Current Cravings

General

• Absurdity of bureaucracy, institutions, family structure, and hierarchy like in Catch-22 and Severance

• Something that is gothic in drama and atmosphere

• Protagonists who live in the secret apartments above NYPL branches

• Surreal settings like the ones in The Wanderer by Peter van den Ende and The Arrival by Shaun Tan

• Stories about unaccompanied immigrant children

• Boys of color as YA protagonists 

• In YA, weird first jobs or jobs that are so specialized that only one person in society can do them

• In YA, protagonists who are incarcerated/in juvie or just got out and are struggling with reintegration

• In MG, protagonists who are cursed like Ella in Ella Enchanted 

• In MG, adults who are ridiculous, whether they’re excitable, bighearted people or are reprehensible, cruel antagonists 

• Let adults be silly or ridiculous, whether they’re self-aware or not, in adult fiction too! I’d love to see a character like Alexander Rostov in A Gentleman in Moscow or Stevens in The Remains of the Day

• Father/child immigrant relationships - I’m not opposed to mother/child relationships, but I feel like that’s the bulk of immigrant narratives that focus on the parent/child relationship while immigrant dads are either absent or so taciturn that they barely feature in the book. I’d like to see an examination of the father/child relationship, whether the dad is like that or is more present and open

• Siblings and their complex relationships like Yolk and Succession

• Stories centered on ethnic/religious minorities outside the U.S., e.g., Ainu, Zainichi, Romani, Hmong, Irish Traveller communities

• Unpredictable villains who can’t be reasoned with like Sato in Ajin

• Fizzy, snappy dialogue and/or dialogue that is extremely particular to a specific region

• Something that goes deep into memory/history shaping self

• One character ruins things for everyone, e.g., Briony in Atonement

• Asian stories:

  • Stories based on Korean beliefs or superstitions like buying/selling dreams, changing names, fan death, etc. I’d especially like these stories to have writing or a plot that is funny or absurd

  • AAPI characters working on the railroad (historical) or in the garment, laundry, beauty, or agricultural industries (historical and present)

  • AAPI in Central and South America and the Caribbean

  • Asian Americans in the U.S. from the 1950s to the present (open to other time periods too, though!)

  • Asian diaspora within Asia

  • Growing up Asian American in coastal places surrounded by Asian people and Asian culture and having that connection to the motherland through a bicultural upbringing (beyond just food, please). Even before increased accessibility to overseas cultures, a lot of Asian Americans grew up with dramas, music, etc. from Asia. We grew up with video stores where you could rent tapes of shows, stores like Magic Castle and Opane (iykyk!) that had loads of Asian goods and DDR/Pump It Up machines, hakwons, noraebangs, etc. 

• Nautical (especially deep sea) and Arctic expeditions that go wrong

• Non-white cults or secret societies

• Your body transforming! Your body betraying you

• Evil clones or parallel selves who come across good versions of themselves and see that it’s possible to be loved—if they weren’t themselves—and what that realization does to them

• Unethical experiments especially in historical settings

• Stories about obsession, whether it drives you to excel like a pro athlete at the top of their game or harms you and others

• Buildings that are strange like Howl’s castle in Howl’s Moving Castle, the House in Piranesi, the backrooms

• The intimacy of betrayal

• Dreamy and healing without shying away from horror or sadness like The Fall, Spirited Away, and All of Us Strangers

• Indigenous religions, folk religions, and shamanism, whether seen from a kind perspective or viewed critically if practiced or spread with ill intent

• Decaying empires or the dying days of an era like the end of the age of samurai in Samurai Champloo

• Fantasy that isn’t about the world ending but is more about the character. Cozy but not twee. There’s more going on under the charming surface than you see on first glance, and you can’t ignore what’s happening and shut out the world to hide in comfort forever

• Magnetic duos in whatever form that comes: narrative foils, two sides of the same coin, platonic soulmates, “two-for-one” deals like Armand and Daniel as well as Lestat and Louis in AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, Victor and Eli in Vicious, Gon and Killua in Hunter x Hunter, and Eve and Villanelle in Killing Eve (season 1 only)​​