Little Cricket won one of the first Paul Zindel First Novel Awards, created by Hyperion Books to promote "stories that reflect the ethnic and cultural diversity of our country" (jacket flap). I'm pleased that such an award exists and I might have similarly awarded this first attempt were it not for the award specifically honoring stories of ethnic and cultural diversity. This story of a young Hmong girl and her family's emigration from Laos during the Vietnam War follows their culture shock and struggles in 1970s Minnesota. Basically, a great first attempt at a novel, but not the cultural content. (This analysis is of the ARC.)Kia, her artistic older brother Xigi, parents and grandparents all lived in the same village, farming and peacefully coexisting until the communists came and forced most of their village's men, Kia's father included, into the military. Soon, the rest of Kia's family find a way to Thailand where they live as refugees until Kia, Xigi and their grandfather emigrate to America. A typo leaves their mother and grandmother behind for now.
Once in America, they are confused and surprised by everything. Apparently they're too ashamed to ask how to make the lights go off or how to regulate the temperature, so they freeze at night with the lights on. This is one of the first things I don't buy. Maybe I don't understand severe culture shock or the residual fear of being a refugee, but these first few "intro to America" incidents make Kia and her family look foolish. In fact, while still in the refugee camp, Kia was confused that sick people were not going to her grandfather, a shaman, and instead seeing the American doctor. Her mother tells her, "If the Americans see our people going to see a shaman instead of one of their doctors, they may not take us to America. They do not understand our ways. They think our beliefs are foolish. We must pretend to be as they are so they will accept us." Maybe this is true or was true. Maybe I've lived too long in a trying-to-be-color-blind society that I forget how far we've come, but this seems much too didactic a message for so early in the story. And by message I mean the message for me, the white reader, who hears this Hmong mother tell her daughter I think she's foolish and that they need to pretend to be like me so I'll accept them, wherein I resolve to never again make someone feel like that. That message isn't for a Hmong reader wondering if she's in this book. I don't know. Maybe it's a message a Hmong reader will resonate with with her own experiences of discrimination.
There are also too many stereotyped situations for these new immigrants fumbling their way around. There is the church that keeps pushing the grandfather to take English classes and the wise, old grandfather refuses, preferring to stick with the old ways. "If you can't speak English, life will be difficult and no one will hire you." Ouch. Thanks. There are the "American" clothes that they are uncomfortable to start wearing. There is Xigi, the teenager, eager to shed his Hmong identity and revered artistry instead preferring to run away all hours of the day with his new American friends. There is the "high-heeled" woman that visibly distances herself from Kia and her grandfather at the bus stop. There are the two pretty blond girls, Kia and her grandfather's "competition" at the farmer's market, that shun them. There's the whole farmer's market that shuns Kia and her grandfather's vegetable table because "they're different." I mean, really? Am I that clueless about how different the 1970s were or does this all seem like forced discriminatory incidences for the purpose of the moral of the story.
Speaking of the moral of the story...there seem to be a few lessons here. There are a few times where Kia and her grandfather are offered help and they refuse because they will make it on their own, besides they don't have anything to offer in return. Xigi has also completely ditched the family and doesn't participate at all. And then, of course, they all feel like outsiders. These three directions come to a head in one or two climactic events. Warning - spoilers. When Kia and her grandfather go the first day to sell their vegetables, they load up with their produce, a white tablecloth from the quirky neighbor (that Kia reluctantly accepted) but they have no luck. Grandfather falls sick, but Kia is determined to go and try again. This time after she sets up shop a loud, expensive-looking woman comes to her table exclaiming how glad she is that Kia is there and that "chef" would die if she didn't get all their vegetables from Kia, and then she proceeded to buy almost the whole table. She totally put on a show, a fake show as it was Kia's quirky neighbor, so that the surrounding shunners would be enticed to now buy from Kia. Which they did. White woman saves the day and Kia's lesson was to be grateful for help from strangers, that not all foreigners are bad. What?! Disappointing.
Xigi, it turns out, was good at gambling rooster fights as a refugee in Thailand and thought he could make a go of his luck at poker in America. This 11-year-old (!) got himself a grocery delivery job to get money for bets and to pay off debts. He actually stole the money Kia had made selling vegetables, and when Xigi's whole story unravels one day, he suddenly is very open and honest and remorseful. He and grandfather make up, go speak with the shop owner, get his job back, and all is well. It's just not believable.
There were parts of this novel that I enjoyed and that started to get good for me. One redeeming aspect I found, which intrigues me enough to read another novel by this author, was her third person voice. The third person voice in this novel is almost first-person from the protagonist's voice. I found myself so wrapped up in Kia's head and thoughts that I forgot she wasn't the one telling the story. I liked that style. I also liked the sideline of the quirky neighbor, Hank (Henriettea) and her dwarf/little person son, Sam. It was an interesting aspect of "being different" that didn't feel forced and felt like a natural learning for Kia. I even liked where I think the author was trying to go with Sam's mom: "Nobody was going to tell me my kid wasn't perfect. I thought I coule make him perfect by just pretending that he was. Except I couldn't...By the time I realized that I couldn't make him perfect, Sam was so used to my making excuses for the way he looked he never even got a chance to like himself. He was convinced I didn't want him the way he was." That's hard insight for a mom.
Some other great sections of this book are the Author's Note, Hmong Pronunciation Guide and Suggested Further Reading at the back of the book. Clearly the novel was researched and the author was passionate about her topic; it just didn't translate as well into fiction as it needed to. I just think this novel bit off more than it could chew, unfortunately.
