Book review: Memoir muses about growing up Chinese and queer in Vancouver
Credit to Author: Tracey Tufnail| Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2020 19:00:57 +0000
By Aaron Chan (Signal 8 Press, 2019)
$24.75 | 249 pp
This City Is a Minefield, by Aaron Chan.
Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the current vogue for memoirs has appeared during the age of the selfie and other artifacts of internet-enabled self regard.
We seem to have limitless appetite for first-person accounts of lives lived, and as a perceptive article in The Guardian recently noted, this appetite is by no means limited to lives of celebrities.
As the epidemic of alienation and anomie that is such a troubling feature of 21st-century life continues to rage, we are hungry for at least the illusion of intimacy with other people who share our non-celebrity status.
At their best, such memoirs provide vivid storytelling and expand our experience of human community. Often, these days, they give voice to populations that have been historically marginalized, thus creating a richer and more accurate sense of the complexity of our society.
At their worst, some evoke Christopher Hitchens’ sardonic observation that “Everyone has a book in them. In most cases, that’s where it should stay.”
Aaron Chan, a young Vancouver musician, filmmaker and author, has added his work to the current flood tide of memoirs in his recently published This City Is a Minefield.
Chan reflects in this set of loosely linked memory essays on his own complicated multiple identities — Vancouverite, Canadian, Chinese ancestry, artist and gay man. He also provides some pungent and challenging snapshots of queer Vancouver in a decidedly post-Stonewall age. Readers who enjoyed C. E. Gatchalian’s Double Melancholy will find much to enjoy in Chan’s brave, unassuming and often charming account of his life.
The author takes on the homophobia of traditional Chinese culture and the sexual racism he has encountered among Vancouver gay men. He reflects on the decidedly mixed pleasures of romantic love, and has some interesting things to say about the rom-com film genre. Unsurprisingly, given the author’s youth — he was born in 1988 — and commendable ambition, the literary quality of his chapters varies considerably.
Hands down the best writing in the book is in his chapter Underworld, a disturbing account of a night spent in a local sex club. The prose here is crisp and powerful, and the author is notably courageous in his self-revelation.
This is by no means a perfect book, but it displays real literary promise. We will be hearing more from Chan, and that is good news.
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