Black Water Sister

Black Water Sister is about a lot of things, but mostly intergenerational trauma and secrets in a crazy Asian family. Jess, our narrator, is split between many identities, primarily a very normal American girl with a useless photography degree from an elite university and a girlfriend who’s becoming a long-distance situationship, and daughter of Malaysian-Chinese immigrants whose long attempt at the American dream has finally crashed and burned, and who could never stomach having a lesbian daughter.

Crashing at her aunt’s house, trapped in a maze of family obligations in a country where she barely speaks Hokkien and doesn’t know anyone who matches her Americanized parts would be bad enough, but a ghost is whispering in her ear. Ah Ma, her recently deceased mother’s mother, isn’t a cookies and milk grandmother (or whatever the Malaysian kindly comfort food cuisine was). Ah Ma was a gangster, a medium of a deeply unpleasant goddess, and she needs Jess to close out a little unfinished business by protecting a temple from development by getting in the face of the fifth wealthiest man in Malaysia.

There’s a lot to like about this book. Jess’s mother in particular is a character, entirely insane and entirely well-realized. I’m just a white dude, but I’m aware of the “my crazy Asian mother” microgenre, and this is one of the best. The supernatural components, ghosts and gods and mediums, hit well. The touristy exoticism of Malaysia is also well-drawn, or at least appears so, since I’ve never been.

But the sub-plots never really achieve a true unity of purpose, and I found Jess a little frustrating as a protagonist, alternating between strong-willed cunning and feckless incompetence arbitrarily. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good novel, but there’s a gap I can’t put my fingers on.