Fiction, Adult

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

YZ Chin is the author of Edge Case and Though I Get Home. Edge Case is a New York Times Editors' Choice and an NPR Books We Love pick for 2021. Though I Get Home won the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the Asian/Pacific American Award For Literature honor title.

YZ is also a translator of Mahua literature. Her translations into English include works by Li Zi Shu, King Ban Hui, and Teng Kuan Kiat. Her work has been supported by NEA and MacDowell fellowships. Born and raised in Taiping, Malaysia, she now lives in New York.

Reviews

[Jennifer Haupt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to receive a galley of this engaging collection of connected stories. I'll remember the characters for a long time, I'm sure, especially Isabella Sin's perseverance and spirit as she is detained in Malaysia’s most notorious detention camp. I highly recommend!

[Elena Mikalsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author's beautiful literary writing completely transported me into the atmosphere of Malaysia. I found myself almost hypnotized by the words, reading them sometimes twice, not wanting to move on. It reminded me of The Art of Hearing Heartbeats in its ability to completely draw you in with all your senses into a different world. Very rewarding read, very talented author. Do yourself a favor and own this.

[Mya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful turns of phrase and lush descriptions of everyday atmosphere come together to create fascinating dialogues on identity in cultural, national, and personal contexts. Chin elegantly shifts between a variety of perspectives across race, culture, and eras to create an ode to the complex state of modern Malaysia (and its fraught history) that doesn't pull punches.

[Juan Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love YZ Chin’s linked stories collected in Though I Get Home. I love their fierce intelligence -- their capacity to humanize existential & political despair in ways that are compelling and disturbing and indelible. In her essay “Writing Behind My Country’s Back,” YZ writes of this project, this questioning of cause and effect: “No doubt part of it is becoming an adult and starting to understand that effects don’t always have direct causes, actions aren’t always followed by consequences, and it all just might be chaos after all. But I think those of us who grew up in an atmosphere of censorship might be more conditioned than others to accept warped narratives.” I love that warp, and the writing in Though I Get Home does the near impossible, which is to achieve a kind of perfect clarity around the imperfect muddle of lived experience in landscapes of political and social turmoil. I love the precision of phrase and observation. I love the recurring Isabella Sin, the poet who turns out not to be a poet, the protester whose protest is a mystery even to herself, and who is, in every sense, the perfect guide to the world of these stories, where we get glimpses of clarity and grace, and where some of the most difficult truths of life and teased out and explored, including some of the most befuddling, like the fact that sometimes the consequences of our actions precede the actions themselves, that the normally comforting commonplaces of stories -- “that happened, and because that happened, this follows” -- are often upended. From Isabella, we receive one final, troubling, brilliant insight, which applies not just to her but to the reader, to the way in which the world shapes us before we’re even aware that it’s doing so: “Now she had simply had to become what she was.”

[Ming · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was well-written technically but the storytelling did not move me. I felt the stories were quirky and too esoteric. And while the setting had every reason to capture and hold my interest, I found the book did not touch me. Linked or not, the stories felt distant and somehow that they possessed some private key or element -- one that was not shared or revealed. The most interesting and funny piece was the poem that caused Isa so much trouble.

[Jennifer Klepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through this collection of interwoven stories, Y.Z. Chin brings a rich perspective of the Malaysian experience, from colonialism to political struggle to how we relate to each other in the world. Poetic and profound, Chin still somehow excels at making her subject accessible to the reader, allowing the reader to be transformed by the experience.

[Taylor Clarke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully crafted, a sweeping portrait that is at its best in what it doesn't wrap up so easily. Balanced, lush, and provocative.

[ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25/5

read for malaysia for the ratw challnge! this is a v cluttered review because this book either prompted a massive reading slump or just heavily contributed to it unfortunately, but that's more of a my brain problem. what a stunning short story collection. it is such a shame this for some reason was incredibly hard to pilfer through because there are some works in here that are so masterful and so hard to pull off with the amount of themes and nuance that YZ Chin not just expertly examines but satirises with a precision that i haven't seen in any short stories before. in particular, "A MALAYSIAN MAN IN MAYOR BLOOMBERG'S SILICON ALLEY" and THE BUTLER OPENS THE DOOR" stuck out as my favourites, but the evolving story of "Though she gets home" was fantastic. i think this was a great look at the current state of modern malaysia for someone who isn't all too familiar with it. 'taiping' is concurrently brought up as one of the biggest examples of a malaysia that has a complex identity, of being stuck in its colonial past but unable to move on, emerged in hollow imitations of american capitalist ideals but still espousing the importance of traditions, whether it's through a proliferation of starbucks and kfc's or entrenched patriarchal ideals that worship or put americans as above malaysians while condemning their institutions. of expecting marriage, filial duty....there's so much to chew on.

where this ultimately fails is that a lot of the stories, while great in theory, are so dense? or maybe unfinished and esoteric, that it kind of fails. 'THE OLYMPIAN' which is a dystopian presents the worst of these issues in which some stories are so ambiguous and reflective that the message or concepts fail to carry through. while some of the best of these stories teeter on the edge of telling not showing but work so effectively because theres still just so much that is not said but insinuated.


some of these stories are so great that i kind of feel like i need to read them over and over again, print them out, stick them on my forehead to fully appreciate all of the things being delivered, but in "A Malaysian Man in Mayor Bloomberg.." most of all. i feel like it encompasses YZ Chin at her best in this collection, examining assimilation, misogyny and internalised racism as perpetrated by ethnic men who make it their life's goal to "get" a white woman, oppressing women that belong to the same culture on the way all to have to ignore their exoticism being fetishised as a result. she touches on cultural identity, or the lack of, wanting to belong badly to a collective thast does not recognise you, the engrained hypocrisy of Malaysia and America in not recognising their own idealisation of westernism, critiquing while desiring 'America's global status, esteem etc.', the xenophobia rampant within Malayisa, corruption..moral ambiguity and the cowardice of denial; of convincing yourself you want to do good for a country you don't belong to anymore ..but only if you are forced to do said good.


a lot of the main takeaway from the continuing story was everyone wants to be remembered as a martyr without going through the sacrifice of what it takes or acknowledging the vapidity of the suffering, of the apathy of the whole affair, othering, misogyny and tradition and it was super interesting.


short story collection (will rate later when im bothered):
- STRIKE
- THE BUTLER OPENS THE DOOR
- A BET IS PLACED
- THOUGH SHE GETS HOME
- THE OLYMPIAN
- WHEN STARBUCKS CAME
- KAMUNTING I
- JUST HOW THE FIRE WILL BURN
- KAMUNTING II
- A MALAYSIAN MAN IN MAYOR BLOOMBERG'S SILICON ALLEY
- BRIGHT AND CLEAR
- TAIPING
- DUTY
- SO SHE GETS HOME

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories of political stagnation (corruption), family, identity, and protest in Malaysia. I know little about Malaysia besides a few excellent films to come from there in the last 15 years or so, so Chin's interwoven accounts shed much light for me. But more than just a series of stories, the continuing threads and borderline postmodern congruences, along with shifts in time, subject, and format, that keep this unpredictable, all serve to make this into one self-contained world and project. A good blind reading impulse from the NYC library system -- I'm always glad to find surprises like this on the shelves at random.

[Zak · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should like this, but I found it too "in your face". Lack of subtleness made it hard to feel anything for the protagonist. Improves slightly towards the end.

[Lizzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Her writing makes you feel like you've been to Malaysia. The stories are so real it's like reading letters from a friend.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

RATING: 3.5/5

It's not perfectly-written. Yet, it's definitely an important one for it deals with many national issues of Malaysia, particularly censorship. Y.Z. Chin's shows how much Malaysians had gone through -from the colonisation to the resistance against the infamously autocratic, non-transparent government- and how far they have come and achieved. It's a significant post-BN (acronym for Barisan Nasional, the previous ruling coalition of Malaysia) short story collection which deserves much wider readership among Malaysians and those who want to know more about the country.

[Ivelisse Rodriguez · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are so many wonderful characters in this book. There is a butler who becomes almost a caretaker for one of the British colonizers in Malaya. There is an imprisoned woman on a hunger strike. And there is the lovelorn woman who pines after her lost lover. There is a clash between old and new worlds and how the meaning of old and new and its markers keep changing. This is a lovely glimpse into how a society and culture changes, for better or worse.

[Emily Strelow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This poetic group of linked stories is told in gorgeous prose that keeps the reader engaged through the entire book. A debut not to be missed!

[Autumn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow start. Great payoff. I was expecting this to be short stories, but it’s more like an interconnected web of short stories that weave the web of a novel.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit that I had a hard time getting into this collection of short stories. I felt this emotional distance between me and a handful of them. It wasn’t so much the plot and characters that I had trouble with, so much as it was the writing itself. However, one thing that caught my attention was how the stories were interwoven by featuring a recurring character, Isa, which isn’t too common to do in short story collections. Whether her presence was central or not, there was a story unfolding from the beginning about Isa all throughout.

I still took a lot away from this collection. Not knowing much about Malaysia, let alone the country’s everyday life and political climate, these short stories were eye-opening. It was interesting to get a glimpse of what shaped and is shaping the country, as well as some idea of how young Malaysians were grappling with their national identity and history. While I was most taken to the stories that centered Isa, I also found “A Malaysian Man in Mayor Bloomberg’s Silicon Alley” an interesting one due to the way it explored the diaspora.

If anything, this collection has incentivized me to go and read more Malaysian literature. And, speaking more broadly, Southeast Asian literature. There’s clearly so much to learn.

[BaSila Husnain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fluid. Relatable. Politically relevant for all times atleast for us Asians

[Kayo · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

Though I Get Home is YZ Chin's debut book, a collection of interconnected short stories that illustrate the Malaysian post-colonial experience and modern-day political dissidence. I picked it up because as a writer, I am interested in post-colonialism, diaspora communities, and activism.  Furthermore, I would like to experiment with Chin's use of interconnected narrative with my current project, In the Shadow of the Middle Kingdom.

The book centers around Isabella Sin, known as Isa, an aspiring writer-activist who was imprisoned for writing obscene poetry. The government arrested her he along with others who participated in a protest in Kuala Lumpur. Her grandfather, Gong Gong, had worked as a butler and a nanny for a British family during colonial times, had told her stories that ignited Isa's fascination with England. After his death, Isa spent a year in London, which led her mother to blame her lack of marital prospects on her Anglophone speech and attitude. There is also the story about her friend K, who at the opening of Starbucks in Taiping, pondered whether or not to leave her ex-boyfriend who had already broken up with her.

There are other characters in the book who aren't directly related to her, like Howie Ho, a Chinese Malaysian studying in New York, who dated an American girl who was sympathetic to Malaysian activists and had a penchant for writing poetry. There's also Ibrahim, a member of the RD, who acted as the moral police. His job was to make sure that their fellow Malays, who are all technically Muslims, are preserving their purity and not engaging in sexually deviant behaviors, such as sex before marriage and cross-dressing. They knocked on the windows of parked cars and broke into hotels to make sure that everybody was behaving themselves.

Initially, I didn't care for the book. I didn't connect with the storytelling and felt that the book was messy overall. I didn't always understand how each story related to one another. There was a story about a concubine that seemed out of place. Furthermore, while reading  "A Malaysian Man in Mayor Bloomberg's Silicon Alley," I was frustrated reading about this Howie Ho, a seemingly unrelated character who went away to the US for college, dated an American girl, and went back to Malaysia to vote for an election. It is the longest story in the book, and at first, I didn't understand why he even mattered. Chin does reveal the relevance of this character at the end, but I wish there was some foreshadowing in the earlier stories. Also, there is a thread in the story where Howie Ho witnessed an incident of abuse and violence in his college dorm room but chose to do nothing. That annoyed me—not only because I thought he was a coward, but I also didn't understand how the incident added to his character.  I just felt appalled and disliked him.

Having said that, I enjoyed some of the stories, such as "The Butler Opens the Door." After the daughter of the British family he was working for had gone missing, Gong Gong staged a funeral to help his employer grieve properly. The British people who attended the funeral were appalled and fascinated at the same time, which reminded me of my own grandfather's funeral that I attended as an eight-year-old. It was an open casket funeral, and Mama had led me to see him, despite my unwillingness. I saw him through a glass sheet over a fridge-like thing— I jolted at how cold it felt when I touched the surface. He looked like he was sleeping, but he also seemed strangely hollow and weird. I didn't like it. On the same day, I also got yelled at for playing with the joss papers, the money for the dead, by folding them into cranes and other origami animals before feeding them to the fire. There is a lot of burning at a Chinese funeral: I watched in awe as flames engulfed an entire paper home that looked like a dollhouse and a paper car. All these memories came rolling through my mind as I read about this funeral with no corpse.

Initially, I didn't like the book. However, after reading parts of it a few times to write this review, I grew to appreciate it. It's like a bottle of good, vintage wine that takes time and patience to enjoy. I learned a great deal about Malaysian history, politics, and how similar Chinese folk religion is wherever people practice it.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first, these loosely connected short stories seem to be linked via the theme of pre and post colonialism of Malaya/Malaysia. But, as the stories progress, they evolve into activism, democracy and identity. Random characters begin to show their significance and the threads start coming together. A compelling collection that is just beautifully written.

ETA: Oct 2018 staff pick

[A L]

The first half is amazing, the best contemporary fiction I've read, especially "The Butler Closes the Door" for its play with voices.

[Suanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though I Get Home is the literary debut of YZ Chin. Born and raised in Taiping, Malaysia, Ms. Chin moved to the United States when she was nineteen, and wrote this book while working as a software engineer. The book consists of a series of short stories, interrelated somewhat along the lines of those in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. The interconnection of the stories in Though I Get Home is somewhat more tenuous than those in Goon Squad.

While music pulsates through Goon Squad, silence—rather the threat of being silenced—percolates through Though I Get Home and provides the warp of Chin’s tapestry. The weft is formed by diverse characters as they navigate their muddled lives against the panorama of political and social turmoil that forms modern Malaysia. A butler from the days when Malaysia was a British colony, a grandfather who eats at KFC and gambles on time the monsoon rain will begin, a girl chosen by the Divine Leader to be his pleasure girl, a young man who’s working—like Chin herself—in America, and a man who works for the Religious Department, patrolling the city looking for fornicators all populate this book. Isa Sin, a frustrated writer, provides the fixed point around which these other characters rotate. She is held prisoner in Malaysia’s infamous Kamunting Detention Center. Like Penelope, Chin’s weaves these shifting points of view into a tapestry that gives the reader tantalizing glimpses of clarity before eventually revealing the events on which she actually focused.

A side-note here is cultural appropriation with disastrous results. An American woman becomes the lover of Howie Ho, the Malaysian man working in the States, simply to pick his brain about his homeland. She uses what he tells her to write poems about the Malaysian government—poems that it finds obscene—and attributes them to Isa Sin.

Chin’s prose is deft, subtle, and evocative of the times and landscapes of Malaysia. The reader indirectly learns of Malaysia’s colonial past as well as its current authoritarian regime. The stories are intelligent and probe existential and political anguish in compelling ways that make her subjects accessible to her readers.

[Nicolette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Admittedly, I always swoon for loose collections of stories with unnamed characters and muddled, lush lives, the mundane and ordinary turned loose in a burst of wild, colored feathers. This is no exception. You'll be led down a wandering lane of several lives, with an undercurrent of Malaysian culture and the things that make it unique and weigh heavy on the characters, the things that give them context. For someone who isn't a part of that, it's confusing and makes you bristle, purse your lips, but also may remind you of the things your own parents do that are so endearingly frustrating to you. They couch those bristles in love. This is the second book featuring the history, culture, and places only found in Malaysia, with a history I'm not yet familiar with but a thread of 'aha!' connecting the two. The location of Cameron Highlands is mentioned in both, and what floats to the surface is the discussion of colonialism.

These are people you know, but you also don't. The righteousness of cultural appropriation in the name of liberating the world, the white-hero complex. The fretting behavior over princely sons while sisters and daughters languish, forgotten. The blind execution of morality management by quite literally the religious police force. The wise man who can predict the rains and the future. The place of the British within the landscape of a place forcibly taken. The angry, hopeful youth hoping to take back power. They're themes we know but stunningly-written characters that we need more of in their nuance and human weaknesses.

Everyone should give this a try.

[May · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

Wanna call this a short story collection but Chin really took a wild spin on the format and made it entirely their own. If anything, the short stories are connected by a common thread; Isabella Sin, "poet and revolutionary," sent to Malaysia's most notorious detention camp for -- wait for it -- sedition. Bruneians, yall feel me?

At its core, this collection tells stories of what it means to be Malaysian, what it means to be a patriot and what that means to a human being. I enjoyed it, but felt it trudged a little with a some stories bloated with prose that did a lot but told little.

Some notes:

1. Isabella Sin's story is my favourite. I believe there are 4 separate short stories that connect to one huge one. Hers were the ones I looked forward to.

2. Representation! Transexuals, drags and lesbians rejoice! I enjoyed the representation included in the short stories but abhorred the lens for which it was told through -- backwards, homophobic and xenophobic. Remind you of anywhere else?

3. The underlying theme that connected every story was what it means to be a patriot/Malaysian. Made me question my own national identity. The crisis never ends.

Would recommend for its novel format but beware the trudge in prose.

[Brian O'kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me caveat this review by saying that I generally do not like, and do not read, short story collections. I picked up Though I Get Home somewhat - ok, quite - reluctantly.

The first story confused me. The next few stories intrigued me. By halfway through the book, I couldn't stop reading. The stories weave through one another, each teasing another element into the the complex mix like Malaysian rojak, the "sweet, sour, salty, and spicy, combining all the flavors possible to be experienced."

I strongly recommend this book, even if you don't like stories.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book and the way the interlinked stories build on each other. The lyrical prose drew me in and I was fascinated to learn a little more about Malaysia. I would absolutely recommend this book to those looking for a kaleidoscope of characters and settings and who appreciate precise, poetic writing.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastically written book of short stories. I ran into the author and bought this at a small bookstore. I found the writing inspired, unique, and covering a subject I knew little about (life in Malaysia). It really opened my eyes to the importance of reading and supporting authors from small publishing houses. How many hidden gems was I missing by only reading mainstream books? High recommend!

[Madalene · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be the best book of short stories I read this year. The interweaving is tight, with overlapping characters although very different points of view. The prose is high quality, and I enjoyed learning more about Malaysia at the same time.

[TM · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it on the overall! 3.5 stars for me.

I especially enjoyed the interconnected longer stories, like "The Butler Opens the Door", "A Malaysian Man in Mayor Bloomberg's Silicon Alley", the two "Though/So She Gets Home" chapters and "Kamunting I and II". Isa's reaction to her arrest and Howie/Fook Hing's guilt and fear over not coming clean about the seditious poems intrigued me.

What justifies Isa's decision to take credit for the poems? What justifies Howie's fear of being caught out for his involvement in the seditious poems, that wasn't much of an involvement at all? He felt afraid and ashamed enough to run back to the States because his worldview was similar to that of his family's: "Wasn’t his problem to fix. He couldn’t do anything about it." Their decisions stemmed from both feeling helpless and this: "She felt that Mahathir had signed away some inexpressible thing that belonged in part to her. Somehow, it fell upon the citizens to feel sheepishly ashamed."

I love that they both acknowledged it though. They're self-aware, and interestingly they'd both just returned from someplace "Western", i.e. London and USA, where freedom of speech is decidedly more accessible. Both people felt entitled to the poems. But they owned their individual actions in response to those feelings of entitlement: in trying to manage their sense of helplessness, both refused to speak out about the truth of who the real poet is (or isn't), causing them to experience different consequences like getting locked up for eight months, jesus, but they don't deny to themselves that they felt those feelings and chose those actions. I really liked that.

The author's message seemed to be this: Malaysians desperately grasp for something tangible lying beyond their national border -- such as casual poems written by white people, housing, and global chain stores like KFC and Starbucks -- in order to build a sense of pride in their own country, because the local sociopolitical climate made it hard to find that pride at home.

Which felt kinda tragic when I first thought it, then I got to this awesome line near the end of the book:

The poet replied that art was its own means and ends, an answer the asker particularly scorned. 'They are not your poems anymore,' he informed her in his column. 'They belong to Malaysians now, angry and ready for change, and we will not thank you.'

Isa's and Howie's stories tied in well with the short stories featuring scenes of Taiping, e.g. there was a story titled "Taiping". Most of them revolved around these characters' search for national identity, whether it be in hawker food or the ability to predict the weather.

I couldn't appreciate the other stories as much though. I liked "The Olympian" as a standalone, but I couldn't see how it tied in with the anthology's focus on Malaysia's messy politics, suburban scenes and lack of freedoms in the big city. Same issue for "Just How the Fire Will Burn" and "Duty". I couldn't understand why the author included them. Plus, the characters' tendencies to linger in their thoughts and the author's tendency towards slower-paced, reflective writing didn't make it engaging at these times. Without them, the anthology would've felt more cohesive, I think! I would've rated the overall book much higher.

[Celeste · Rating 3 out of 5]

my favorite part of this book was, shockingly because i almost always prefer prose, the catalystic poems. the way they play with language (redig ridic relics; the evidence, strained/not as if through a sieve/but meaning tough to conceive; bellies belie; etc) and just beg to be spoken aloud.
some of the stories also opened up a lot of really interesting questions: in particular "a malaysian man in mayor bloomberg's silicon alley" when howie realizes the white american girl he'd been seeing wrote the poems and isa was framed, and how he is then put in the position of knowing something that could save a specific stranger from a specific fate that he knows, and being able to choose whether to help her. no one knows he knows this. how terrible would it make him to stay out of it all? that was really interesting. and the idea of thinking you're helping people when in reality you're hurting them that comes up in "duty," or the end of "so she gets home" where isa has grown into her status as someone willing to speak out, someone punished for it, and wrestles with becoming an innocent nobody again.
unfortunately even when I was interested in the themes I wasn't really interested in the stories themselves:( but it was cool to learn more about malaysia. and definitely well-written!

[Ashtar Boulos · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book provides a fascinating peek into Malaysia, more specifically Taiping and its history.

I loved the insights into the culinary, political, environmental, and social elements of life and culture in Malaysia. My main criticism was the structure of the book. It’s a combination of a novel and short stories because the stories are loosely connected to the character, Isa, who has been wrongly imprisoned for writing poems about sodomy that are considered an act of treason against the government.

The book opens there and there are many other characters whose stories you find. Some have a stronger connection to Isa than others.

For me, it was a challenge at the beginning of each chapter to try and figure out whose story we were following and what relevance/relationship they had to Isa. Additionally, Ida’s story is interspersed throughly a few different chapters, which is partially what gives it a choppy nature.

I think this would’ve been more successful if the stories were much more obviously disconnected so you could focus on each character in his/her own right. And keep Isa’a story in one chapter, maybe toward the end, even if other characters reference the dosing poet.

Overall I enjoyed the book. Now I need to find a place to try rojak!