WIN ME SOMETHING
A perceptive and powerful debut of identity and belonging—of a young woman determined to be seen.
Willa Chen has never quite fit in. Growing up as a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey, Willa felt both hypervisible and unseen, too Asian to fit in at her mostly white school, and too white to speak to the few Asian kids around. After her parents’ early divorce, they both remarried and started new families, and Willa grew up feeling outside of their new lives, too.
For years, Willa does her best to stifle her feelings of loneliness,
A perceptive and powerful debut of identity and belonging—of a young woman determined to be seen.
Willa Chen has never quite fit in. Growing up as a biracial Chinese American girl in New Jersey, Willa felt both hypervisible and unseen, too Asian to fit in at her mostly white school, and too white to speak to the few Asian kids around. After her parents’ early divorce, they both remarried and started new families, and Willa grew up feeling outside of their new lives, too.
For years, Willa does her best to stifle her feelings of loneliness, drifting through high school and then college as she tries to quiet the unease inside her. But when she begins working for the Adriens—a wealthy white family in Tribeca—as a nanny for their daughter, Bijou, Willa is confronted with all of the things she never had. As she draws closer to the family and eventually moves in with them, Willa finds herself questioning who she is, and revisiting a childhood where she never felt fully at home. Self-examining and fraught with the emotions of a family who fails and loves in equal measure, Win Me Something is a nuanced coming-of-age debut about the irreparable fissures between people, and a young woman who asks what it really means to belong, and how she might begin to define her own life.
- Tin House
- Paperback
- November 2021
- 280 Pages
- 9781951142735
Buy the Book
$16.95
About Kyle Lucia Wu
Kyle Lucia Wu has received the Asian American Writers’ Workshop Margins Fellowship and residencies from Millay Arts, The Byrdcliffe Colony, Plympton’s Writing Downtown Residency, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She is the Programs & Communications Director at Kundiman and has taught creative writing at Fordham University and The New School. She lives in New York City.
Praise
“I’ve never read a novel quite like Win Me Something, which is to say that I’ve never seen the nuances of navigating a biracial identity put, so beautifully, in fiction. . . . Readers will recognize themselves in Willa’s loneliness, and they will feel that they are, finally, in good company.”—LitHub
“A quietly affecting tale of family dynamics.”—Library Journal
“A lovely coming-of-age story that will resonate with anyone who’s felt separate, or questioned where they belong.”—The Washington Post
“Finely crafted.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Wu understands the human heart keenly, and her novel is a subtle but powerful triumph.”—NPR Books
“Tender and devastating.”—The Atlantic
Discussion Questions
1. Win Me Something is a searching book. In your opinion, what is Willa looking for?
2. Food plays an important role in terms of comfort, identity, connection, and more. Discuss how the author uses food in both communal and personal ways.
3. Win Me Something flashes back in time to Willa’s childhood. Why do you think the author made the decision to show Willa’s upbringing?
4. Flowers are a recurring image—what might be their significance?
5. Throughout the novel, racism and prejudice are pervading themes. How do they manifest overtly in scenes and also in subtext?
6. New York and New Jersey are both important settings—what parts of each do we see, and why do you think we are shown certain locations?
7. Mothers play critical roles in Win Me Something. How are the mothers in this novel portrayed and to what end?
8. At one point, Willa thinks, “I wanted to be chosen, or to choose—maybe I wasn’t sure the difference yet. Just that I saw choices glimmering outside my reach, and I wanted to get closer.” Have you ever felt the way she feels here? By the book’s end, does Willa get what she wants?
9. Ethan’s arrival to the Adriens’ home can be seen as a turning point in the novel. Does he change the dynamic or reveal something that was already there?
10. Toward the end of the book, Willa says that she wishes someone would tell her what she’s experienced was “real.” What do you think she means by this?
11. What do you think the title, Win Me Something, means for Willa?