Description:
A vibrant, bighearted coming-of-age story about a young woman caught between loving and leaving Oakland--the whiplash between trauma, dreams, and all the things that shape us below the surface.
Anastasia Ān Xiá Huang is the third generation of her family to live in Oakland, but now, in her twenties, she feels stuck in the city she loves. She assists a pretentious curator at a modern art museum, while her own artistic dreams have fallen to the wayside. When her beloved uncle passes away, she unexpectedly inherits his house, a rundown Victorian in Oakland Chinatown. At first, it seems like a bittersweet windfall: She can renovate the house with her best friend, Noa, and then sell it. That, combined with the bonus she's been promised by her boss for locating a mysterious street artist, would give her the push she needs to apply to art school. But the house itself seems to hold darkness. Not just the black mold on the ceiling, not just grief, but maybe something more, connected to the memories coming back to her with more force and frequency--of Anastasia's childhood, the volatile father who abandoned her when she was five, the workaholic mother who continues to keep her distance. Along with her wisecracking best friend, a resurfaced childhood crush, and an irrepressible elderly neighbor, Anastasia attempts to solve the interconnected riddles of her family, her home, and her art. Full of wonder, self-discovery, and bracing revelations, Eat Bitter, Anastasia is a colorful ode to the spirit of Oakland and a deeply intimate, surprising story about how the places and people we love contain so much more than meets the eye.Brief description: Soma Mei Sheng Frazier's debut novel, Off the Books, earned positive reviews from The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus (starred review) and others, and was included in Bustle's "Most Anticipated" roundup. She has been published in People, Electric Literature, LitHub, Zyzzyva, Glimmer Train, Mississippi Review, Hyphen, Story and elsewhere. Frazier served as a San Francisco Library Laureate before relocating to New York for a professorship in creative writing at SUNY Oswego, where she has learned to drive in blizzards. Frazier has also taught at Oakland School for the Arts, the University of San Francisco, Westchester Women's Correction and elsewhere--and she worked at KQED, a premier national public media source in the Bay Area.
Review Quotes:
‟Like Blindspotting or Sorry To Bother You, Eat Bitter, Anastasia is a classic 21st century tale of Oakland, California, peopled with characters who meet hard times and long odds with underdog elán, garrulous banter, and boundless creativity. At the center is Anastasia An Xia Huang, a young artist in a drifting life whose uncle's passing forces her to face the ghosts of the past and her fears for the future. Soma Mei Sheng Frazier has crafted a novel that is wise, tender, and unforgettable."
--Jeff Chang, author of Water Mirror Echo and Can't Stop Won't Stop
‟Eat Bitter, Anastasia is an excavation of the many layers we build around our families, our cities, our selves. Frazier renders her heroine, Anastasia Huang, with tender clarity as she unearths the secrets--and debts--that surface after her uncle's death, all against the backdrop of an Oakland rendered in loving, unsparing detail."
--Shanthi Sekaran, author of Lucky Boy