American Panda

By: Gloria Chao / Narrated By: Emily Woo Zeller

Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins

Well, wow… I was expecting light Chick-lit with a side o’ teen angst, and I got something with a bit of depth instead!

Seriously, I knew I’d be doing Asian/Pacific/American writers for all of my Listening this week, and I was esPECially looking for something that was a light listen, with maybe a dollop of girly-girl and romance in it cuz I’m super shallow that way: Emotions, drama, lyrical writing, check. Got ‘em done, so gotta follow up with a cheeeeeezy dessert.

Instead, I was pretty much engaged and chuckling from the get-go. Oh yeah, you’d better believe there’s a solid helping of Girl Meets Boy, and yes, there’s the whole Can’t Disappoint Parental Expectations that one would expect for teens. But there’s also 17-year old MIT student (She skipped a grade) Mei feeling like a total fish out of water no matter where she is.

To say that her parents are Tigers and Helicopters (And each chapter starts with the frantic or demanding voicemails Mei’s mom leaves for her… rePEATedly throughout the day) is a supreme understatement. They’ve got her life planned out for her from taking classes to prep for Med school, marrying a nice Taiwanese professional, spitting out babies left and right to carry on the family line (And they mean business. Mei’s big brother and only sibling, Xing, has basically been cast off from the family for dating a non-parental-approved young woman who can’t bear children—What good son would do something like THAT?!?).

But Mei is a total germaphobe, and after an embarrassing rash lands her at the gynecologist, she even shadows a young Asian doctor, also a woman who couldn’t go against her parents’ wishes, on rounds only to discover that she thooooought she’d hate being a doctor, and now she knoooooows she would. This scene, by the way, is one of the funniest in the book. Plus, and wouldn’t you know it: She IS interested in dating, but most unfortunately, the only guy she wants is Darren—definitely NOT Taiwanese, kinda sorta Japanese, which is oh so not to be countenanced.

There are plenty of little scenes that are chuckle/chortle-inducing as author Gloria Chao has a wry way with words and situations.

The surprise for me was with her ever-evolving relationship with most notably her mother as she begins to wonder if it’s all not just a pack of lies, and if maybe there’s another, more satisfying way to live. I fully expected Mom, given her drop-of-the-hat hysteria and worries re: Mei and anything that could possibly cause illness, mayhem, or death, to become rather a cartoon character. But as the story developed, and as Mei became more fully realized as a character and person, Mom developed as well into something unexpected, all without it becoming a happy pappy gee, I’m a new person now sort of cliché. It was very gratifying, and it had me proud of the characters, pleased with Chao, that the characters were women of strength.

Now let’s get to the audio production. Okay, so I was totally onboard with Emily Woo Zeller. Apparently, given the reviews I’ve seen left for her for a plethora of audiobooks, she’s an either: Love her or Hate her narrator. I happen to like the way she narrates, the amount of emotion she can put into the story, the amount of humor she can tug from each funny line. I really liked her here in American Panda, but I gotta tell ya, the audio production left a lot to be desired, and maybe it was her fault for perhaps making mistakes that had to be edited out… then spliced in with either suuuuper quiet speaking, or suuuuuper loud near-screeching. With earbuds, the audio quality and variations were notable indeed.

Still, it was indeed more of a story than I expected, less Girl Meets Boy than Girl Wonders Just How She’s Gonna Manage it all. And there were just enough quandaries to give it some tension, with just the right amount of flailing to make it comedic without becoming outright silly.

A light listen? Oh dear me, yesssss.

But a tiny bit of pride flared up in me throughout it, there, and how exciting is that?!?